Link Building vs Linkbait

Previously I have listed the SEO link building check points which are off-page SEO and can be considered by SEO strategists before planning their link building campaigns. Search engine optimization link building techniques are categorized into natural link building, unnatural link building, reciprocal link exchange, and linkbait.

Natural Link Building

A webmaster or blogger produced good content or blog post, and naturally acquired numerous link back from other webmasters (from their website contents) or bloggers (from their blog articles). There is no monetary transaction involved during the acquisition of the inbound links (backlinks). The exact web pages that the backlinks pointing from and the anchor text of the backlinks are often unpredictable by the blogger who produced the good content.

Unnatural Link Building

Unnatural links can be created by purchasing of inbound links from websites (or web pages) of other webmasters for the purpose of improving rankings in the SERP. Usually webmasters (or SEO link developers) buy backlinks from web pages that have high Google PageRank. Also, the anchor text of the inbound links are often pre-determined by both parties.

Some webmasters argue that unnatural links purchased are for the purpose of increasing traffic to the purchaser website. The traffic may drive sales or improve brand awareness.

However, Google is against the buying of inbound links as explained by Matt Cutts and is encouraging webmaster to report the purchase of paid links.

Reciprocal Link Exchange

Reciprocal link exchange occurs when two websites point links to one another, hoping to improve one another’s rankings in the SERP.

Due to the spammy and easy-to-manipulate nature of two-way reciprocal linking, Google has reduced the positive effects of reciprocal links to both webmaster parties who have involved. Many webmasters have shifted intention to rather exchange qualified traffic.

Linkbait

One way natural inbound link building is self-explanatory and is one of the most important SEO techniques in improving rankings on search engine result pages (SERP). Linkbait is a deliberate method in acquiring backlinks. It is considered a subset of one-way natural inbound link building in which some bloggers (or webmasters or SEO experts) deliberately write very interesting or very debatable blog posts. The topics can be discussions about daily issues (or news) or even go as far as to spread negative news about their competitors. The reward of this is high number of blog comments and natural back links.

One of the ways to make the most out of the linkbait technique is to use Digg. Linkbait via Digg is also known as Digg-bait. Some bloggers (or webmasters or SEO experts) deliberately write blog posts (or articles) with very interesting or very debatable and submit them to Digg. Due to the high traffic nature of Digg, some blog posts got Dugg by many Digg audiences. The more times your article (or web page) got Dugg, the higher it is being ranked on Digg. Some of these Diggers (or readers) are actually also bloggers who point links to these highly debatable articles from their blogs.

Share and Enjoy: