What does your content say about your product or service? Is it clear and concise? Keep in mind, linkbait is more than a press release. Blog posts, infographics and videos are just as, if not more, effective.
Is your linkbait relevant to your audience? You have a target audience. Cater to them. Give them something useful – something that will make their lives better. Teach them something they don’t already know. They will then rely on you for information and continue buying your product or service.
Is your content authentic? Give your audience a unique look at a current trend or topic that relates to your brand. What do they know that they didn’t know before? For example, if your brand is targeting working mothers, you want to choose language, images, and analogies that best relate to them.
Your content should, of course, be SEO- friendly. Not spammy, but showing Google your linkbait has value. This means your linkbait should be ripe with relevant, varied keywords. This requires keyword research.
Not only should your content be keyword rich, but it should also elicit quality links pointing to it. These should be relevant, valuable sources that also find value in your content, and send it on a viral hunt via Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Reddit, etc. This will increase the value of your content in the search engines, and also increase brand awareness and conversion rate.
Lastly, your linkbait should conclude with a call to action. It should encourage the reader to take action, including comments, tweets, shares, likes, join your social network, buy your product or service, etc. How do you encourage this? Simply ask. If your content is valuable to the reader, and you start building trust, they will eventually take what you have to offer.
2. Social Signals
It isn’t a new thing to know how important social media is to a brand. Whether you have a brick and mortar storefront, or you’re an online retailer, you need social media to help build your brand.
You should be actively engaging in social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to connect with both current and potential customers. This includes more than auto-importing updates from your blog or other sources. Of course, promoting your linkbait piece is an important element of linkbuilding. Asking and answering questions, initiating and facilitating discussions, are just as vital to building a good reputation on the Web, and maintaining a strong linkbuilding campaign.
Utilizing social networks will also help you become an authority in your niche. Believe it or not, likes, retweets, and connections will boost confidence in your brand, and give you a bigger platform than other brands in your niche. Optimizing your social accounts is vital to your success.
3. Organic Traffic
Organic traffic has many benefits for your linkbait piece. Natural links not only keep you in good standing with Google, but also offer a good return on your investment. So, how do you achieve organic traffic from the search engines?
Optimized Content
Keywords are vital to your linkbait. You must include search terms that will help you rank high in the search engines. For example, if your brand sells brand name tablets, and your linkbait is about the future of tablet OS, you want to include a variety of key terms that people are already using to search for tablets (ie. branded terms, head terms, long tail, etc.). Of course, you will want to include exact match key terms as well.
Social News Aggregators
How do you build natural links to your linkbait/brand? Social news aggregators. If you aren’t familiar with them, you should get familiar–fast. Aggregators such as Digg and Reddit are taking social media by storm, and if optimized correctly, will earn you lots and lots of natural links.
Social Media Networks
Again, social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIN must be effectively utilized to build natural links to your content. Not only will it build your customer base, but give your conversion rate a boost. This is the ideal way to know what your customers like and don’t like. It gives you a platform to test a new product or promote a campaign to gain new prospects. It is also one of the easiest ways to promote your linkbait piece, and solicit feedback and natural links to your brand.
In order for you to have a successful linkbuilding campaign, your plan must be strategic. Keep the following in mind when strategizing your campaign:
- Collect data. You must do research–collect data, analyze it, and determine how you will use it to build your links.
- Keyword research. This is a vital element to linkbuilding. You must know your target audience and how to reach them through keyword research.
- Analyze competitors. This is another way to find prospects that you may not have reached yet. Find a competitor who is doing something you aren’t doing, and do it better.
- Know your target market. This applies to who your target market is online. This may be different from your initial target market.
- Your campaign should be both branded and conventional. There are countless ways that you can achieve this. However, keep in mind what your brand already has to offer. Try not to veer too far from your philosophy and what you want your brand to be known for.
- Timely. Your campaign should be relevant to what people are currently talking about or doing. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel.
