OK, something has been bothering me.
When a piece of web content, be it a blog post, a picture, a pdf, gets called linkbait simply because it gets a bunch of links.
Is the term “linkbait” overused?
Yes.
But why is it important, I mean, who cares?
It’s very important in the world of social media marketing to know what is linkbait and what is not. I have in the past posted what I can only be described as opinion, I thought about it and came to the decision other people might find it interesting. They may not agree with it, but it’s still interesting to create a discourse. The post was then called linkbait and that really irked, because it was not designed as exceptional content to get links.
It may have got links, it may have been exceptional. But it wasn’t linkbait because it wasn’t my intention. Only the author can decided if something is linkbait or not because it is all about the intention of the piece. Of course, we want to get links to everything we write, else how will people read it, do you think they will randomly enter the url. Even the SERPs are links.
It’s important to know if something is linkbait or not because when you create your own it has to follow certain rules. Rules which of course can be broken. This post for instance is not linkbait, sure it may pick up some links, but not uber links and when I write linkbait I want to aim for those uber links. Those golden links that twinkle like stars in the firmament.
So what are the rules?
I’m going to leave that for a future post. Now that will be linkbait and I’m not in the mood to create linkbait. But I think it’s time for a good, solid piece of high fibre, “how to creat linkbait”, type post.