For anyone who’s been off the planet for a while, a link strategy is probably the most important aspect of running a website these days. Yes, I’m an SEO copywriter, but I’m still telling you that because of Google, you’ll never make it online, even with the best copywriter there is (me of course), unless you have more inbound links than your competition.

One of the easiest (yet most difficult) ways to get links is to create link bait and spread it liberally throughout your website. Why is it the easiest way? Because once your link bait is on your site, you can sit back and let others create links for you. Why is the most difficult? Because thinking up stuff to put on your site that constitutes link bait is enough to give you internal combustion.
The unspoken question of course is, ‘how the heck to we create link bait?’

Since I’m in a good mood tonight, I’m going to tell you how to create link bait. What put me in such a good mood? My husband just bought me a new fax/copier/scanner/telephone, which I’m truly delighted about. It may do other things too, but I haven’t had time to read the manual properly yet. Yay.

Oh yes, where were we. Link bait.

Before I start, let me first mention that if you’re spending phenominal sums of money creating link bait, and if it would have been cheaper to launch your own satellite from which to beam your message, you’ve missed the entire point here.

(Skinner, will you quit digressing and just get on and tell us how we can creat some good link bait?)

Link bait should be something that other webmasters will want to link to for their own good, and which will launch your link campaign so that it gathers a life of its own.

I’m not going to suggest subjects for you. You’ll have to think about it yourself. My brain cells are already dangerously overheated trying to think up link bait ploys for my clients and myself. Go do your own thinking. What you don’t want to do is jump on a subject that everyone else is already talking about, like Britney Spears, for example.

Naturally, your link bait subjects should be relevant to your site (more relevant than Britney Spears is to my blog, for example). If you subject is worthy of a press release then you may have found something that will create its own momentum, which as I said, is always the goal with link bait.
In order to create effective link bait you need a hook that is attractive to your audience. Do they want (or need) a laugh? Would they be drawn to something mean and spiteful (let’s face it, most of the human race is). Or would some really earth-shattering news item be more in line with what you offer? If you’re really good you’ll create link bait that appeals to all the different facets of your demographic. Something for everyone as it were. If you pick a subject that no one is writing about yet, then you’ll wear the crown because links to your bait will be the oldest. The first to do anything always leaves the biggest dent in the market.

By now you should be getting the idea. Maybe you’ve already found massive inspiration for your link bait campaign. I’ll continue with this later. Yes, I will post some examples of really great link bait in the coming days. I can’t do it right now because I’m off to play with my new fax/copier/thingy machine, about which I’ll also keep you posted.