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Table of Contents An intro- What is Link Bait? ............................................................ 3
Link Bait Examples .......................................................................... 4
2) Infographics ................................................................................ 5
4) Creating useful tool ..................................................................... 7
5) Combining data to create innovative digital tools ....................... 8
Using Video ..................................................................................... 9
Maximising distribution ................................................................ 12
Summary ....................................................................................... 13
References: ................................................................................... 14
About the Author ........................................................................... 15
An intro- What is Link Bait? Link bait is a permanent and vital part of any link building/ SEO strategy and is one of the most effective tactics any online marketer can deploy because it forces marketers to think deeply about customer preferences and what type of product content is good enough to engage your online audience. "link baiting" can be defined as creating a piece of content so compelling and interesting as to persuade your website readers to link to it and share with friends, social network and contacts.
Why Link Bait still matters for SEO Link Bait and attracting links naturally are also a very authentic way of achieving authority in the eyes of Google. As I write this user guide creating unique content for your audience has never been more a important necessity for content marketers since the Panda and Penguin Updates (2012-14) where Google has explicity rewarded higher-quality sites near the top of the search results and penalized or even removed low quality, thin website from its results. Thus link bait is a key strategy to fulfil the new paradigm of Google’s content evaluation. Executed well Link bait also earns repeat website visits and traffic over time. Links aren't necessarily pushed but earned in unexpected places with natural and topically relevant anchor text. The other key benefit is when you publish valuable content related to your core subject matter you establish yourself as an authority on that topic, and more likely appear in search results for topically relevant queries. This Guide is written for SEO, digital and content marketers providing simple ideas and inspiration for creating Link bait and Linkable assets that can boost your long term link volumes and SEO performance
Link Bait Examples Below is a list of Linkable asset examples that succeed in earning natural, highly-topical links.
1) Expert interview series How does it work? The approach is to send identical questions to several experts in your industry, compile the answers into a single page on your site and then announce that interview series to the key news sources within your vertical industry. The result is niche links that strengthen your domain. Digital publisher, Econsultancy do this very well when they publish a list of blog posts annually seeking the opinion of experts in a specific vertical as shown below:
Fig 1; SEO trends opinion piece for 2016 asking a panel of experts
2) Infographics A popular form of Link bait is infographics. To generate quality info graphic ideally combine it with unique research. One of the best Info graphics around content was the imaginative and visual Periodic Table of Content Marketing created Chris Lake CEO of Empirical Proof
Fig 2: Chris Lake’s The Periodic Table of Content Marketing
Accessing primary research and data can very expensive and time consuming to create. Another option for limited budgets is to create Link bait from Secondary Data using someone else's research. Here is an example of Wikipedia data cleverly color coded and sorted by region on the SEOplan website
http://seoplannow.com/country-de... Another commercial question when planning is how can info graphics support commercial SEO goals? The US Ecommerce website REI have used Info graphics in very compelling intelligent ways to support their commercial strategy. Taking the theme of Zombies and Walkind Dead they have designed these funny infographics to raise awareness on which products you would need
to survive in a post-apocalyptic world
Fig 2: Info graphic supporting commercial goals. 3) Humorous 404 pages
Humor can also be used in simple Link bait design such as
designing a funny 404 pages
Fig 3: Lego using this cute Tableaux for their website 404 page
David McCandless's Blog Information is beautiful a must read for
inspiration info-graphics; http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/
4) Creating useful tool Creating useful online tools that fulfil the needs of your online audience will automatically attract Links. This approach is used a lot in financial Services as shown here:
Fig 3; tools and Calculators to slash cost; Source: Money Saving Expert 2016
Fig 4: Currency Converters and Calculators
5) Combining data to create innovative digital tools Example 1: Sustainable Cities Index The B2B Marketing agency Man Bites Dog created this fantastic tool for ARCADIS called the Sustainable Cities Index, the rightful winner of the 2015 B2B Marketing award. The purpose of this nifty tool was integrating multiple data points providing a fascinating, easy to use, informational tool giving the user highly valuable information about sustainability around the world
Great link bait strategists also combine differing content types and distribution to maximize the SEO impact. The Sustainable Cities Index campaign was also combined with a downloadable PDF report and Press Releases supporting a global reach and distribution with bloggers and leading global news like the Independent and the Guardian
Example 2: Thomson Travel Interactive Map; How Music Travels The Thomson travel company created this brilliant interactive graphical map that visually explains the evolution of western dance music over the last hundred years, showing roughly where on Earth the musical styles were born, and how they combined with each other.
This fantastic Visualisation idea not only works because of the quality of the interactive design but also the clever us of social Share buttons located on the top left of the page
Using Video Video is one of the most effective strategies for link bait strategy as assuming that that you have a strong idea it is easy to share and encourages distribution across leading Social Channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Vine. The cost of producing quality Video has fallen considerable making to be produced and distribute through Youtube and Vimeo With video, exceptional does not necessarily mean that the production quality has to be ground-breaking, but rather that the content must meet the needs of a specific online audience and do so efficiently and creatively.
One example of understanding its online audience is The Simply
Business Guide to WordPress where a series of videos are blended
with links to articles and presented in a very easy to read step-by-
step interactive flowchart.
Another excellent approach to delivering a distinct message that
provokes immediate response is the Will it Blend series of Video
The blender company threw everything from marbles to an iPhone in their blender and answered the question will it blend by turning it on. “I wanted one of their blenders too because it will blend anything”
The external Link, brand profile and long term value for Blendtec are almost incalculable. Will it Blend is almost a comedy channel in its own right. The Video of the Ipad alone has achieved 18 million likes at the time of writing and proves that video executed correctly can have dramatic results for link bait and building brand profile.
ReelSEO has created these excellent key Steps to Maximize the Use of Video as Link Bait which I have included below :
1. Self-host your videos (or use a secure third party provider)
and put it in a big frame (I recommend 720 x 405 for most
desktop sites) on a dedicated page on your site.
2. If you’re using Vimeo Pro, Vzaar, Viddler or any other
platform which allows you to publish your video outside of
your domain - turn this functionality off for now
3. Create a custom embed code for your video, using the
following free tool. So the video has an "embed" call to action
at the bottom of a page (NB ensure the in-built “embed”
button is turned off for any hosting platform you may be
using, as this typically won't include a text link back to your
site)
4. Include social share buttons on the page, with a custom
message specific to your campaign
5. Outreach to sites who may be interested in linking to your
video, ensuring you include the above embed code within the
6. 3-4 months later, or once the return from your outreach
work has dried up - put the content on YouTube, Vimeo and
any other social video platforms relevant for the content
you’ve created.
7. Seed the content socially and try to get as many shares and
links as you can to the YouTube/Vimeo versions of your
video.
8. After the buzz dies down from this - mark the content up
"private" on YouTube and set up domain restrictions on
Vimeo (so it stops working for anyone who has embedded it).
9. Outreach to all the people who embedded/linked to the
YouTube/Vimeo versions of your video, explaining that this
link now doesn’t work and ask them to link to the version of
the video on your site instead.
Maximising distribution Enabling your content to be seen, content distribution is a critical component to maximize the success of any link bait campaign.
Here are some strategies to maximize content distribution 1) Find relevant social influencers on Twitter and make connections with them. You can use an array of tools including Follower Wonk or Buzz Sumo for finding the relevant Twitter users. The real skill once you find influencers is engaging with them and understanding what content entices them to share. Another unused tool for finding influencers in your vertical is Quora which is a fantastic Q & A website with a rich source of topics and influential writers on any subjects Journalists working on industry specific publications and, where relevant, even broader consumer publications. In the UK we have a resource called Journalisted and responsesource where we can identify relevant journalists in your category. 2) Optimise your content Right Carry out keyword research with Google’s Keyowrd Planner tool around what people might search if they are seeking your content. As you start accruing links to the page, this will of course help its visibility for the relevant search terms further and this in turn means more traffic, shares and links.
3) Use paid advertising including Facebook Ads, Google Adwords
and Linkedin Sponsored updates. Be prepared to invest in getting
paid advertising to get your content infront of your target audience
4) Paid for content marketing network.
Cost per click content marketing platforms like Outbrain and
Taboola are also good at getting your content in front of people on
highly trafficked sites, but they will generally offer less
conversion/retention than using social platforms.
Summary So there you have it. A Guide to link bait with some suggestions for maximizing distribution. I hope you found this guide useful and provides some inspiration for testing link bait content to support your link building, SEO and branding goals. Good Luck and I’d love to hear from you if you have any other great examples to support this Guide
References: Wordle http://www.wordle.net/ Visualisation tool for words Linkbait Generator: http://linkbaitgenerator.com/intro.php Lifehacker: http://www.lifehacker.co.uk/ Followerwonk: https://moz.com/followerwonk/ A tool for finding influencers http://buzzsumo.com/ A great tool for finding influencers and content which travels Technorati: http://technorati.com/ For sourcing authority bloggers Quora: quora.com Excellent Q and A website for sourcing authority writers
About the Author David Reilly is Digital Skills trainer, writer and Strategy consultant.
Email; [email protected] Twitter: @DavidLGReilly
