Definition
Linkbait is a marketing strategy that aims to encourage visitors to visit a website and share links to it. This is often achieved by publishing an interesting, informative or entertaining content that encourages people to link to it and share it.
Successful example of linkbait
Here are five well-known, past examples of Linkbait, which have caused a stir on the Internet:
- Dollar Shave Club: Dollar Shave Club's introductory video went viral in 2012 and became a prime example of successful Linkbait. The humorous and entertaining video showcased the company and its razor subscription services. Due to the success of the video, Dollar Shave Club received countless Backlinks and quickly rose in the GoogleRanking on.
- Oatmeal Comics: Matthew Inman, founder of Oatmeal, is known for his humorous comics and infographics that often go viral. One example is his "10 Things You Should Know About Coffee" infographic, which has been shared and linked to on blogs and social media. Through his humorous content, Oatmeal has many Backlinks preserved and its notoriety increased.
- Zalando Scream of happiness: The original Zalando advertising campaign "Scream with Happiness" attracted a lot of attention and was hailed as a successful Linkbait viewed. The humorous commercials, in which customers scream with joy when they receive their Zalando packages, were shared on social media and linked on various websites, which increased Zalando's awareness.
- Moz's Beginner's Guide to SEO: Moz, a renowned SEO company, published a comprehensive and detailed guide for SEO beginners that included many practical tips and advice. This guide was linked to by numerous websites and helped Moz establish its expertise and authority in the SEO industry.
- Old Spice Viral Video Campaign: Old Spice launched a viral video campaign in 2010 featuring actor Isaiah Mustafa, who appeared as the "Old Spice Guy." The humorous and whimsical videos were viewed millions of times and linked to by many websites, making Old Spice one of the best-known examples of successful Linkbait made.
These examples show how more creative and appealing Content in the past has helped companies and websites to generate Backlinks and attention to support.
Advantages
Linkbait offers a unique advantage that other Internet marketing strategies lack: a chance to reach an audience that is not already interested in your product or service. Since visitors who come through Linkbait reached aren't necessarily part of your target audience, it can be difficult to turn them into customers, but it's a great way to generate traffic and strengthen your brand.
Other benefits of linkbaiting in link building:
- Natural Link building: Linkbaiting allows you to use natural Backlinks from other websites instead of buying or acquiring them. Natural Backlinks contribute to the improvement of the Search engine optimization your website.
- Increase visibility: If your content is shared and linked to often, it can help increase the visibility of your website and brand.
- Traffic-Increase: When people link to your website, this can help to increase the Traffic on your website, which in turn can lead to more conversions and potential customers.
- Increase domain authority: A higher number of high-quality Backlinks to your website can help increase the domain authority of your website, which in turn can lead to a higher ranking in search engine results.
- Increase brand awareness: Linkbaiting can also help increase awareness of your brand and content by reaching more people.
Disadvantages
Linkbait is associated with its time and requires quite a big investment in creating high-quality content. If the content is not compelling enough, visitors will not be encouraged to share it. Moreover, it can be difficult for companies to stand out from the competition if they share the same Linkbait-Use content.
Other possible disadvantages of linkbaiting in link building:
- Time and resource intensive: linkbaiting can be time and resource intensive, as it requires creating and distributing creative and engaging content to generate attention and Backlinks to be obtained.
- Risky strategy: linkbaiting can be a risky endeavor, as it aims to get people's attention to erlangen, and it is not always guaranteed that there will be Backlinks leads.
- Quality of the link: Linkbaiting can lead to Backlinks receives from low-quality websites that have little authority, and this can even have a negative impact.
- Bad reputation: If linkbaiting is not done properly, it can lead to getting a bad reputation as you can be seen as spammy or unserious.
- Penalty risk: using unethical practices such as artificial linkbaiting can put you at risk of a penalty from Google or other search engines, which can affect visibility and rankings.
Use cases
Linkbait can be used for many different purposes, from increasing traffic to a website, to promoting a brand or product, to increasing engagement on social networks. It can also be used as a tool to generate leads and increase conversion rates.
10 practical examples of linkbaiting in link building:
- Surveys or quizzes: Create a survey or quiz that is relevant and entertaining to your target audience. This can help get people interested in your poll or quiz and talking about it in their network, which can lead to natural Backlinks can lead.
- How-to Guides: Create a detailed tutorial on how to do a specific task. This kind of content is very useful for people and is often forwarded and linked.
- Resources and Tools: Create a resource or tool that is useful to your target audience and that others would like to use and link to.
- Viral content: Create content that has the potential to quickly become a viral hit, such as funny videos or amazing images.
- Industry News or Updates: If you're always up to date on the latest happenings in your industry, you can use this information to create topical content that others will love to link to. You can also use interviews with experts or recent studies and surveys to create interesting content.
- Events: Host an event like a WebinarAn event or conference that is relevant and interesting for your target group. You can use recordings or summaries of the event as content and thereby Backlinks generate.
- Influencer Marketing: Identify and work with relevant influencers in your industry to create and distribute content that will be seen and linked to by their followers.
- Community-Building: Build an active community around your brand, products or serviceservices, share, discuss and link to the content.
- Newsjacking: Take advantage of current developments to create content that aligns with what's happening in your industry or in the world and use it to generate Backlinks.
- Sweepstakes or contests: Create sweepstakes or contests to draw people's attention to your website. Sharing and linking to sweepstakes or contests can lead you to Backlinks from other websites.
Linkbait vs. clickbait
Technically Linkbait a content to be linked to, while Clickbait is a content that should be clicked on. Content can be both well clickable and well linkable, in which case it would be both Linkbait as well as Clickbait.
The term Clickbait has a negative connotation and is often used to describe content that is light and entertaining. Examples of Clickbait are article headings like:
- What does your choice of M&M color say about you?
- Can you solve this puzzle for 6 year olds in 20 seconds?
Linkbait can also be a pejorative term, but generally less so, as linking is a greater sign of quality than clicking.
Conclusion
Linkbait is an increasingly popular marketing strategy that can help businesses drive new traffic to their website and promote their brand. Although it's quite an elaborate strategy, it has the potential to produce great results and is therefore a valuable option for businesses that want to improve their Traffic and would like to increase their level of awareness.
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