“So, you know, all these people who are like... ‘You have to go buy links; you have to go spend a ton of money on viral conversations...’ No, sometimes it's as simple as just coming up with a really creative hook.” — Matt Cutts, Head of Webspam @ Google
Linkbaiting, for linkjuice-based authority and higher rankings in search engines...
When all the standard techniques are in place, it often comes down to link bait strategies, to get a step ahead of the competition who may also have standard SEO in place.
The best linkbaiting requires genuine originality and shed loads of creativity. It can not easily be purchased, but the sky's the limit to how successful it can be.
Linkbaiting requires you to think outside the box, not to compete with competitors, but to gain an unrivalled advantage. Usually it involves creating a service that doesn't currently exist, and people flock to use this service because it's genuinely useful. Sometimes it's just a cheap joke, virally hooking new people's attention. Then there's the interesting news articles which consistently generate a new inlinks from new readers.
See what Google says about blackhat link schemes
See also: Selling linkbait ideas
Whichever form of link bait you use, it's all about getting people to link from their site to yours. One easy way to do this is to promote HTML-based website widgets which have linked embeded inside them but are tolerated because the widget makes their site more useful. But be careful about how you bait your links, because if you over-do-it, it could be blackhat-SEO link-scheming, which is ethically on a par with vote-fixing in an election.
Linkbait Test: Is it the kind of thing that people would talk about on Facebook or in emails? If it is, then people would also blog about it.
