Link Baiting
Last week, I talked about using social networking sites to generate traffic. I personally don’t particularly enjoy interacting on those sites and dropping links to my work as I go, so I tend to prefer to write articles in the hope that someone else will submit them for me.
I guess you could almost call this link baiting. Writing an article with the intention of having some one else link to it. Whether that is another blog, or a networking site doesn’t really matter – all that counts is the links in.
Sometimes this tactic pays off, others not. Also, sometimes, you do not get an instant response. I wrote this one a while ago, entitled, “Stop pissing in my drinking water Mr. Clooney”
Apart from the fact that this is what I actually believe, I really wrote this to get it out of my system. I wasn’t looking for huge traffic – I don’t really make any money from this blog – it’s my personal blog and sometimes goes for weeks without being updated.
But, someone found it, submitted it to stumbleupon and wham, today it has had hundreds of hits. Now, I know that stumble can provide hundreds of thousands of hits if you appeal to the members just right, but it is an interesting phenomena.
What about you? What is your most successful link bait post. Does this work for you?
daes | February 12th, 2008 at 6:36 pm #
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blogbucket | February 12th, 2008 at 6:41 pm #
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Reed | February 12th, 2008 at 8:04 pm #
Thats cool about the stumble traffic, sounds a lot like doshdosh.com, he writes articles and doesn’t even worry about seo’ing. Seems to be a good tactic, I’ve had other blogs link to one of my articles where I bash article directories, but nothing that has been stumbled and drew in phenomenal traffic.
lonnie | February 12th, 2008 at 10:01 pm #
I loved the article. I find I get big traffic spikes hen people submit my stuff to fark and digg.
Mark Knowles (Post Author) | February 13th, 2008 at 5:33 am #
Thanks lonnie and Reed - Nice to know there are some readers out there - I always know I have hit the spot when my blog posts start to attract the spammers
Chris | February 17th, 2008 at 10:59 am #
I agree that it’s odd what articles on your site people like. Sometimes you spend a while creating an article that few people link to, other times, an article that you think wasn’t particularly interesting gets picked up by lots of sites.
Personally, I wouldn’t submit any of my own content to any of the social news and bookmark sites (or ask other people to submit for me). I do like using them though as you can read some interesting ideas you wouldn’t normally come across otherwise (especially on StumbleUpon)
Mark Knowles (Post Author) | February 17th, 2008 at 12:01 pm #
Yes, it’s odd - some posts I think I have hit the spot and get no traffic from them and others just take off. Fickle is the word I’m looking for i think.
Querblogger | March 4th, 2008 at 6:08 am #
Hi,
I personally haven´t done any kind of link baiting so far, but anyway, just yesterday I got an immense traffic hit from StumbleUpon because one person has submitted my blog to it. I got over 300 unique visitors within the first 3 hours (you must know, my blog isn´t that popular and usually gets only 50 to 100 visitors a day ;))
So, I think it would be a nice idea to start doing some link baiting too to get even more free traffic…
Bye,
Querblogger
Amy Derby | March 8th, 2008 at 2:10 am #
I can’t say I’ve mastered link-baiting yet. At least, I’ve never written a blog post hoping it’ll bring me lots of links. The posts on my blogs that draw in a lot of traffic (often from Stumble) are usually posts like yours — inspired rants, I call them.
Mark Knowles (Post Author) | March 8th, 2008 at 4:47 am #
Inspired Rants - Love it ! I may have to pinch that term
Amy Derby | March 8th, 2008 at 11:36 am #
Feel free. I stole it from a lawyer.
Mark Knowles (Post Author) | March 8th, 2008 at 1:42 pm #
Thankis - I will
Ephena | March 13th, 2008 at 9:25 pm #
Viral marketing is definitely the way to go. Thanks for the heads up.
JayStar | June 17th, 2008 at 10:14 am #
Link baiting? Never heard that term before but I agree with you on the approach it seems odd to submit your own work to the social networks etc unless its monetised and the back links will def help.
Eileen | June 23rd, 2008 at 5:00 am #
Great ideas, from the expert. still learning, I find it so hard to get traffic, but one day. thanks mark.