Link Bait Basics

On this blog there is quite a bit of discussion on how to gain links through different mediums such as social bookmarking, directories, and article directories. Now these are great to get noticed, but if you really want to set your site or blog on auto pilot then link bait should be in your marketing arsenal as well. As I spend hours reading what others say on link bait I have found a common misconception of people believing that unique helpful content is "link bait". Well in a way this is true, but for the most part writing unique helpful content will more than likely get your post or article rewritten. So what do we do when trying to gain links rather than get rewritten or have our content stolen?

For a blogger it comes with either a post which takes so much time to rewrite that others do not want to take the time or the respect from the blogosphere which can take years to gain. I guess we are jumping the gun a little bit lets discuss what link bait is before we discuss the creation of it.

Link Bait: Content in the form of image, video, or/and text which has such a uniqueness, helpfullness, relevance, and authority that the web sends backlinks either to reference or explain a topic. If that does not make sense please leave a comment asking me to explain further and I will do my best.

Like I said there are two forms of link bait and I will first discuss the type which you can create without being an authority in your niche. So what does it take to create link bait. How much time and effort must you put in when trying to create something worth linking to. I have had posts which have gained links by themselves one of my most linked to is http://marketing-a-website.blogspot.com/2009/05/top-55-social-bookmarking-websites.html. This post has the most useful social bookmarking sites 55 to be exact that help webmasters. The post took around 1 full day 16 hours or so of me going from social bookmarking site to social bookmarking site finding the ones that had a simple submission process and were useful to anyone who owned a website or blog. Then the next day I spent 12 hours or so putting the post together trying to rank my favs first and the soso sites last. So when all said and done it took 28 hours of pure work before I was able to create a post which was linkable and not easily creatable. Now I have had other posts which have been linked to in fact all of the posts in the "my best posts" have gotten links, but not to the extent which the 55 list has had.

Really if I were to put a number onto it I would say 12 hours is the mandatory amount of time which you will need to create link bait. Now if you spend more time doing research and making a larger post or article the linkability will increase and you will find the more hours you put in will get you more links pointing towards your creation.

Now lets move onto becoming an authority something I really wish to be in the upcoming months. I have been steadily climbing the ranks and when I have done searches on my name and the name of this blog it has been talked about (usually good). So how do you become an authority within your niche? There are many ways to get noticed and I find the best is to constantly be creating new unique content for your blog and site as well as building a constant flow of links. Personally I use the free traffic system frequently to build links though I find the blogs which my articles go on usually are not to authoritative, but are still relevant backlinks. Another thing which you can do to increase your authority on a subject is to write articles for prestigious sites either the top blogs in your niche or the highest regarded article directories. The article directories like www.goarticles.com or www.articlesbase.com will get you backlinks, but they will not get you noticed within any given community. If you would like to really get noticed then you must get on the big sites such as www.ezinearticles.com, www.buzzle.com, and www.ehow.com none of these allow even moderately spammy article and expect your best work. So if you want to get noticed then begin writing to these sites and remember these three don't allow mass submissions and expect to have the unique piece so they are not good for any type of mass article submission write the article submit it to one of these three then delete it so you don't break any of the rules. You will also notice sites such as buzzle only allow one link and you may be saying "then whats the point" well this actually works out to your advantage since Google will see the article/site as being mostly content rather than a lil content and a ton of outgoing links. Anyway once you begin getting noticed and you have a constant stream of updated unique helpful content on your presence people will take notice and you will see your readership rise which will lead to you slowly becoming an authority on any given subject.

Once your an authority then anything you write will get backlinks and you will gain a following of people who when you ask will do pretty much anything for you. Don't use this poorly such as charging your readers for info or trying to force feed them products from companies which contact you. Anyway this is link bait and remember if you like the post please link to it here is the code:
<a href="http://marketing-a-website.blogspot.com/2009/08/link-bait-basics.html">Link Bait Basics</a>

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