The term ‘link bait’ may lead the readers to a false assumption that it is a non-ethical practice of catching a link. Though link bait cannot be called as a purely ethical method of search engine optimization, it is found to be useful in creating better search engine optimization without affecting the credibility of a website in front of the search engines.

Link bait is a method of attracting links to one website. There are many ways of creating link baits for a website. The most common practice to do so is to create blogs. However, the practice of link bait is adopted not only by blog sites, but also by almost all types of websites. Link bait is preferred because it saves the websites from the task of hunting for links.

To create link bait, firstly you have to create a content that is interesting and is capable of attracting many links to it. The most suitable themes for creating link baits are news, humor, controversies, etc.

Link bait is becoming an accepted method of search engine optimization because of its value to attract the search engines. The link bait helps both the websites- the source website and the linked website. A typical example to show this is the Subservient Chicken website created by Burger King. It has got about 30,000 links so far, and it is ranked among the top five in Google search engine page result (SERP) for the word ‘chicken’.

There is no hard-and-fast rule for creating link bait. Many of the websites do it with the help of social networking site. Create a page and send an email request to your contact groups for linking it. As there are many theme-based social networking groups available, it is easy to get connected to them. Most of them prefer to accept your request as it is a win-win strategy for both of you. In one morning, you may see that you have hooked your competition too!

There are certain websites who act as link baits involuntarily. The success formula for link bait is to create catchy contents. If you wish to create link bait intentionally, look for a topic that is the most relevant or the most controversial. It should be able to catch the search engines easily in the initial days. Thus more and more links will get hooked into it and in the future it will remain as a webpage with rich content and a lot of relevant links to it, and its page rank will go on improving.

Link bait can be considered as an effective way of optimizing the website. Even if it is not accepted explicitly by the search engines, there is no chance of eliminating this method of creating links from the search criteria. This is a common practice that has been adopted for many years, say since the inception of internet. It finds relevance today also because it helps people to access related links that share the similar contents. In the present scenario it has been found more useful because of its power to improve the search engine optimization.

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