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You've heard of the olden days when people would hunt for potential link partners. Well, those days are long gone and smart web masters are moving on to greater things, while decreasing their reciprocal link building effort..

If you are wondering what this new technique could be, it's actually quite simple... in theory. It is known as linkbaiting. This is a strategy that brings links to a website simply because of the unique and popular content on a website.

With the rise of the blogosphere and social bookmarking sites, all it takes is one person to notice an interesting page and link to a site. Once a link is passed around once, it becomes easier for it to spread further.

Bloggers around the net constanly use linkbait to encourage other bloggers to mention them or to get their content passed around the blogosphere. However, many traditional web masters have not quite latched on to this powerful technique.

The benefits of creating quality, unique, or even controversial content go way beyond what one might first imagine. When a web site offers true value to the visitor, they can create hundreds and even thousands of backlinks without even asking.

Unfortunately, simply having good, quality content on your site doesn't always work. To gain the full potential of linkbaiting, you need a good hook. Some of the most popular ones include:

News
Controversy
Resources and...
Humor

News Hook: Everyone loves to read about industry news. However, the key to attracting some real traffíc is to add a twist to the latest news. Find out exactly how it affects your web site visitors. If you just give a rehashing of what everyone else has already said, no one will care.

However, if you inject your own twist or personality into your news story, then you are prepared to catch someone's eye.

Look at CNN.com as an example. What do they offer? They provide the latest news every day of the week. In the world of information that we live in, news is a commodity. Because CNN offers such appealing content, thousands of sites are linking to them. Do you think CNN sent these sites a little email asking if they would be interested in a reciprocal link? Of course not.

Instead, they employ linkbaiting. Their fresh and interesting content automatically encourages other people to link to it. Luckily for us, we can use this same technique on our own web sites.

News is one of the best ways to attract incoming links, especially if the news is controversial.

Controversy Hook: Before we move on, I must warn you that this hook can be very powerful and also very dangerous. It involves contradicting what someone says, preferably someone very prominent in the industry.

When used correctly, controversy can be very effective in bringing traffíc to your site, but always be careful.

To begin, look for articles and stories in your industry. Some of the best places to find this type of content is on blogs, news sites, and social bookmarking sites. Once you have found a good story, take an opposing viewpoint or give it some sort of twist. This will make your content stand out from the hum drum of what everyone else is publishing.

The next hook is actually one of my favorites. It is known as the resource hook

Resource Hook: Information is powerful online. If you have information that is not available anywhere else, you become an authoritative resource. Many of these resources come in the form of a list.

You would be surprised at the power of a list. You can organize:

One of my favorite lists is located at SEOCompany.ca, where they offer over 150 SEO tools. Simply by linking out to their favorite SEO tools they get tons of traffíc each and every day.

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