What is Link Baiting(SEO)?

Link baiting (or linkbaiting) is the latest buzz word in the SEO world and has come to be the preferred way to natural link building.

It means to create something that naturally attract backlinks for your web page by getting people to talk about it, discussing it on forums, blogging about i, posting it on del.icio.us/Furl/Digg/Shoutwire and linking to it from their sites. It also attracts a lot of visitors.

Here is a list of ideas:

• Make a valuable resource (lists, special reports, history of, how to, etc.)
• Interview (e-mail/phone) prominent people and publish it.
• Build a useful tool
• Write an interesting article
• Run a newsworthy ‘event’ such as a contest
• Test something new that has not been done before
• Be the first in doing something on the internet
• Write something controversial
• Be the first to write the latest news in your niche
• Be the first to expose a scammer
• Disagree with an authority
• Write some funny humor
• Make an interesting picture
• Be the first to research and document something
• Make a theme, plugin or piece of software
• Make a tool that others can put on their sites but that links to you
• Make a joke about a known person
• Make a resource that is just in time for a major event
• Write an outrageous theory and back it up with logics
• Write useful comments on something that is happening
• Give something valuable for free
• Coin a new acronym in your niche and get people to talk about it
• Become an expert in your niche and write valuable information
• Linkbait is a word that gets passed round a lot in SEO - but it's not a massively used or understood term, and a Google search only yields a few specialist sites based on SEO. Some describe it as a technique; others dismiss it as a by-product of producing quality content.
• But what is linkbait exactly, and how does it fit in as an SEO technique?
• Definition
• Linkbait is essentially a piece of content placed on a web page - whether it's an article, blog post, picture, or any other section of cyberspace - that is designed for the specific intention of gathering links from as many different sources as possible.
• With the rise of the blogosphere, meritocracy and social bookmarking sites, all it takes is one interesting page on a site, someone to notice the page, and a few people to share the link - and before you know it, you've accrued a large number of links across a wide variety of sites.
• Linkbait as a technique
• So is linkbaiting a technique or a side effect of good article writing? Well, in our case we presented some interesting, original research in an interesting and digestible way - the ever-popular top 10 list. A quick submission to Digg, a meritocracy and social-based tech news site, and a few positive 'Diggs' from the users there, we broke the front page, and was subject to a massive surge in traffic, and perhaps more importantly, a massive influx of inbound links.
• So, in theory at least, if you can write great (or at least interesting) content, and if you can submit it to the right sort of site in the right sort of field with the right sort of audience, with a pinch of luck you might just find yourself with a deluge of traffic. There are, of course, any number of ways to garner such links - a few of which are listed below.
• Timely, current content
• With the advent of constantly-updated blogs and the thirst for news that has grown with it, current affairs can be a good source of links. Many of the meritocracy sites, including Digg and Newsvine, have a predominantly news-oriented approach to their content.
• If you can cover a news story whilst it's still a current event, and publicise the link to enough people, you should be able to gather traffic and links as people spread the word and link to you. If you're lucky enough to have a sector with an established .