This post is guest written by Simon from Otooo

Link baiting is the process of publishing any interesting piece of material to your blog, in order to gain 3 main things: traffic, backlinks, and exposure. It can come in a variety of ways, whether through a controversial or interesting article, contests, a compilation of standout items, a top 10 list, a free tool, a free e-book or anything else that will grab the attention of readers.

It is a form of traffic generation that can drive huge amounts of traffic to the page, especially because link bait has a much easier time making it to the front page of social bookmarking sites such as Digg than other regular articles or pieces of information do.

Did I mention that the other great thing about link bait traffic and links is that they are also very well targeted?

Many bloggers know how powerful good link bait can be, but many struggle to find ideas or get their link bait noticed by the blogging world. Without exposing link bait to other bloggers, it is virtually impossible for
them to tell their readers about it and drive you traffic.

To find good ideas for some successful link bait, we can do a few things. The first is to regularly check the front page of popular social bookmarking sites and analyse the stories that make it to the front pages, and then create something similar. I have found that humor, fresh industry news and odd stuff have the most success with social bookmarks, so you can give that a shot. The other way to gain ideas is to read a lot of the other top blogs in your niche and try to find any patterns or trends in their posts. Once you see this, write something controversial about this topic or propose a challege on this. For example, site flipping has been talked about a lot lately, which has brought about many site flipping contests and challenges.

A few examples of link bait I have written are the contest I am currently holding and a controversial article called, Is It Worth Submitting To Link Directories Anymore?

Once you have created your link bait, you have to get it noticed. There are a few ways in which this can be achieved, with the first being social bookmarking. If you can make it to the front page, expect a lot of links and visitors.

The second way is to make regular comments on others blogs. Chances are that they give some link love, and if you are a regular commenter, than the owner / writer of the blog will preference linking to you rather than others that he has never seen before.

The third way is by emailing other bloggers in your niche and telling them about that great article you wrote, or the contest you are having, or that free tool you now have on your site. Mention how it would benefit their readers (also make sure to compliment them :) ). Chances are they won’t be offended by your email and will consider posting about it, or including a link in their post.

Please, don’t wimp out on doing that one. If you want to be big, you have to communicate with the top bloggers in your niche.

Remember to check out my blog at otooo.com

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