Link baiting is a procedure used by Website owners to market their sites on the Internet. By using link baiting, the Website gains popularity with the help of the visitors to the site itself. These visitors that like something in the Website will tell others about it by posting the link back to your site on other Websites.

By using link bait, the Website becomes popular in two ways. Firstly, visitors from other Websites could come to the site via the link posted. Secondly, the number of inward links increases dramatically by using this marketing method, causing a boost in the site's rank in search engines. This is because one of the parameters for search engine rank is link popularity. Gaining a higher rank on search engines will also promote the Website and help the site get more visitors.

Link baiting is not easy to perform and it should not be a random process. Careful strategy has to be planned in order to persuade the visitor that views the page to pass on the link onto other sites. A good link baiting strategy invokes emotion within the viewer to link to the Website from other sites and spread the word.

It is important that you use hooks for your link baiting depending on the content of your Website. If your Website contains information on a certain subject, then you should use informational hooks to grab viewers. If a page contains jokes or cartoons, you should use humor hooks. A viewer would find it relevant to place a link on other sites only if the content matches the hook for the link bait.

If your site contains information, jokes and tools, you should use a good combination of link baits for each of the categories on your page. You must identify the sections available on your site and individual pages and place hooks accordingly.

Good link bait provides specific information on what the link is about. In addition, a viewer of the link on other pages will believe that the content on the page is worth viewing only if the headline for the link is specific. For example, Salary.com contains link bait with a headline stating, “Home moms are worth $134,121 a year”. This statement is more specific than if the figure in the headline were $100,000 a year. Thus, the specific nature of the statement makes it believable for the viewer to think that the site is worth visiting.

It is important that your viewers are capable of interacting with your Website. Allowing viewers to post comments helps others in the community and draws in new site visitors. Link baiting for viewer opinion and feedback can also help.

The visitor should be able to easily link back to your site. You would not want to lose on link bait just because the viewer finds it difficult to place a link back to your site. Giving pages stating “Link to this page” with a script, which allows the user to get the link easily, help quite a bit when you're crafting a link bait network.

Bloggers can help in your marketing strategy. Let them comment or review pages from your site and write about them in their blogs. The link bait obtained through blogging is essential because many people visit blogs and they tend to have good rank in search engines.

The above 6 pointers are the basics of most link baiting strategies. Make the appropriate adjustments to the tips above to craft a link baiting strategy that works for you.