Bait Them And They Will Come

Bait Them and They Will Come

by

Mark Wales

There is a method of writing articles that can cause huge amounts of people to come to your site. They are not like your average ‘informative’ articles because you have to put a lot more time, effort and research in to them.

The concept is called link baiting and it centres on exploiting peoples natural curiosity. It is called link bait because the content of the article causes a lot of people to discuss it on social bookmarking sites and forums. One of the major factors in writing a successful link bait article is the title, which I’ll explain in a bit.

Virtually every successful link bait article that has been written has been based on a list. People seem to love lists and will link to them over and over again. The list can be about anything, from a list of resources to a list on how to do something.

Naturally if it’s a list of resources then it’s going to take a long time to research and prepare, which is why although the effort is a lot greater the reward can be equally as great.

So let’s take Golf as an example around which to write a link bait article. What are golfers interested in? I’m guessing that they all want to lower their handicap and increase the range of their drives. They are probably also very interested in watching golf, which has given me an idea to write about the top 5 greatest golfers of all time.

A topic like this serves two purposes, people will check it to see if they agree with your selection and it will also create debate and discussion on your site because people are bound to disagree with your selection.

I will decide what factors to consider in rating the top 5 golfers of all time such as earnings, number of holes in one, number of trophies etc. I would then have to spend a long time data mining all this information to compile my list, then read biographies about all the golfers before compiling my article.

Once the article is written the make or break part is the article title. This is what people are going to read and decide on whether they will click the link. It’s got to be snappy and it’s got to instantly make the visitor curious enough to click.

I’ve come up with a few title ideas below:

Discover The Surprising Top 5 Golfers of All Time

Does Tiger Woods Still Make the Top 5 Golfers of All Time

Top 5 Golfers of All Time It’s Not Who You Think

I’m sure they would generate large number of clicks, especially the Tiger Woods one because of all the controversy he’s been in recently.

Another good tip for writing your article title is to use the word ‘mistakes’ because no one likes to make mistakes and people have to click it to find out what these mistakes are.

Sticking with our golfing example, do you think golfers would click on a link that says 4 Mistakes You Are Making That Are Affecting Your Swing ? I think they would want to put their mind at ease that they are not making any mistakes!

Writing link bait articles can be a lot of fun, but keep in mind that it usually requires a lot of effort on your part to prepare the article and there is no guarantee of success. Once you have written a few then you will start to get the hang of what works and what doesn’t.

Mark Wales is responsible for internet and social network marketing at the

Free

internet services portal

CX.CC

Article Source:

ArticleRich.com