Top 6 and a Half Ways to Create Linkbait for Your Site

If you are like me and fed up of reading those Top 10 lists (see my last blog post, I had a Top Eleven I will have you know), then this blog is aimed at you.

We all know these Top 10 lists are just linkbait (Linkbait = ways to get people to link to your site - or the place where you write the Top 10 List) and so I thought I would do my very own "Top 6 and a Half" guide to writing great linkbait - although not to our own site, something has gone wrong there!

1. Say Something Controversial - Controversy creates debate, not always good, but rarely that bad in the long term, especially if the debate contains links to your site from multiple places. A good example would be: "I cannot understand how social media agency WeAreSocial has 32k followers on Twitter when they rarely engage with followers? Have they used a Twitter-Follower-Bot and if so, what does that say about their soshal meeja thang?". Just an example... :-)

2. Offer Something for Nothing - well, maybe in exchange for an email addy. Write one of those e-books (basically a PDF document) on your area of expertiese and offer it for free, or at least in return for an email address. If it is good enough people will link to it.

3. Say Something Nice - obvious innit... people love to share kind comments about themselves made by others. For example (this is a real one!), we have recently started outsourcing the odd bit of internal design work to Start-Up agency, Chuse Design and they are fricking awesome... and I mean, really top draw!

4. Say Something That is a Bit of a Tease - These ones make me giggle. Ones where people post an overly dramatic or mysterious header on Twitter or alike with a link that takes you through to something far less exciting. I am not talking those Tweets about offering extensions of nether regions either, headers like "Why Your Business is Going to Fail" and "Why Cutting off Your Finger Will Help Your Business Grow"*. My fave recently was "Mucky Mucky Mucky" and then a link... I did not click it, even though the writer is someone who I follow and like.

5. Create a Funky Widget - if you have the tech skills to hand why not build a funky widget that people can get from your site and place on their own blog or soshal meeja pages. Make sure the widget links back to you and hey presto, you have some link love.

6. Be Creative - come up with a funny or creative "thing" on your site that people will want to share and link to... could not be more shimples

6.5 Do a Top Ten List! - Needs no explaining

Finally, not really a tip but a bit of common sense, make sure you make it easy for people to share your linkbait using tools that will enable them to FaceSpace it to their Twitterbook, or even Digg it out cos they find it Delicious...

For all those who think linkbait is bad... it aint cos a man from Google said so and they is the God's - well in internet land at least.

Hope I haven't sent you all asleep...

Thanks,

Andy, who runs a Public Relations Agency

*Made up, of course, well, I hope it is - maybe now is not the time to debate if this works... don't try it at home kids.