In the search engine optimization (SEO) industry, linkbaiting is debated as being a technique to gain links or just a result of producing good content. Whatever your intentions are, linkbaiting can gain instant success in a link building campaign. Generally speaking, linkbait is some sort of content (article, picture, poll, etc.) with the main intention of gaining links from many different sources. With the advent of “Web 2.0” and the popularity and rise of social bookmarking sites, one good piece of linkbait can gain you more visitors and links than you could request in a year. It is a common technique for new sites that are looking to gain some attention to their young web site. So you can now see the debate. Putting out good quality content that just happens to garner many links and lots of popularity wasn’t necessarily meant to be linkbait, but many hope for this type of success.

Many people are able to break out to web stardom by trying linkbait while others continue to try but are unable to create content that makes them stand apart from the other millions of web pages. Many users create top 10 lists or tutorial style documents which many web users find interesting. After creating a good piece of linkbait, you can submit your article to the social networking site, Digg along with other social networking sites and news sites. If you already have a presence in the online community, you may not even have to do the ground work yourself. Those web authors that already have significant readership may find that some of their readers often submit their articles and help create links back to their site.

If your goal is to increase your web traffic and links through the linkbait technique, there are a few different options you can try. More and more people are using the web for their up to date news. The Internet is also a place where you can find industry specific news that you won’t find on major network television or radio shows. Writing content on your web site or blog about the most current news can help you get quick success. You will need a few people to link to your blog early in order to get your article publicized before it becomes old news.

Another approach you can take is to talk about something controversial and create a buzz about it. Your whole web site can be dedicated to this or even just a blog post. This one can be a little tricky because you will see many passionate people and you may need to step in and moderate at some point. You should never purposely abuse or slander an individual just to create a buzz and bring people to your web site. Doing so can even result in legal issues. There are plenty of debatable topics in the world that will cause a stir.

The most common and potentially the most lucrative way to get more visitors and links is to get your web site and article listed on the front page of Digg and the most popular social bookmarking site, del.icio.us. This will prove to be very difficult but a front page listing on these sites will guarantee you many links and lots of visitors. You will definitely need some very interesting, well written material to get on the front page of these social bookmarking sites.

Crazy web sites with even more bizarre domain names seem to do very well in the online community. If you have something people want to see or read like funny jokes or interesting videos, you will find lots of people willing to share your web site with other. Humor and video sites are some of the most linked to web sites on the Internet. Viral marketing and campaigns are great at getting people to fall in love with your site and getting them to want to be a part of it by sharing it with others. It may take more time than other methods but this can be one of the most productive methods of linkbaiting. Because users have the ultimate vote, bad content will always fail. So be creative and you can do well with linkbaiting.

Obtaining links from websites related to yours are one of the best and most difficult steps in a search engine optimization campaign. Many SEO experts believe that right now, relevant links are one of the highest factors in ranking well on Google. Not only do high rankings in the search engines help, but links from other websites also send you traffic. Here are some tips to help you get started in finding and getting the best links possible.

1. Create content that people will want to link to. This is a very effective way to obtain links because you often won’t have to request the link. People are choosing to link to you. Some content that is very popular are “10 Best” lists or other help documents. This type of content is also very popular in social networking sites like Digg which has the potential to bring your website tons of traffic and links.
2. Become the authority on a particular subject. If you are known and respected as an authority in your field, many people will want to link to your website. This is another great way to obtain links without having to request them.
3. Submit your writings to websites like EzineArticles. These types of websites rank well in search engines and being the author of a great article on their site will bring you significant traffic. And if the article is impressive, people will link to it.
4. If you are a business, take advantage of press releases. There are many news sites and press release sites out there that list different press releases for various businesses. Your press release should include a link to your website.
5. Find another website that is related (but not competing with yours). Trade content with each other and include your link with your content.
6. Many company websites link back to blogs and websites that are covering news and information about recent events dealing with their company. If you cover company news and information, make sure you link to their websites and they may link back to you.
7. Find a highly debated topic and create a discussion group or poll about it. Many people who are passionate about the topic will link to your site and advise others to visit your site to give their opinion or vote.
8. Get your site into authority directories in the “right” categories. Such directory listings offer not only much needed authority backlinks, but also co-citation benefits where your site is listed side-by-side with other quality sites in your field.
9. If you are a business, join business associations like the Better Business Bureau and the local Chamber of Commerce. Some of these groups may have websites where they will post a link to your website.
10. Request a link from your business partners. Some will be more willing than others but this is an easier way to request a link since you already have your foot in the door. If you supply a product to different vendors, you can easily require that they have a link to your website on theirs.
11. If your site is dedicated to a certain topic or if you are a brand name, you may be able to add a link to your website on Wikipedia. This will be counted as a very strong link since Wikipedia is widely known and popular.
12. Include your website address in your email signature and forum signatures. These may not count as links to your website but if you have a good reputation and are helpful, people may follow your signature to your website. If they like your site, they may end up linking to it.
13. If applicable, have satisfied customers or clients write a testimonial claiming how wonderful your product or service was. These will often include a link to your website.
14. Blogs are extremely popular right now and you need to have one. Links to blogs are common since the content changes regularly. Make sure your blog is useful and up to date. Link to other relevant blogs and you will find people linking back to you.
15. When viewing other people’s blogs, leave intelligent comments. The link to your website in the comments will not add much value for the search engines but people will follow that link and potentially link to you later on.
16. List your blog in different blog directories and use Technorati tags which are known to rank well in many of the popular search engines.
17. Provide a good looking site to your visitors. People are much more likely to link to your site and tell their friends if you have a professional looking website. If you have a run of the mill, cookie cutter web site, people may not even look at it.
18. Trade links with related websites. This is one you have to be careful with. It’s easy to find a reciprocal link network that will trade links but you only want links for relevant sites and you only want to give links to relevant sites. If you go the wrong direction with this one, it will hurt your campaign more than help.
19. Try to get links from older websites. Search engines seem to trust older websites more and often have a higher PageRank.
20. Have a contest or giveaway. These types of promotions often create a buzz in different communities. The better the prize or contest, the more publicity your site is going to receive.
21. Provide the most up to date and current news in your industry. Cover important news and events but also cover the famous people in that industry. People turn to the internet to get the most current news.

Link building can be a tedious and difficult chore when it comes to search engine optimization. If you follow some of these basic tips but are also creative and find new and interesting ways to gain links, you will be successful. While asking for links may seem easier, creating a buzz and providing content that people want to link to will usually result in more relevant and important links.

Everyone who has studied a little bit of search engine optimization (SEO) knows that linking is one of the key factors to a successful campaign. Many people overlook one of the easiest and most influential types of links they can get, “internal links.” As those who have tried to get good, relevant external links know, it’s not always easy. With internal links, you have complete control over where your links are, what type of links they are and what your anchor text says. Although the benefits of internal links and external links differ, they are both vital to a successful search engine optimization campaign. As simple as it sounds, it is one of the most commonly overlooked steps in most campaigns.

Internal linking can help the most by:

• Aiding the search engine spiders in locating all of your pages which results in more of your pages being indexed in the major search engines.
• Inserting more of your keywords on each page, making your page more relevant and building keyword density.
• Helps boost the Google PageRank of your internal pages when linked to from your main page.

Here are some tips and more information about all these areas and how you can maximize your website to take advantage of internal linking.

Getting Your Pages in the Index

The concept of search engine indexes is simple: you want as many or all of your web pages to be represented in all the major search engines. The more pages you have in search engine indexes, the more likely your site will come up for search queries. If you are participating in an SEO campaign, you have researched keywords and have targeted these keywords. One of the great things about getting your pages in the index is that you will start to show up for all kinds of queries that you hadn’t even targeted.

Internal linking can help get more of your web pages indexed because you are providing links to each of your pages on every page. Imagine you are shopping on a website; you click a link to a product from the first page. You are done looking at this product but there are no links back to the main page or other categories or items. Where do you go? The search engine spiders have the same problem. If you provide links to all your other pages, your visitors and search engine spiders will always have more pages to look at and index.

One of the most important parts of internal linking is to make sure that you have text links somewhere on your pages. Many websites use trendy flash and script code for their navigation. These websites look great but they are not always search engine friendly. Search engine spiders can’t see the code in flash and other script code and therefore are not able to follow the links within them. If you use flash or another script code for your navigation, you must ensure that you have text links to your important pages somewhere else on your web page. In a lot of cases, people will put their text link navigation towards the bottom of the page. If you can avoid flash for navigation, that is your best bet. But if you can’t switch, make sure you provide text links also. Search engine spiders can follow image links but they don’t carry as much value as text. If you do use image links, make sure you use ALT tags that appropriately describe the image. This will help the value of your image links.

Keyword Relevancy and Density

The idea of using keywords is pretty basic; you want your keywords to show up on your pages. Even more important than just showing up on your page, you want your keywords to be used in the anchor text of your links. If you have a website page that is about MP3 Players, typically you’d want the anchor text of the links on your other pages to say MP3 Players. It is far more beneficial to use keyword text than the words “click here” or “homepage.” Additionally, some search engines still look at the keyword density of your pages. Keyword density is the ratio of keywords to other text. If you want to show up for MP3 Players, you should have the appropriate keyword density. Be careful though, overstuffing keywords and having a high keyword density ratio can hurt you more than help you.

Using keywords for your anchor text in inline text links is always a very good idea. It may be obvious to use keywords in your navigation links but linking to internal web sites in your page copy may help you even more. If your web site is set up to sell MP3 players, you obviously are going to have the words “MP3 Player” in your page copy somewhere. Instead of just letting this text go without links, use this text to link to your page about MP3 player information or MP3 player product pages.

Boost Your Internal Pages PageRank

Your internal pages’ PageRank can be affected by the PageRank of your homepage. Typically, your homepage carries the highest PageRank of any of your pages. The best way to let your homepage influence the PageRank of your internal sites is to make sure you have internal links from your homepage to only your most important internal pages. You may think that it’s a good idea to list all of your internal pages on your homepage so that your homepages PageRank is distributed to all your pages but this will actually be more detrimental to your internal pages PageRank. If you distribute your homepages PageRank among 100 links, less of the PageRank is trickled down to your other pages, resulting in a lower PageRank. Only put links to your most important and relevant sites on your homepage and boost their PageRank.

Most Important Tips to Implement Internal Linking

• Use text links for your navigation menus on the left hand side of your homepage. If you put your text link navigation on the left hand side, it will be one of the first thing crawled by the search engine spiders.
• Use keywords in your internal linking. Don’t go overboard and cram keywords in there but keep it looking natural and informative.
• Use the footer for navigation text links. The footer is a common place to put your navigation text links. You can also list other pages like your sitemap which will help you in getting more of your web pages indexed.
• Use inline text links. There are many reasons to include inline text links. Many people believe that the search engines place extra value on these types of links and view them as more important since they are in your page copy and not part of your navigation.

Improving your internal linking is a major step in your search engine optimization campaign but as you will see, it is a very important one and one of the few steps in a campaign that you have total control of. If you effectively use internal linking (and don’t abuse it or spam) then you will see more of your pages being indexed and potentially a higher ranking in the search engines.

One of the things webmasters try to do with very little success is to acquire high quality back links from web sites with a .gov or .edu extension. Getting links from these types of sites is very difficult because only reputable government or education organizations can register a .gov or .edu domain name, and these organizations tend to link to other equally reputable web sites. Hence, the quality of those backlinks from .gov and .edu are likely to be higher than that of those links from other regular web sites.

There is a debate on whether search engines actually award more value to back links coming from .gov or .edu web sites in terms of page rank and search engine rankings. Recently Matt Cutts from Google released a comment about .gov and .edu back links, and indicated that there is no preferential treatment for those back links currently done by Google.

Due to their high credibility, still many webmasters try to come up with ideas on how to acquire back links belonging to .gov and .edu domains. These reputable web sites hardly ever sell links, and when they do sell them, you can expect to pay upwards of $100 or $200 per month per link and even more if the page rank of such a web site is high or the site receives a lot of traffic.

There is one way to get .edu and .gov links relatively easily and quickly at no cost. This is through forum signatures. There are many .edu and .gov web forums that just about anybody can sign up at. All you have to do is to register at one of these many forums hosted in .gov and .edu domains and make a few (non-spammy) posts. Then put a link in your signature that goes to your web sites and you instantly have multiple back links to your sites from a .gov or .edu web site. This is one legitimate way to get links from all regulated extensions where not everybody can register a domain name.

There are wild guesses and some informed arguments on whether site-wide or single home page links should be seeked for when you are building backlinks for your site.

These are some of the meats from ongoing discussions:

• If you aim to maximize your PR and direct referral traffic, site-wide links help you better.
• If your primary concern is SERP, obtaining home page links from relevant good sites is a better approach.
• If your site is new, securing site-wide links will help it get indexed quickly and deeply by search engines.
• A site-wide link on a site with thousands of pages may be flagged as keyword spamming by Google; MSN and Yahoo tend to be more tolerant to such linkage.

As a means to avoid being flagged as unnatural linkage patterns by Google, one tactic suggested by several SEO experts is, instead of getting a site-wide link, to place your link on a “pre-sell” page of a related website, which is linked to site-wide on that site. With the site-wide linkage, such a pre-sell page will be considered important within the site by search engines, and your link on that page will also be able to claim high weight from that site.