Update:heaps more linkbait ideas!
January has been a great month for forward-thinking linkbaiting ideas. Two posts that really stood out for me are Todd Malicoat’s Linkbaiting Playbook and Nick Wilson’s 2007 Guide to Linkbaiting.
Todd opens up and expands in some detail to Nick’s original five linkbaiting hooks and adds two more gems of his own:
- News Hook
- Contrary Hook
- Attack Hook
- Resource Hook
- Humour Hook
- Ego Hook
- Incentive Hook
Todd illustrates some excellent ideas and examples. Although, it was Nick’s 2007 Guide to Linkbaiting coupled with Aaron Wall’s SEM & Lateral Thinking Skills that really struck a chord for the need to be creative, think laterally and to take calculated risks in the drive for link love.
Nick goes on to say:
The linkbait way of link building is a mindset. To do it well, you need to put thoughts of manipulating the system to one side and focus entirely on providing value to your clients users and making that value easy to link to.
I agree that valuable content is the key, however I would go a little further in suggesting that the mindset for truly remarkable content that provides the highest rewards in links, is having the ability to think laterally.
In any competitive market it helps to think a little outside the box for new ideas. A savvy linkbaiter will then analyse the risks to link aggregation and have the confidence to take the most appropriate action.
Lateral Th(L)ink(bait)ing is where it is at for 2007 and lets finish off with Nick’s final and inspiring thoughts from his post:
Those of you already working on linkbaiting services are the rockstars of the industry, the pioneers of change, and you have a responsibility to yourselves and the industry as a whole to not let a wonderful win-win service gain an undeserved, shady reputation.