Linkbaiting is something most, if not all, webmasters do-whether they realize it or not! Who doesn’t want their content linked to? Backlinks are a good thing, and getting them without any extra effort on your part should always brings a smile to your fac

Writing content that is so perfect and so complete that it entices one-way incoming links from others…well, I for one love when that happens!

Linkbaiting has gotten a bad rap of late (because of a few that will stop at nothing to try to gain back links to their site.) Just stay out of the grey areas when linkbaiting, and get your back links for all the right reasons.

I’m not here to argue the ‘ethics” of linkbaiting techniques, but to offer what I feel are the five best “white-hat” linkbaiting techniques to use in your writing.

My five all time favorite, best, tried and proven linkbaiting techniques:

Write content that is the best “out there” on your chosen topic. Make your content compelling, unique, attention grabbing, provocative, and make sure it provides real, useful, value for your visitors.

Let them hear it from you first-Be the first to break the “big” story. Stay on the cutting edge. Subscribe to magazines, trade journals, or any source of up-to-the-minute happenings in your niche. Try to be the one who gives them “the scoop”.

Provide a free tool or piece of software-This can really make the back links show up! If you are unable (like me!) to produce the tool or software, you can always buy it or pay someone to code it for you. The more useful and “used” the tool or software the more links it will generate.

Include “lists” of useful links in your content-Links to useful websites or useful resources tend to get linked to a lot. Make your list the most complete, or the most useful, make it stand out from the rest.

Give stuff away-Everybody wants free stuff (I know I do!) So give it to them, and they will share it with their friends. The more value you can give away the more links you’ll find showing up.

Use these techniques, and use them consistently as you write your content, wether it’s blog posts, articles, website content, etc. and you will find your offerings linked to more and more often. And naturally occurring backlinks are the best kind!

For even more info on Linkbaiting Methods or Earn Money Working From Home

Link baiting has been mentioned on many SEO & link building forums and websites. Link baiting employs writing an industry quality post relating to your market. Because the article/post answers many common questions asked in the market or industry, it is assumed that a lot of people will link to the post which will help your SEO efforts.

I personally believe that people who promote link baiting as the main way of getting links do not really know what they are talking about. Normally, authors tell you to write some good “How to” or “5 Tips to” kind of posts, which will force a lot of readership and people linking back to you. In this way, they argue, that you will get many links.

Here is the problem. I have written many articles for the sole purpose of link baiting to see if the technique works. To my disappointment, I suspect I never had more than 3 incoming links to those pages. Now I understand that unless you are operating in an interesting industry, link baiting will not work to its maximum effect, but I feel it hard to believe that people can get 100s or thousands of links this way.

I think that the theory behind this technique makes sense, but in reality, this method only provides minimal benefits. Why?

Because you are spending your quality time to research, write good quality information. And as everyone would know, time is money. But unless your website is already dominating its market and getting thousands of pageviews, there will never be hundreds of people who will link to your article or post.

Plus, even if hundreds of people did link to your link bait page, that is not the page you want to rank high for, right? Think about it. Apart from that, even if for some reason you would actually want the link bait page itself to rank, you can never optimize your effort fully, because natural links coming your way will never care about the anchor text that you would want to use.

In my opinion, link baiting mostly results in a wastage of time which can be used in other ways to get more work done. People who have had success with this method operate in industries which are buzz worthy or have websites which are already dominating the niches.

Maybe this technique would help you in micro-niches, where it would be very easy to portray yourself as an expert on your subject, but for bigger niches I do not think this technique warrants itself to be used.