SEO Expert, Anthony Yap

Link building is one of the major keys in ranking effectively with the search engines. Many techniques have evolved to capitalize on the hidden gold from attaining top rankings and getting free search engine traffic. Of them all, link baiting has to be one of the best methods to build incoming links.

Link baiting boosts the link popularity of a web site and has quickly become a very effective method of promoting web sites, by increasing their traffic and raising their search engine rankings. Due to the viral aspects of link baiting, inbound links increase very quickly without much additional input after it has been setup. Despite the fact that some consider it to be a black hat technique, link baiting is very popular these days and many top SEOs recommend it highly.

What is link baiting? It is simply a means of creating content that spreads like a virus on the internet. No, this isn’t the kind of virus that infects your computer. Rather, viral content writing involves material that is made freely available online such as tools, useful software, articles, news, gossip, humor, or controversy. The goal of this original content is to attract the interest of other web publishers or peers in the industry, who in return, will add links to their web pages because they like or consider the posted material to be interesting, original, or useful for their site visitors. The materials used in link baiting can provide a valuable information resource to their readers and visitors or it may be just rumor or gossip posted on the web site for the sole purpose of “hooking” as many links as possible.

This technique doesn’t involve requesting any links actively from other webmasters. Webmasters voluntarily link to your website. This is a safer technique when compared to reciprocal linking or purchasing off-topic links which can get a site owner in trouble. It represents the true value and meaning of the Internet.

The first thing everyone needs if they are going to ‘bait’ a link is of course a good ‘hook’. As mentioned before, there are various types of hooks, such as tools, software, news, attacks, humor, rumors, controversy, articles, stories and essays. There are “nice” hooks and “nasty” hooks. SEOs do not recommend the nasty hooks, as they may lead to unexpected consequences (such as litigation).

In order to prepare the bait with the highest probability of success, you have to know the current trends, latest news and any rumors on the web. Find the hottest, most intriguing topics or fill a void of a sufficiently large market that needs to be addressed.

After you decide on a theme and write the material, you must promote it. It’s easy to promote something if you are a well-known author or blogger. In case you aren’t, try to contact a professional and ask for his help. Never ask for a link because most people get annoyed by that. If the material being promoted has good content, it will most likely be noticed, read and linked automatically without having to “beg” anyone to link to your site. Something that “catches the eye” will spread all over the Internet like wildfire and attract lots of quality visitors to your website.

Link baiting has been revived somewhat lately due to the increase in popularity of blogs and RSS which provide people with an easy method of posting their material online.

The main disadvantage of utilizing link-bait methods is that they are usually time consuming and can be quite difficult to develop. In order to write interesting and original material for link baiting, a great deal of investment in time and effort on research and brainstorming are needed.

At first sight link baiting may seem like it’s not worth the effort because of the time and effort involved. Well-orchestrated link baiting, however enables any webmaster to generate a ton of free links from well-known sites and even top industry authority sites that would otherwise be expensive or otherwise impossible to obtain. It can save thousands of dollars in advertising costs to obtain these links and can potentially generate a lot of sales by attracting high quality traffic to your web site especially if your materials have good content. With many top SEOs recommending it, this phenomenon has grown into a more mainstream marketing vehicle for webmasters.

In the major search engines like Google and MSN, the titles and description are taken from DMOZ listings (where applicable) for the titles and description of the search results. These titles and description play an important role in generating the desired clickthroughs for the search result. With search engines studying behavioral patterns of users, clickthroughs are an important aspect of getting and maintaining rankings. Sometimes, the titles and description listed isn’t ideal especially if your listing in the DMOZ category has been altered by the editor or is less than optimal.

Now, MSN announces that you have the option of not displaying a site’s DMOZ directory title and description in MSN SERPs. Webmasters can specify if DMOZ data is used or alternate data is used.

How do you accomplish this?

Place one of these tags with the other meta tags on your page.

or

Make sure the site has the desired title and description for use. Be patient as MSN search crawler re-crawls your pages to see the changes.

What are Web Directories?

Prior to search engines, the web was a confusing mess of websites that made it difficult for users to find information they wanted. Thus, web directories were born. Web directories served the purposes of organizing information on the web through a strict human-edited review process. Sites are listed in relevant pages of the directory so users can find sites they are seeking by navigating to a specific directory subpage for that theme. The largest and most well-known directory is the Open Directory Project (DMOZ).

Are Directory Submissions Worth Doing Anymore?

Most definitely yes, even if you have to pay review fees. While some SEOs believe the value of a submission lies in the traffic potential, I believe that the directory listing offers an opportunity to increase link popularity from a quality, relevant page of another site. Directories were initially designed to solve issues with spam in the search results. Once the problem of search was solved (at least mostly), many believed that it was going the way of the wind. Directories still served a purpose even though it’s small. A search engine would never be able to establish site quality based on algorithmic factors. A directory editor, on the other hand, would be able to review the site on factors such as ease of use, look and feel, content quality, etc.

Which Directories Should You Submit A Site To?

The top directories on the web to go for first are DMOZ.org, Yahoo Directory, Microsoft Small Business Directory, and Best of the Web Directory.

For an inside look at the operations of top-tier directories, check out the interviews with Greg Hartnett of Best Of The Web and Shawn Walters of Uncover the Net.

What Factors Can You Use to Establish Directory Quality?

To determine what other directories would be worth the time and money, consider these factors:

• Age – The older the better. Generally, we look for sites having been around for more than 5 years. BOTW was registered back in 1996. It’s even older than DMOZ.
• Authoritativeness – How does it rank for it’s industry keywords? How well is it known in it’s industry?
• TrustRank & Inbound Link Profile – The more authority a site has, the more “trust” it gains in the search engine. With the proliferation of spammy sites, age and authority play a bigger role in establishing whether a site is trustworthy. Trust levels can also be measured by the type of links it has. The more .GOV, .MIL, and .EDU links to a site, the stronger the link profile.
• PageRank (PR) – The higher the better as it measures, in part, the authoritativeness of a site. While PR is no longer as important as it used to be, it offers a quick and easy way to evaluate a site.
• Recently Cached – The more often the search engine spiders visit the site, the better chance a link on the directory page will be seen and counted.
• Alexa Traffic Ranking – Since you can’t get actual traffic figures from the site owner, we can do the next best thing. By visiting Alexa.com and selecting the Traffic Rankings tab, anyone can get a quick estimate of site traffic as compared to its peers. Check the section where they list other sites that people visit in addition to the site entered. You’ll gain some insight as to how it ranks. A word of caution though. These numbers can be easily manipulated and thus any figures derived from this measurement should be taken with a grain of salt. In general, it offers a decent method of evaluating a directory’s quality.
• Editorial Review – Sites accepted into the directory should meet quality standards and not just because the site owner was willing to shell out cash. There must be clear editorial guidelines that are followed not just posted for display. Sites in the directory should be checked regularly for broken links and for “bait and switch” techniques.

What Other Directories Are Still Worth Your While?

• Business.com
• Uncover the Net
• Joe Ant
• Go Guides
• Gimpsy

For the month of May: Best of the Web (BOTW) Directory celebrates 2 years of web directory promotions by running a contest. Each site that is submitted to the BOTW Directory gets 10% off submission fees and for a chance to win an Apple Mac Book Pro.

To submit, click on BOTW.org and enter the promotional code WINMAC! when submitting.