If you don’t know what link-bait is, let me explain. Link bait is anything that will make others want to link to it. Placing some attractive link bait on a website is a well known way to attract links and boost positions in the search results.
Link bait can be nothing more than an informative tutorial through to a unique web application. Here are a few simple suggestions that can be used by almost every website owner.
Competitions.
Competitions are a well known, tried and tested way to attract attention and traffic to a website. The prizes don’t have to be too expensive, but high value prizes will tend to attract more attention.
An effective technique is to run a fresh new competition each month. Announce the competition at the same time each month and save the prize announcement for then. People will be revisiting your site just to see what the prize is each month.
To give your competition the widest possible appeal it should be open to anyone, but you may also run competitions that are exclusively for your existing customers. This can encourage people to become customers in order to be eligible to enter.
Authoritative, Informative Content
Top quality, unique, informative content is still enormously appealing. What relevant, informative content could you provide?
Why not brainstorm a few ideas based on the current content of your site. For example, if you were running a site that was selling wine glasses you might decide to research and write some articles on the history of glassmaking, how different styles of glasses are most suitable for various drinks, the history of wine making or even a brief tutorial on wine tasting. And if you were running a ecommerce site selling designer clothes you might research and write a page on the history of each of the designer labels and their vintage fashion boutiques in your shop. You may go further by writing articles on specific clothing designers.
Some well researched and well written pages like this might even be linked from Wikipedia.
Free Images
Free images are always in demand, for use in blogs and web pages. These days it really doesn’t take much effort to gather a whole lot of digital images using a digital camera and present them from a few webpages.
Why not compile some collections of images based on the content of your website. Make certain the images are all named appropriately and also ensure that your images can be indexed by Google. These will potentially attract traffic from Google Image search.
Your Database
If you have been running an online business or a blog for any length of time you will have accumulated a wealth of data regarding your site traffic, the pages and content that was popular, trends in visitor figures and more.
Data of this type can potentially be very useful as link-bait. A page in which you analyse the traffic that your site received over the past 12 months, the browsers that visitors used, the landing pages they entered through, the key terms they used in searches etc. This data could be collated into several pieces of attractive link bait.
Discounts and Special Offers
This one really applies to ecommerce sites but can be extended to blogs by offering free give-aways. Discounts and special offers are always attractive and can be very news-worthy if the offer is generous enough.
As for competitions, the trick is to update and vary the offers and discounts reasonably frequently and at regular intervals, maybe each calendar month. Your site will attract repeat visits from people coming back to see what’s on offer this month. It is worthwhile, every now and again, making an extra-special-cut-price offer that really stands out.
Hopefully these simple suggestions will give you some ideas that you can apply to your site.
