There are thousands of pieces published on the internet that are vying for attention. Getting backlinks from authoritative websites showcases search engines that your content is valuable.
However, building backlinks can be challenging and is often one of the hardest parts of optimizing your website. You can get backlinks by integrating link bait content into your strategy. A link bait will naturally drive backlinks due to its unique nature.
If you understand the psychology of how link bait works, you can create effective strategies to improve your website’s visibility.
Ready to start link baiting? Let’s dive in.
What is Link Bait?
Link bait is content that is designed specifically to attract links. Picture it like a fisherman’s hooks with bloody meat that will lure the fish, in this case, other websites.
However, the content has to be of the highest quality to attract authoritative backlinks. A well-crafted piece of link bait solves user pain points or provides valuable information, making it highly effective in attracting multiple backlinks. If you get these high-quality links your chances of ranking on Google grow exponentially.
A good link bait has three main characteristics:
- Great content
- Infographics
- Timelessness
The goal is to create content that is engaging for your existing audience as well as relevant to the target audience.
Link bait doesn’t get you only a few inbound links but hundreds to thousands. You can earn links naturally, as people want to link to your content to give their content an edge over competitors.
There are several pieces on the internet with zero backlinks. With website owners refreshing or writing new content, creating link bait content to link to can be a great strategy and one of the best resources in your toolkit.
A link bait is a scalable solution and can provide exponential returns to boost your off-page SEO.
Pro-tip: A link-building agency like GrowthOG can offer you the guidance you need and answer questions on creating high-quality link bait content, which will have a lasting effect on your website’s SEO authority.
Understanding the Psychology of Link Bait
To understand link baiting, you must first grasp the psychological principles that drive people to share and link to your content.
Why link bait works: emotional triggers and user needs
Humans are filled with emotions, and link bait takes advantage of these emotional triggers. If content invokes strong emotion, then people will want to share or link the content.
If a piece of content emits positive or negative trends, it will be more shareable. Similarly, when an audience finds content they are feeling or experiencing, they will easily relate to the content.
One of the successful link bait examples we can turn to is when everyone was talking about ChatGPT and its implications on the internet. ToolTester understood that writers and journalists require statistics to cite their writing. So, they created stats about ChatGPT’s user base and its operational costs.
Users looking to get related information quickly stormed to link content to their website. Currently, it has 572 backlinks from different websites. Through link bait, the website was able to garner relevant backlinks and rank high on SERPs.
Link bait creates a sense of urgency, encouraging people to link before it gets too late. However, it is important to create content that resonates with your audience, wherein it can get more outbound links.
The role of storytelling in link bait
Stories have been passed through generations. If you can replicate these stories as a tool for your content, you can form a personal connection to the consumer. A great link bait uses narratives to engage readers and encourage them to share it.
A few examples of successful storytelling include sharing testimonials or case studies to weave your content. If you can create a compelling storytelling link bait, you can easily attract more links and increase your website traffic.
Pro-tip: GrowthOG helps websites like yours create compelling link bait strategies by using storytelling and emotional triggers in the content. This creates a great impact on the content, making it naturally link-worthy.
Crafting Great Link Bait Content
To create an effective link bait, you need to consider some key characteristics:
- Practical link bait: To do this, you need to offer readers real-world solutions. For example, you can create tools or a template that people can use for their endeavors.
- Opinionated link bait: Take a strong stance on a topic, even if it is controversial, and offer a unique opinion about it.
- Visual link bait: Content with infographics can offer a better understanding of the topic. Make use of high-quality images, video, and multimedia elements to make the content more engaging.
- Newsworthy link bait: Create content that resonates with current events taking place in the industry to attract inbound links.
You can create the best content with the above-mentioned points, but it will not convert unless you know your audience. The first step is to identify the target audience and understand what they are interested in.
To find what people want, you need to use Google Search Console to monitor fundamental metrics. Using these metrics, optimize your link bait content around it using relevant keywords.
Google Search Console provides up to 16 months of search data you can go through.
When you create content that resonates with your audience, you’ll start getting high search rankings. This will attract backlinks, which will also help improve your website traffic.
Proven Link Bait Strategies
Listed below are proven link bait strategies you can integrate with your link-building strategies to help you kick off your link bait campaigns.
Strategy 1: Create something useful for users
The most basic strategy is to understand the pain points and offer a solution to them. A perfect link bait can be a tool that resolves any specific customer issues. For example, a calculator that can calculate your savings or determine the mortgage payments.
Templates are also great options as they save users plenty of time and effort. These resources are sought after by content marketing individuals to stand out.
Apart from this, guides and cheat sheets provide step-by-step instructions that can also garner link-building opportunities to increase your traffic.
Strategy 2: Start a conversation with a blog post
Start writing high-quality content that is original with proper research which will form a unique stance. Some topics may portray controversial content, but it’s always good to be opinionated to stand out and become a thought leader.
When readers or content creators read your content, they’ll be encouraged to join the conversation and put their points forth. This can boost traction on your blog posts, which will help you build links.
Strategy 3: Bring the visuals to life
Visuals are a key component of building a powerful link bait. 94% of articles with images and visuals garner more views than without. They are a tried and tested and should be a key part of your SEO strategy.
People are more likely to connect and respond to visual triggers rather than words on a page. Videos can also create a lasting impact on an individual.
Who doesn’t love infographics? They are cheat sheets that portray a clear picture of the topic. Ensure that all your visuals are aesthetically appealing and can be easily shared across different channels.
Strategy 4: Make it interactive with quizzes and games
Crafting interactive content is one of the best ways to create an effective link bait. Quizzes, polls, and games are two prominent types of content that can help garner more organic traffic.
A quiz is often an underutilized commodity even though it imparts useful information. They might seem a bit tricky to make, but a good quiz can create a buzz. You can generate quiz topics that arouse curiosity amongst audiences to get optimum results.
Conducting polls and surveys can be a great way to get more links. It is very easy to run a survey on trending topics. Use this virality wisely to attract links from news agencies and websites for your page.
Also, try your hand at creating fun and highly interactive games. Creating a game can be challenging. However, if it becomes popular, the number of links you can get for your site in link building is insane.
Strategy 5: Evoke emotions with surprising content
Humans are filled with emotion, and a content piece embracing emotions can easily resonate with readers. Content that creates surprise, excitement, anger, awe, or anxiety can get you the most backlinks.
Why would somebody share a post on social media unless it created an impact on them? Challenge existing beliefs or share your take on certain things; if it’s good enough, watch links to your website flow.
Tapping into these emotions only with content won’t help. Video content gets 1200% more shares than plain text content. People tend to watch video stories that can completely influence the status quo and trigger them to share the content with others.
Finding and Creating Link Bait Ideas
Now that you’ve understood the concept, let’s delve deeper and learn some great link bait tactics for getting the most links on the internet.
Using backlink analytics to uncover link bait ideas
You may have the best idea, but the link bait will only work for your page if it appeals to your niche. The best way to uncover link bait ideas is to perform backlink analytics based on your industry.
Backlink analysis is a doctor’s checkup that you need to do to ensure everything on your site is in order. If you want to understand the health of your site, then it is one of the best choices.
Backlink analytics gives you the ability to compare your backlink profile with that of your competitors. The analysis report contains information about common backlinks you have, as well as links that your competitors have on their websites. Using the data, you can identify what strategies your competitor is using and how you can implement and enhance your website ranking.
Lastly, it is a great opportunity for you to identify areas of growth that you haven’t explored yet.
To perform a link bait and identify what link bait is best in your niche, you can:
- Choose sites in your niche you want to analyze
- Select an auditing tool to do the analysis
- Get an in-depth overview
- Analyze and implement what your competitors are doing
Identifying gaps in your backlink portfolio
Backlink gap analysis is a great way to check for any gaps in your backlink portfolio. Identify websites that link to your competitors but not to your pages.
With the gaps, you’ve identified efficiently craft link baits that will attract new links and improve your traffic.
To get ahead, you can work with professionals at GrowthOG who can assist you with competitive analysis and help identify effective link bait opportunities for client-specific niches.
Measuring the Success of Link Baiting
Once you’ve launched the link bait, you’ll need to track its performance and measure its impact.
Tracking engagement metrics: likes, shares, and comments
Tracking the progress of your campaigns can help you understand what is working for you and what needs improvements. A good way is to check your tracking engagement metrics and see how often the content is shared on social channels.
Analyzing the comments and likes can help you understand how your content is taken by the readers. You can also check the bounce rate to enhance your link bait and get more traffic on your site.
Monitoring backlink growth and SEO performance
Monitoring your backlink growth and checking how many backlinks your content has acquired is an important parameter for SEO growth. Efficiently analyze them, with a stern focus on their domain authority and relevance in your niche. Try to disavow low-quality or spammy backlinks, which will have a negative effect on a website’s SEO.
Tools like Google Search Console can help monitor the fundamental metrics. Many times, users try to enhance their offerings, completely forgetting the basics. Check for any missing keywords and optimize your bait content to enhance the SEO offering for your site.
If you can keep track of your site’s SEO performance and backlink growth, you can improve your website’s visibility and drive organic traffic to rank higher.
Common Link Bait Mistakes to Avoid
There are some mistakes you should look to avoid when curating link bait content to get as many backlinks as possible.
Over-optimization and spammy tactics
If you think that you can rank higher using deceptive tactics to drive clicks, then you are mistaken. Google and search engines value content that offers some value to the reader. Fraudulent tactics can affect your rank and remove you from search results.
There is a common misconception that adding many keywords will help you rank higher. However, that is not the case, and most times, Google penalizes websites for over-stuffing their content with keywords.
Link exchanges between other websites are something you should tread carefully. It’s a great way to boost your rank, however, too many links are against Google’s Webmaster guidelines. You must ensure that you don’t engage in excessive link schemes to manipulate your rankings.
Furthermore, article spinning, automated queries, or content cloaking are other forms of black hat SEO techniques that you should stay far away from. If you can avoid over-optimization or spammy tactics, you can create link baits to earn backlinks for your site.
Lack of relevance and user value
Content for your link bait should be relevant to the audience in your niche. When you are creating content that provides value, it is great for attracting links. If users quickly leave your website after landing, then it will affect its SEO performance.
If you are creating content on a niche topic, then it should have some original research that can lure people into reading it. If not, it can attract negative comments and feedback that can damage your brand.
If you want to have content that resonates with the audience, you should look at agencies like GrowthOG. We make sure that you offer relevant content while avoiding pitfalls like spammy tactics and over-optimization.
Over to You
By now, you should have the answer to the question, “is link bait worth the hype?”
Link bait is more than just visually appealing content. Using content that allows you to attract links isn’t a black-market SEO tactic, but keep in mind not every link bait is of the highest quality.
To create a successful link bait, you’ll need to learn what the audience in your niche wants to read. If you are able to crack the case and curate high-quality content that offers value and credibility, then it can attract backlinks from authoritative websites, which will help improve your rankings in the vast ocean of the internet.
Remember, the key to successful link baiting is to prioritize the needs of your audience. Create content that resonates with them to stand out in the niche. When you understand the pain points of your readers, you will encourage them to share your content and link it to their website.
GrowthOG is a trusted partner that offers a tailored solution to create high-impact link bait with high authority and relevance to drive sustainable SEO results for your website. Partner with us today to learn more!
