Linkbaiting. The art of grabbing people’s attention so they will link to you. What are some examples of linkbait?

• Don’t Block Firefox
• MistyLook WordPress Theme
• How Much Is Your Blog Worth?
• Merging RSS Feeds With SimplePie
• Creating a Favicon
• Anything on Smashing Magazine

Linkbaiting is basically writing/making something that people are sure to notice, come back to, link to, and tell others about. I probably don’t have to tell you that this benefits you a lot. Incoming links are worth a lot in the blogosphere, especially from bigger blogs. You get traffic from the other blogs, and you get PageRank too.

So, what are the top linkbaiting techniques that we’ve seen so far?

• Wordpress Themes:  The MistyLook theme is a prime example. In addition to looking cool, the theme was popularized by John Chow, who used it for a while. If you can make a great Wordpress theme, and get the word out about it, this is a great linkbaiting technique for you.
• Quizes: People like taking quizes and tests. If you have the expertise to code a quiz, you could get some links.
• Wordpress Plugins: How many plugins are installed on your blog? How did you find them? Find a niche in the plugin world, and you’re all set (assuming you know PHP).
• Other “Tools”: The “How Much is Your Blog Worth?” calculator, AddThis.com, etc. Study them and learn.
• Lists: Make a huge list of something and submit it to Digg and StumbleUpon. Smashing Magazine only does this, and look where that got them. They’re in the Technorati Top 100!
• Controversy: Write something that people will disagree with.
• Be the first to do something: Be innovative, do something no one’s done before.
• Be the definitive resource: Wikipedia gets ton of links. Why? They’re one of the best online encyclopedias. Write a unique tutorial on something new no one else has done yet.
• News: If you can get a news story out before anyone else, you’ve struck gold (especially with Tech news).

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