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Link Love vs Link Bait

Posted on December 20, 2006 | Filed Under Traffic Generation 

By Sharon Housley

Link Strategy

As a webmaster, it is important to develop a link strategy. Unless you
have a massive brand with a reputation and following, it is unlikely
that the masses will simply saturate your site with deep links. What
are deep links? Simply put, deep links are direct links to various
sub-pages on a website (example: domain.com/subpage.htm)

Search engines value websites that have numerous incoming links spread
over a large number of pages within a domain . In other words, a
website that has large number of incoming links to various pages within
the website will generally rank better than a website that only has
links to a single page.

Incoming links are critical to achieving Internet popularity and search
engine ranking. There are two popular ways to achieve a massive amount
of incoming links, Link Bait and Link Love.

What is Link Love?

Link Love is all about quality. In order to achieve Link Love you must
establish authority and credibility. Link Love is all about being a
reputable source, often recipients of link love are the first to post
breaking news that is vetted and accurate. Bloggers, webmasters and
publishers reward sources they genuinely enjoy with link love.

Link Bait is often considered the evil step sister of Link Love.

What is Link Bait?

Link Bait is a hook. It is unique or even controversial content. Common
sources of Link Bait include humorous items, accusations, controversy,
or even implications. Link Bait is similar to ’shock and awe’; people
cannot help but link because they are so intrigued (for good or bad).
Link Bait often walks the line between acceptable and unacceptable.

Both Link Bait and Link Love generally result in numerous deep links,
as bloggers tend to link to directly to specific articles or issues
that are raised.

Not all of us are feeling the Link Love and many are not gutsy enough
to use link bait with jaw dropping headlines, so what are some simple
ways to garner deep links?

Give Aways

Everyone loves ‘free’. Determine what is of value to your website
visitors and figure out how you can provide it free of charge. “Free”,
could be anything, an online calculator, a glossary of industry terms,
software, information, statistics or web space. It is best that the
free item relate to the content on the website.

Be Different

Do not be afraid to step outside of your comfort zone. Being different
or unique attracts attention and links. Step outside the box, be
innovative and different with your design, product, or service.

Contribute

Often non-profits will provide links to companies that have assisted
them. Contributions do not necessarily need to be financial they can be
in the form of free services or products.

Befriend Industry Authorities

Get to know the bloggers and journalists in your space, provide them
quality content, previews of releases or other industry information
that would be of interest to their readers. Nothing beats quality
information.

Participate

Participate in industry forums and newsgroups. Post constructive well
formed posts and link back to your websites sub-pages on your site as
part of your signature.

Regardless of whether you use Link Love or Link Bait, develop a plan to
solicit deep links throughout your website use these tips to improve
the quality and quantity of your incoming links.

About the Author:

Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for NotePage http://www.notepage.net a wireless text messaging software company.

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