Most website owners only dream of creating content that goes viral and increases their overall traffic, but only a few are able to create link bait content that people just can't resist. The term Link bait has gotten a lot of popularity over the last couple years and that is mostly due to how effective the strategy is. If you provide content that has an incredible headline and delivers exactly what people want to see, then they are much more likely to click the link and also share it with their friends and family.
While there are plenty of different tips and tricks that people have tried over the years, only a few still continue to be successful. So let's take a look at what works in 2013 and beyond.
Guides
People use the internet to gain knowledge every day, and providing them "how to" guides will get you some easy traffic. While there are plenty of other how to guides out there, being creative with your content is what will determine if it becomes successful. Guides don't always have to be step by step information only type content. You can make it fun or give it some comedic elements to make it stand out and become link bait.
The bottom line with creating guides is, if it can truly help people achieve their goal, then it will be used by lots of people and they will also refer it to other people who are in need of it as well.
Keep the Topics within Your Niche
Creating link bait that has nothing to do with your website might give you a quick bump in traffic, but will ultimately fail. People that click on your link will have a hard time trusting you as a source and might end up just trying to find the content on a more related site before they decide to share it with their friends and family.
The more link bait you create within your industry, the higher the chance the traffic will be converted over to future visitors. Once you have been to know to provide top quality link bait content, people will start automatically going to your site for their information or signing up to receive the content as soon as you post it. If you’re able to come up with a large list of people that want you to contact them with new content, then it gives your content an extra boost when it first gets published.
Other websites in your industry will also start to respect you and consider you an expert if you continually provide great content. They will be more than happy to link your content to their readers because it also generates traffic for them to post quality links.
Interviews With Important People
This especially works for websites that don't have a big reputation because even though you might not have a lot of followers, people will more than likely know the person you are interviewing. The best thing you could do is find someone that is successful within the industry you are in and ask them questions that other people would like to know the answers to. Doing this can bring a lot of new traffic to your site and since the content is related to your industry, it increases your brand recognition and can help bring in future traffic.
Best of Lists
These continue to be very successful types of link bait. By creating a list of the top things regarding the subject, people will be very interested in what the content says. The only thing you need to make sure and do, is to research and make sure the content is correct.
The last thing people want, is a great title, only to get into the content and not trust it. If you provide bad content with a link bait type headline, you will be hurting your website's brand and they won't trust you in the future. The whole point of link bait is for people to feel the need to share it around, so if they don't feel like they can trust you, why would they? Just provide valid content that people enjoy and you won't have a problem getting more and more traffic.