If you are not so familiar with internet marketing jargons, you may find it hard to understand what a Linkbait is and how you can benefit from it. For those who are not so acquainted with online marketing or if you are new to online business and would like to learn more about the ways in the industry, then continue reading below.
What is a Linkbait?
Matt Cutts, the famous Search Quality Engineer from Google, defines Linkbait as “anything interesting enough to catch people’s attention” that they would link to it or share it to their network of friends.
Technically, a Linkbait comes in various forms (i.e. Articles, Infographics, Quizzes, Widgets or Badges, Videos and Cartoons). SEO (Search Engine Optimization) wise, Linkbaits are contents created to encourage readers or visitors (more especially bloggers, active social media users, and website owners) to link to them as they are very informative and can be very helpful to others.
A Linkbait is considered as one of the most effective internet marketing strategy to generate links and increase traffic to a certain website. An effective and a well-thought Linkbait can go viral and can help you gain huge followings, thus gaining more online visibility and earning authority and trust in your industry.
There are various types of Linkbaits. Some of the most common used ones include Informational hooks, News hooks, Humor hooks, Evil hooks, Tool hooks, Widgets hooks, Unique content hooks, and Curated hooks. We will delve in deeper on these Linkbait approaches on our next publication.
How to Create a Linkbait?
For online marketing, a well-strategized Linkbait creation is a must as it would determine the reach and effectiveness of your content. Whether you are planning to create an article or a video, it is very important to follow a proven and tested process to ensure that your effort won’t go into waste. Below are the five basic steps in creating an effective Linkbait.
1. Analyze and Conceptualize Ideas and Strategies – Before the actual content creation, try to consider first the relevancy of your topics. You should see to it that your content is in line with your business and your link or anchor text is within your topic’s scope. If you are into dog food business, be sure to prepare and research topics that attract dog owners or pet lovers (your target audience). Determine what type of contents they prefer to consume as this would greatly matter how your content will be shared and promoted.
2. Content Production and Branding – Your content creation process plays a vital role in helping you produce high quality Linkbait that appeals to people, attracts the right audience, and compels them to link to it. You should be in control of your content production and branding to maintain consistency and quality of results. Make sure to create a timeline to edit and review your contents as a single error or mistake can taint your credibility and reputation. Also, always keep in mind that you’re creating contents for real people, so avoid being too spammy and putting too many sales pitches as these are big letdowns especially to potential customers.
3. Publishing and Promotion – Getting your contents out there and sharing them to your target audience should be easier and more fun. You can either feature your Linkbait on your website’s blog or on other blogs. Make sure that it is shareable by installing sharing tools that would encourage your readers to easily share your content to others. You should make use of social media tools like social bookmarking sites and social networks (i.e. Twitter and Facebook) to increase visibility, and allow commenting to promote reader participation.
4. Review and Improvements – Once you’re done with your publication and promotion, you can still do some little tweaks here and there. If you created an Infographics and would like to know those people who use it without linking back to your website, you can approach them and ask them to properly give you credits. You can also make use of Copyscape, a soft-ware used to check which website or blog has copied your content. Lastly, if you already have published and promoted a Linkbait before (which has successful results), you can feature your new Linkbait in there to help it gain more traffic and exposure.
5. Strategy Appraisal and Measurement of Results – This is a crucial step to determine the effectiveness, measure the reach, and track the performance of your Linkbaits. The data you collect will be compared to your previous campaigns to determine which area needs to be improve and which one needs more attention (or needs to be dropped).
If you wanted to learn an easier and more detailed instruction on how to create your own Linkbait campaign, you can ask the help of our seasoned online marketing professionals here.
Keep on visiting our Dallas Internet Marketing Blog for more Linkbait tips and internet marketing news. You can also read our daily publications through email by subscribing to our eNews and Updates.
