Link Baiting
As we’ve talked about in class, links can be critical for your ranking and success with a website. Links are the currency of the web, and if you’re doing search engine optimization, you must be chasing after links. At first sound, link baiting sounds a little questionable, but in reality, it is good and helpful. Link baiting is leveraging authoritative websites in your industry (preferably the most powerful linkers) into sending and generating traffic and links to your own site. A basic way of link baiting is by creating content that is captivating and compelling to the point that naturally others want to link to it.
The Value and Impact of Links
We know links are valuable “web currency”, but why is there value of sites liking to you? There are many points, and to name a few, the more healthier links you have, the better the authority and trustworthiness of your site is. The better authority, trustworthiness, and credibility of your site, the more relevance your site has in the industry. Links are good, however, you don’t want to strive only for quantity, you must combine quality links with quantity in order to achieve industry relevance and success.
How To Go After Links?
There is strategy of course to going after links. Three simple steps entail, first: research links, then: target content, finally: serve it. You can look for sites with free submissions in business directories to go after links. Researching and looking into similar (non-competing) businesses or potential industry associations is a great way of going after links as well. The key with this is simply sharing content and suggesting links appropriately, building networks of relationships.
3 Responses
This was really insightful! Link baiting is a smart way to get your content noticed. By creating something really valuable or interesting, other sites naturally want to link to you, which helps your site gain credibility and authority.
One of the most important skills and jobs is networking. Businesspeople are not meant to be Lone Rangers wandering their field aimlessly. They are supposed to connect and help their peers. The same goes for Link-Baiting. Leveraging authoritative websites in your industry is the same as finding an influential person to add to your network in order to boost business.
Links are very important if you want to get recognized by people and search engines alike, very helpful!