5 examples of link bait subject line mistakes

The latest SEO tool for marketing Websites is link bait. It is the technique by which the visitor of the site acts as the marketer and spreads the link to the site on other websites. Link bait is a term derived from the practice of fishing. The page is the bait and the site visitors are the fish. If the visitors find the page interesting enough, they'll take the bait, place the links on other websites and blogs, and spread the word. The links back to the site are described by subject lines. A good example of link bait is if an article on pharmacy science would have a line like “Websites like www.xxxxxx.info provide useful information for pharmacy students”. The subject line in turn defines where the link is going to take the viewer. Thus, it is important for the subject line to be enticing enough for the visitor of the site to click on.

Not all subject lines can achieve this and more often the subject lines end up not getting any traffic to sites. Here are examples of mistakes you can make when writing link baiting subject lines:

Subject lines should not be very long. Paragraph-long links will not encourage the person to click on the link to view the page. For example, “the best prices on books and other materials are available at xxxxxx.com. These prices are unbeatable and no other website can offer such prices”. A visitor would look at this whole line and understand that it is just marketing, thus refusing to click on it. Internet users are smart enough to understand that marketing does not mean a statement is true. A shorter subject line would be better link bait.

On the flipside, the opposite of what has been discussed above is when the subject line is too short and tells nearly nothing about where the link leads to. Here's an example: “Available at xxxxx.com”. This subject line tells you nothing about the product it features or the page one most go to to see it. All subject lines must include some description of where that link will take visitors. A better subject line would be: “the best deals for books are available at xxxx.com”.

A subject line that is non-specific will not be trusted as much as a specific subject line. For example, “Salaryxxx.com measured the average stay-at-home womens' earnings to be $151,342”. The number itself, although specific, will bring in more site visitors. This is far better than a subject line than the same subject line that says the women would make more than $100,000. $100,000 is too vague for a number to dissuade people from thinking the link is an advertising ploy.

Attacking subject lines, like “xxx.com is the worst site ever”, are good only to an extent. Over-attacking subject lines can cause more damage than good, however. While some attacking subject lines gain a lot of clicks by visitors, especially if they focus on a large, corporate entity or politician with a bad reputation, use these subject lines sparingly because they often turn people off.

This is the worst possible subject line you can have. If the subject line is in no way connected to the Website it is linked to, even if the visitor does click on it and land on your site, he will not stay there for long, due to dissatisfaction. Not only will he close the link, but it would give the visitor a bad impression of the site you link to. An example of such bad link bait is: “Download software here”, where the software is not available on that linked page.

These are 5 of the most common examples of bad link bait subject lines. Keep the mistakes listed above in mind. It is important that you follow these rules when you design your link bait.