By pvaughan@hubspot.com (Pamela Vaughan)

Can we please come up with some better terminology for the concept of “link bait”? For me, it conjures up thoughts of those evil bait-and-switch advertising schemes.

But I’m going to say it loud and proud — “Not all link bait is bad!” There is a right and wrong way to use link bait, and, when done correctly, marketers can drive more traffic to their content without alienating their audience

Here, we’ll cover what link baiting entails, its benefits, and how to do it the right way. Let’s dive in.

Table of Contents

What is link bait?

The Benefits of Link Baiting

How to Do Link Bait Correctly

Whether link baiting is good or bad depends on how it’s executed, along with the intentions behind it. For instance, it can quickly go awry when marketers use deceptive tactics to drive clicks to content that lacks genuine value.

For Matt Cutts, former Engineer at Google, link bait is “something interesting enough to catch people’s attention, and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.”

Again, the key is to combine link baiting with high-quality, valuable, and credible content. You want people to click on your blog and read until the last sentence.

Brian Clark of Copyblogger believes that link bait is “just a sexy term for high-quality content that benefits the reader,” even if he does admit that the term is pretty “inelegant.” And I’m sure most experts would agree.

Let’s talk about why link bait is so effective, how it can benefit your marketing, and how you can approach creating top-notch link bait content that your readers love and value.

The Benefits of Link Baiting

Link bait content can be extremely beneficial to your marketing. Here are three powerful reasons why:

1. Increased search rankings.

Because link bait content is so interesting, it’s usually very effective for generating inbound links (remember, it’s called link bait for a reason). After all, people are way more likely to link back to something if they find it interesting.

As a result, link bait content is extremely powerful for boosting your website’s off-page SEO, which we know is the most influential way to increase your organic search rankings.

As you’re creating content you predict will make great link bait, be sure you’re optimizing it using the keywords you want to rank for in search. This will help you leverage your link bait content to boost your rankings for the keywords you want to get found for in search.

2. More traffic and conversion opportunities.

Because link bait content is interesting, there’s usually a level of virality to it. As a result, link bait content is also usually a major traffic driver.

The more traffic you generate to your blog or website, the more visitors you have the opportunity to convert into leads and customers. So, make sure your blog is optimized for conversion: use …read more

Source:: HubSpot Blog

Author: Aaron