linkbait and you
I’ve been doing some reading lately about Linkbait. What is linkbait you ask? It is creating some kind of content on your site with the express purpose of getting other people to link to it. Now call me crazy, but it seems like EVERYTHING on your site should be link bait. If you aren’t trying to create something people want to link to, wtf are you doing? I’m surprised that there even needs to be a term for this practice.
Some people have come up with some pointers on how to write blog posts that qualify as linkbait.. and here is what I believe the important bits of that are:
- Controversy. People will link to you if they think you’re crazy or just to point out your point of view to others.
- Funny or Strange. I can’t even begin to guess how many billions of emails and URLs must get forwarded around the planet every day just because they’re funny or strange. Social networking sites make this stuff easy to share. MySpace whoring anyone?
- BUZZ! Clearly if you write something related to currently popular items such as the ipod, SEO, or current events, people will be more likely to be interested. The more people that are interested the more likely it will be that your link will spread like wildfire.
Do I really care about linkbait? Sure, it would be nice to get huge spikes in site traffic for a day or two, but am I going to go out of my way to do it? Not likely.
I do have one method for producing linkbait that I’m surprised hasn’t seen more widespread use, but I’m not ready to share that with the world for free just yet.