Link Baiting - Thrive Learning Institute

When it comes to SEO there are several factors than contribute in a major way to the webpage's strength in the search engines. Aside from on page optimization and probably more essential is the obtaining of backlinks. In this article from Thrive Learning Institute we'll discuss what backlinks are and the different strategies you can you use them to drive traffic and profits.

What are backlinks?

Back links are links from outside sources that link directly to your website or a page within your website. The more links you have from these outside sources the higher Google will rank you, the more traffic you'll and, if you're going for money, the more $ you'll make.

Because backlinks are an essential source of income for the online community, it's plain to see why so much has been written about it and why there is so much confusion about it. I'll attempt to shed some light on one section of the art and psychology of getting quality backlinks to your site.

Link Baiting

A popular way to build high quality backlinks to your website is to use a method called "Link baiting". Now we all write content for our websites and we try and make it good, useful content that people will find useful. Many times however we write a piece just for the sake of getting some text for on page SEO where you can stick your keywords for the crawler (programs that scan your site for keywords and content relevance). Link Baiting is the process of writing a piece of content with the intent of making it go viral so it spread across the net.

There are a few different kinds of content that are more apt to catch the imagination of net dwellers than others however.

Humor
Contrary
Resource
News

Writing a humorous article and combining it with a funny picture or video is a great way to stir things up in your niche. Everyone has received those emails filled with ridiculous pictures before and it gets passed through friend networks forever. That is what you're going for with a humorous piece sans email. You want this to take hold on the social bookmarking sites like Digg, Reddit and propeller and you want other bloggers in your niche to link to it and comment on it. So lighten things up a bit and let it fly!

Writing a post that is contrary to popular belief or principle is another awesome way to stir things up in the community. Nothing incites more buzz than a respected blogger saying something seemingly insane but then backing it up with data and evidence. This is probably one of the hardest things to do and because of that its also one of the most effective.

Take for example, Tim Ferriss. He wrote a great book, called The Four Hour Work Week, that basically attacks the corporate employee and the corporate lifestyle. Ridiculing it as a 40 year prison and then proceeded to show the way out. This book has been in bold rebellion of the societal norm and because of that reason he has been on the New York Times Bestseller list for 2 years straight. I know this is an extreme example but it illustrated my point well. Be intelligently controversial and you could have your ticket to fame and see a dramatic increase in your income.

Creating a useful resource is an effective and easy way to get lots of backlinks. Look around your niche and find a need that hasn't been filled effectively and then put together a comprehensive resource that will be a great benefit to others in your niche. If its useful you'll see tons of new backlinks to your site as people discover your post or article.

The last method I've listed is that of writing news posts. The trick to this one is to be first. It doesn't necessarily have to be a perfect post but if you can get a thorough article out there about breaking news along with some analysis of your own it can spread like wildfire and build a LOT of valuable backlinks.

At Thrive Learning Institute we urge you to start implementing some of these strategies in the articles you write or posts for your blog and test them out. You'll find that you're better at some than others. The more you test the more successful you'll be so get to it and start building backlinks!