Linkbait
If you want to increase your SEO for your blog then you know how important it is to create linkbait. Creating linkbait means writing content that others will link to, this in turn makes your page more relevant to Google and your search engine ranking will improve without a doubt. Some blogs use guest bloggers to increase their linkbait. The guest blogger will write an article on their page and link back to their own blog and vice versa. This is a great method, however creating content that goes viral is the best way to linkbait.
Linkbait | Infographics
You ma not be a great writer, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t draw traffic to your site. Infographics are the perfect in this scenario, because many people would rather view a graph that presents useful information rather than spending their time reading a 1000 word article. How does this create linkbait you ask? Well if you can create an attractive infographic then others will use the infographic in their postings, just make sure you ask that your blog’s images are accredited with a link. Some people still won’t accredit your work, however if you have your company logo or url in the graph it can easily be used as free advertising anyways!
Linkbait | New Stories
Black Box Social Media gives the rundown on the importance of writing new stories in their article on linkbait:
If you’ve noticed something new in the SEO or Social Media world and nobody else has written about it, drop everything and write about it yourself. Like you, everyone will be looking for more information on anything new happening and will flock to Google to search. My first reaction to noticing Google’s new ‘personal search’ was to search in Google and read the first couple of posts that came up. If you are the first to write about something and can force your news story to the top of SERPs for relative queries then your page will be the one everyone reads first. Many people will then link to your page when sharing the story themselves. The main tip here is get there first. A lot of our traffic comes from news stories we’ve written.
Linkbait | Resources
There are many different opinions on resource postings. Many people say that they aren’t worth it for linkbait, because there are so many outbound links. Do doubt this is true, there are many outbound links, however the lost link juice is really made up by the number of inbound links that you’re sure to receive from people sharing your resource post. So I’d say its still worth it for linkbait.
Linkbait | Creating Viral Titles
The key to creating viral content is to write content that fulfills a need for your reader that they feel they cannot do without. So an obvious way to do this is by creating a title that immediately captures the web-surfers eyes. Here are some good examples of titles from ProBlogger that will be sure to create linkbait:
One example of such an article is a list post. These are posts that are easy to read, and usually provide solutions to problems or reasons why things are needed. Examples of list post titles are “Top 10 Must-Have WordPress Plugins”, or “5 Methods To Increase RSS Subscribers”. The titles of those articles are meant to get the attention of the person who has a need for those things. When they access the article, it is broken down into a list for easy consumption.
Creating linkbait can definitely take some time, but following these guidelines will be a good start to really amping up your SEO.
Image attribution: http://www.seo.com/blog/leveraging-current-events-link-baiting/