Lists as Linkbait
You may have heard of the idea of linkbait before - as the name suggests it is when you make a site or a post that attracts a lot of links from other sites.
The trick is finding something that is such good quality that people are inclined to link to it.
One trick in this area is to make a list.
For some reason, people love lists.
For example, on Jamdo, you might remember a while back that I made a post about the Six Best Blogs on Blogging.
Besides getting on the front page of a social bookmarking site (which was nice), it also got a few incoming links from other blogs.
Those links seem to deliver traffic still now, more than a month after the post went up.
Lists seem to have this magical ability to spark interest.
So if you want a bit of link love and traffic, it might be a good idea to try making a list. Here are a few possiblities.
Make a “best of” or a “worst of” list related to your niche. Make sure you leave one or two places on your list for a controversial entry - this will spark debate and interest in your site which will bring more people. Don’t worry about criticism - it is part of the business.
You could also make a list of tools or resources that people in your niche might be interested in - if it is a list of tools that are of interest for continual reference, then you might be luck y enough to have people continually returning to your site to refer to your list.
You could also make a list of ways to achieve a certain goal - something like “10 ways to…” - these type of lists also seem to be pretty popular.
All of these type of lists seem to continually get voted onto the front of social bookmarking sites and get lots of traffic.
I suppose you just need a way to give people what they want to read!
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