Six LinkBaiting Ideas
There’s been a lot of talk about LinkBaiting in the blogosphere, and I’d like to weigh in.
First a little background: Google gives more ranking weight to what they call authoritative sites and pages. It defines those sites as having many outbound and inbound links. So now having links to your site is important to your success online. More simply, inbound links also drive traffic to your site.
So now we have link exchanges and link sales and link finding software. We have free articles on anything you could possibly think of that all contain links back to the author’s site. There are 437 free articles in my Inbox right now, including Rubber Floor Mats or Carpet Floor Mats and The Lowdown on Laminating Film.
LinkBaiting is viral marketing for links, and we love viral marketing. Like all viral marketing, the goal is to get people to write about and pass around your link so that you get free exposure and traffic. You need to give people a reason to mention you in their blog or on their website, and you need something newsworthy or at least write-worthy to get a news source to mention you.
The best treatise on LinkBaiting comes from Nick Wilson on Performancing.com. Nick says that all good LinkBaiting relies on a hook, and he’s come up with different hook categories:
News hook
Contrary Hook
Attack Hook
Resource Hook
Humour Hook
The goal is to offer something so unique and mentionable that other sites will link to your site for free. Other sites will see that mention and add their own in true Viral Marketing fashion. Making you think? Me too.
Here are six LinkBaiting ideas:
1. Come up with a simple free tool for people in your subject area to use, and spread it around.
2. Watch the RSS feeds like a hawk. Jump on and cover a good news story. Comment on a blog or two to get things rolling. This has worked for me.
3. Write a funny list or post in your subject area.
4. Find some funny pics related to your subject area.
5. Come up with some original research (the 10 Most Profitable Programs on Commission Junction This Week was the most popular post on this blog).
6. Give away a free web template, WordPress plugin or graphics file.
Whatever you choose to do, remember that Viral Marketing needs an index case. So go plant the virus somewhere, like at a prominent blog site or two in your niche, or at a forum site, or both.
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April 5th, 2006 at 4:04 pm
A little late adding a comment to this post (having just – happily – discovered your blog now), but I certainly can vouch for “Watch the RSS feeds like a hawk. Jump on and cover a good news story. Comment on a blog or two to get things rolling. “…
I have some autogenerated blogs on various niches (not spammy, imo, and many have been added to people’s MyYahoo and MyMSN rss readers – based on what my logs are showing – so others must find them useful too *grin*) and whenever I see a story on CNN or in the blogosphere related to any of my blog niches, I’ll “Stop the Press!” (ie turn off that blog’s autogeneration) and make a manual post about the new hot story. Then let it ride until the story dies down, at which point I’ll pop on the autogenerating program again.
If it’s an especially hot story, I’ll continue updating that post with the very latest developments to ensure it’s the best and most thorough resource for that story online (ie find rare related photos online, some google research of my own for details not appearing in other coverage, etc).
I’ve done that a few times and seen huge spikes in traffic, especially when one of those visitors (sneezer) posts it on a similarly themed forum they’re established on.
Personally I’m still trying to find the best ways to monetize those efforts, especially for some topics that don’t lend themselves to adsense ads or affiliate programs, but it’s satisfying to see when it works.
Great post!
April 5th, 2006 at 4:09 pm
Hey Steve,
Your article directory site is terrific (click on Steve’s name above to go there). I already replaced a few of my lesser-performing article sites with some from yours. How about a SORT BY PAGERANK feature :-}?
Wouldn’t it be great if there was a master index of all the major affiliate programs that you could search by keyword? If you’re a subscriber to my newsletter you’re going to soon get a chance to try one.