Link Bait

A fisherman may use an array of bait to lure his catch. Throwing in anything from croutons to corrupt tax dodging politicians, a fisherman knows when to use the best type of bait depending on what environment they're in, the time of year, and the type of fish they are trying to catch. Much like the humble fisherman, an SEO developer must know when to strike the right bait to catch target traffic.

First lets consider why this is important. The ultimate aim of SEO is to generate and increase traffic, and in theory, the more inbound links you have the more traffic your website may generate. A search engine algorithm takes an assortment of factors and binds them into the calculation that decides a web pages fate in the rankings. A major heavy weight in this algorithm, is the calculation of importance based on the quanity and quality of inbound links.

A website with 15 good, high quality links, is more attractive to search engines than a website with 100 bad links. So it is also important to differentiate between what is considered a high/low quality inbound link.

However, generating legitimate inbound links is not that easy. It is a long winded process, and it could take months, or even years to reep the benefits. Manually creating a link here and there can very be time consuming, while unnatural link building techniques, exploits such as Link Farms, can often lead to penalisation.

So web developers must come up with ways to generate organic links, and through these increase traffic and up their page rankings.

To get around this, and to generate natural, organic and legitamate inbound links, developers must employ a technique known as Link Baiting.

The concept of link baiting is beatifully simple. Place hooks around your website that are interesting enough for other sites to link to. It is a mini PR campaign in your SEO world take-over.

An endless range of PR stunts await, and you as the web developer leading an SEO campaign must strike at any opportuniy presents itself. But how and where do you apply this bait?

Nothing is set in stone with regards to what bait to use. Think of it as a form of gambling where you neve lose. Its like playing the lottery for free. If you generate any traffic from it, good work, if not then better luck next time. Use current events to inspire your baiting. Tell a joke or say something controversial. Say anyting that will get peoples attention.

There are many stunts you can pull to rake in the attention. Here are a few angles to approach from to get you thinking.

Controversy

Wonderful controversy is a powerful PR tool, it gets people talking like crazy. Use it cautiously and wisely. Don't go saying something too serious about anybody, or you end wind up paying your way out of a conviction for slander and damages to a companies reputation.

Instead be clever. Use current affairs to inpsire you. That way people will know where you are coming from. Perhaps use pre recorded quantive measures to back up your statements or views. Stats in headlines always get a few head turning.

Resolve Bugs

If you are a web developer, I am sure you encounter the odd programming block from time to time, and what do you do? Yes, you guessed it, you Google cyberspace looking for answers, you post urgent on forums, you structure the most intricate search strings known to man. More often than not you find the answer on a forum, on somebodyies blog or worse, on the self proclained Experts Exchange. Tut...dreadful state of affairs.

Do yourself a favour. Next time you solve a programming riddle, whether the language is open source, closed propriety, front-end, back-end, Ajax, JQuery or PHP, write it down and share with the world. You know more than anybody else this works, and somebody out there will find it, pass it on, and link it up.

Make a Useful List

A list about top SEO tips perhaps? People are always looking for top tips and any information that is useful within any certain topic.

Choose your topic, and build away! By the way, see what I did there?

Write an Article/Review

If you have something to say, say it. Whether it be a golden review of the most recent sub of the day, or about a strifingly bad experience at the latest most fashionable suhsi bar in town. It's all info that someone, somewhere out there will want.

Look out for opportunities in current affairs. News that hits the headlines, if you have something to contribute, for or against an argument, or for any reason you can imagine, go for it and write an article. People scan the Internet for recent headlines. Nine times out of ten they go straight to big correspondance sites such as the BBC or Sky News, but if your site is kept well up to date on a regular basis, there's no reason why your site shouldnt get noticed.

Recent Times/People

People love gossip, mostly girls, but nevertheless, it is fact. There is so much gossip out there in the world, it is sometimes difficult to avoid it. Find a niche in the gossip world and your laughing.

Think outside the box. What do other people love to read about? Consider other peoples hobbies. Your friends hobbies your relatives hobbies. There is gossip out there for everyone, just find yours and stick to it.

Tell a Joke

Say or do something funny. If it gets noticed and people like it, they will share it with their friends, and word will spread like wild fire.

Create a Tool

Think of character counting tools, currency conversion, a tax calculator or a conteporary mathematical metaphysical flux capacitor that only 1 million scientists will use on a regular basis. If you can program, think about the potential in giving away a very free and valuable tool, people may link to it.

Free Free Free!

This is a great campaign any time of the year.

If you run an ecommerce site, give something away for free when a customer buys something.

If you publish a catalogue of your products, send them out everywhere possible.

As mentioned above, if you can write a useful program/tool, give it away for free (unless its so good Google want to buy it).