Link Baiting with Article Marketing

This post is kind of an example of my reinforced link building method that I discussed a couple of months back. While this is still a theory on my part, mostly because I haven’t explicitly tried this method yet -as I learn more and more about how inbound links affect a website’s standing – I know that this method will work to improve a website’s search engine rankings and definitely the visibility of a website.

Anyway – this link building method relies on link baiting, which the link baiting takes place through content posted on a 3rd party website linking back to yours. If you’re not familiar with it, link baiting is simply the act of creating (or publishing) content on your website that somehow motivates others to link to the “link baited” page or blog post.

Link bait can be a funny story, an image, a controversial news piece, an informative article, a video, an unbelievable offer… whatever. Obviously whatever you choose to use as link bait should be tightly focused on the topic of the website where the baited material is posted.

An example of how not to use link baiting is this: You have a website that offers SEO advice, webmaster tips, etc. You find an obscure and under-promoted YouTube video of cute, cuddly kittens and you post it on your website. Others find your website and cute kitten video, and start to link to it… but chances are the website’s linking to yours probably won’t have any topical relevance, and the last thing you want to do is develop 200 backlinks from cat-enthusiast websites to your SEO advice website. Now, this may be an off-the-wall example, but the point is that you want any attempts at link baiting to be topically relevant to the “baited” website.

3rd party link baiting method

Really, this method is very simple. Of course, just because the steps are simple doesn’t mean that it’ll be all that easy to implement… but the steps are straight-forward.

What you need:

1) A website, topically related to yours where you can submit content. I would suggest looking for already-popular blogs or websites that allow submissions by guest-authors. You can do a search in Google to look for these types of websites using these terms:

• Topic Keyword inurl:”write for us”
• Topic Keyword intitle”write for us”

The “Topic Keyword” represents the keyword topic of your website. So, if you have a website about SEO, you can do a search for seo intitle:”write for us” and you’ll get a few listings of qualified websites.

In most niches there are authority websites that accept 3rd party submissions, and these are generally the best to get your articles/content placed on because they likely have a strong user-base to begin with. And, that just helps the process along.

Something you want to be sure of, however, is that the resource where you will be publishing your content allows for a SEO friendly link to your website at least at the bottom of the content. This strategy will be less effective, IMO, if you only get an “about the author” page that is separate from the baited article.

Also, some resources will allow you to link directly to your own website within an article if it’s relevant to the piece you’re creating – and I would highly suggest that if you can do so, do it. I’m not talking about your website’s home page – I’m talking about a direct link to the content on your website that your syndicated content is based upon. However – it should be noted that websites that choose to accept guest author submissions won’t likely use your articles if they see a theme of self-promotion, so start out with a few general articles and then put in a passive plug for your website from time to time.

2) Familiarity with link baiting. While website owners can inadvertently create link-worthy content without really trying, many people have trouble creating link-worthy content that will “take off” on each and every attempt. Being familiar with trigger points of your target market can help precipitate natural link growth through viral link building. Which, this method really relies on the viral-capacity of baited content. But, because different markets have different needs, I can’t tell you what will work in your market – though I know that in the SEO/Webmastering world “top 10″ lists or “top 101″ as in the case of Aaron Wall’s 101 Link building tips, would probably do good so long as the content was applicable to something that website owners need.

3) A way to promote the content yourself to get things going. If you happen to have access to a highly popular website, your content may grow on its own, but from time to time baited content needs a helping hand. You can do this through a news release, press release or even creating a “catchy” video and promoting the third party page from video sharing websites. Sure, it costs money and/or time – but you’re increasing the popularity of a web page that holds a direct, search engine friendly link to your website… so it’s really helping you out. Plus, aside from the viral link building, you can also get a rankings boost from the domain authority alone, so regardless of whether you get hundreds of links from topically related websites, it’s still a worthwhile endeavor on your part.

I welcome any thoughts/questions or comments on this.