I would agree that the best types of links are the natural ones–called “editorial” links. These don’t seem forced, because the writers themselves wholeheartedly link to your content because they like it. But it’s sometimes difficult to determine what kind of content people would actually like and link to on their own.

Ryan has defined these under two categories. First, you can evoke reactive emotions–write something that you know people will feel strongly about, whether positively or negatively. Secondly, you can appeal to reason–make yourself appear as the expert so people would listen.

Folks might think that linkbait articles are essentially those list-type articles that are fun or make for good reference. But remember, next time you try to come up with content that you feel should be link-worthy, make sure that it does appeal to the senses and to emotions. This way, people have a reason of linking to your site.

If you’re a new blogger and you don’t have a lot of traffic, how will you find more readers? You can focus on search engine rankings but those take time to improve. A more effective method is gaining the attention of other bloggers and hoping they will link to you. Fortunately, most bloggers are helpful and will gladly link to you as long as you provide value in some way.

In this post, I’ll talk about practical ways to get the attention of bloggers. And then I’ll close with 4 important principles.

Practical Ways

Writing a Guest post. Some popular bloggers built their audience through guest posts. Guest posts work well, since bloggers are always looking for fresh content.

Linking out. This method seems to be underutilized yet it can be very effective. Bloggers like to check their traffic logs. If you can send them some traffic, they may link back to you.

Leaving blog comments. One of the things that can make a blogger’s day is a well-written comment on their blog. If you leave a couple of these comments, you can bet the blogger will be checking out your blog.

Using Twitter and Facebook. There are other social media sites where bloggers hang out but these two sites seem to be the most popular right now.

Emailing. Email is old school, but it’s definitely effective. Don’t spam though. Instead, most of your email messages should be about their blog and relevant issues within the industry.

Submitting their content to social voting sites. Blogger appreciate this, since it shows you like their content and you want them to get more traffic. Also, email them whenever you do this, since many bloggers don’t regularly monitor social voting sites.

4 Important Principles

1. Consistent repetition is the key. Now you don’t want to be overbearing, but it usually takes a couple connections for bloggers to notice you. Also, even when a blogger finally links to you, you still want to keep in touch so they won’t forget about you.
2. Choose wisely the bloggers you target. I focus mostly on up and coming bloggers that get a moderate amount of traffic. The popular bloggers can be hard to network with since they get a lot of emails and comments. And the bloggers that don’t get a lot of traffic, well, they don’t get a lot of traffic.
3. Don’t be afraid to promote your stuff. Now you don’t want to spam, but once you’ve provided a good amount of value for the blogger, feel free to send them your best content and ask for a link.
4. If a blogger is not receptive to you, move on to another blogger. There’s no sense in wasting your time.

Over to You

How have you gotten the attention of other bloggers?

How have other bloggers gotten your attention?

1. Build more relationships.

Bloggers are often too focused on writing. They forget that blogging is a great social channel. How many other bloggers do you know?

Of course, you can start the process by leaving comments. But you can do much more. Send a blogger a guest post. Introduce yourself to another blogger. Ask for a link. Reply to an interesting message on Twitter. Basically, anything that allows you to interact directly with other bloggers will usually be more effective than simply leaving comments.

And why build relationships? Well, it’s fun. It makes blogging less lonely. And relationships can definitely lead to profitable partnerships.

2. Add multimedia.

Whether you add podcasts, video posts, or both, using multimedia adds a lot of perceived value to your blog. Think about it this way, “Out of these three products, DVD, audiobook, or book, which is the cheapest?”

Multimedia allows you to reach a different audience in your industry. For example, in this Perfcast interview, Darren Rowse said he gets a different group of commenters whenever he does a video post.

With videos, you can get more traffic by posting them on YouTube since YouTube gets a lot of traffic.

Multimedia also lets you set your blog apart since most blogs still don’t use multimedia.

You don’t have to suddenly shift your blog to audio or video only, but I’m sure even a monthly multimedia post will pay big dividends.

Here are two introduction resources to help you get started: Intro to Podcasting 101 and an interview with a video expert.

3. Diversify your monetization.

Too many bloggers get lazy when it comes to monetization. This is easy to do since monetization is usually the last thing we focus on. But with a little effort, you can diversify your income streams and make more money.

For example, if you’re only using AdSense, take some time to find an affiliate program that would fit your blog. Try searching “[name of your industry] affiliate program” on Google. Also, look for direct advertisers. This is effective especially if you get a lot of AdSense clicks. You can contact the owners of the sites that show up on your AdSense ads and see if they would like to advertise directly with you. Usually you save them money since Google won’t be taking their cut.

My favorite monetization method is creating your own product. I like this method because you don’t have to share the profit and you don’t have to deal with advertisers. Also, you can create an info product so you don’t even have to deal with shipping and handling. Here are some product ideas to consider: video, audiobook, ebook, membership program, and paid forum.

Over to You

What resolutions will you make in 2009?

1. Be prepared.

I listened to an mp3 about how Jerry Seinfeld prepared for his first appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. This was many years ago when Seinfeld was an upcoming comic and The Tonight Show was a very popular show. Seinfeld knew there was a chance he would be nervous during his performance. So, he practiced his short monologue over a hundred times because he knew that proper preparation leads to a confident performance.

As bloggers, we can learn from Seinfeld’s work ethic. How prepared are we to blog? Do we know our niche well? Have we researched our niche audience? Do we know our competitors? Did we create a well thought out plan for creating content and gaining attention in the long haul?

Yes, there is the mistake of over-planning and over-preparation. But blogging without enough preparation is also a mistake. Too many bloggers jump into blogging without enough preparation.

If you feel unprepared to blog, you may need to take a break from blogging (or at least, post less frequently) and take time to prepare, research, and plan.

2. Break your tasks down in smaller steps.

Doing something big and bold is good for your blog. Let’s say you decide to do a seven-part series of posts. Or a list linkbait of 101 things. However, it can be intimidating to think about the project.

By breaking down your projects into smaller tasks, the projects won’t seem as intimidating. Smaller tasks are easier to accomplish and you’ll gain momentum and confidence as you complete each small task.

Also, don’t just use this tactic on your big projects. I’ve broken down 400 word posts into smaller chunks (paragraphs and even sentences).

3. Gain trained in the art of writing.

I started blogging because I was passionate about my niche. However, I soon realized that I didn’t have much writing chops. It had been many years (back in college) since I had written on a consistent basis.

So, I read a couple books about writing. This helped me remember the writing fundamentals from my college days. Here’s a good list of books to get you started.

Also, start reading popular blogs and books in your niche and you’ll get a feel of what good writing looks like. And getting feedback from other writers helps too. I recommended join a blogging or writing forum to network with writers and bloggers.

4. Celebrate small positive trends.

Look back at some of your stats - maybe the number of comments or monthly visitors. If you’re trending upward, you can feel confident that as you blog consistently, you’ll stats will continue to increase.

Even though you only have 100 RSS subscribers, you can look back when you had 20 or 50 subscribers. As long as your stats don’t stay stagnant or drop for a long period of time, you should have confidence that you’re doing something right.

5. Gain practical experience in your niche.

This mostly applies to bloggers in a “how to” niche. Let’s say you have a gardening blog. You should start a garden and then you’ll have something to blog about because you’ll learn a lot from your experience.

Also, you’ll gain confidence because your experience will add credibility towards your reputation.

Feedback

What have you done that has helped you blog more confidently?

Who do you think will advance to the next round? Who will incur the wrath of Simon Cowell?

In music, confidence is a big thing because a huge part of the performer’s task is to make the audience feel at ease. If you’re nervous, the audience will be nervous for you or worse yet, be hostile towards you.

Blogging with Confidence

There is a similar phenomenon in blogging.

If you’re not confident, your post quality will not be high as it could be. You’re unsure of yourself, so you write “safe” blog posts. These blog posts have no life. They are basically rehashed content that can be found in other blogs on your niche. You’re afraid to take a risk and write something conceptually unique because you fear the possible criticism from your audience.

Also, you won’t have the urge to promote your blog because you’re not confident in your content.

Now you don’t want to be overconfident to the point of being arrogant and self-absorbed. That’s turns people off.

But if you’re confident, you’ll be motivated to write blog posts that are conceptually unique. You’ll take more risks that will cause your blog to stand out from the crowd.

Your readers will sense your confidence and feel at ease as they read your blog. You’ll be more likely to make specific call to actions that will cause your readers to subscribe to your RSS feed, buy an affiliate product, or join your email list.

You’ll promote your blog with more fervency. You’ll email other bloggers and tell them about your content. You’ll go on social voting sites and ask other members to vote for your posts.

Building Confidence

In my next post, I’ll talk about some ways to increase your confidence as a blogger. Feel free to subscribe to get updated on new posts.

You might be blogging consistently, publishing your 3-5 300 word posts week in and week out. However, that in itself will not get you a lot of search traffic.

To get a huge increase in search traffic, you will need links from authority sites. Authority sites include the popular sites in your niche, the well-branded sites, the about.com’s on the net, the blogs that get 10+ comments per post, and the sites with Alexa ratings under 100,000. Also, The EatonWeb Blog Directory lists blogs based on authority.

Google gives a lot of weight to these links because they are harder to build than the average link. These links can’t be bought (usually). Instead, they have to be earned with linkworthy content and diligent marketing.

So, how often do you create linkworthy content?

Many bloggers overestimate the linkworthiness of their content.

Here are some examples of recently published linkbait.

• 23 Ways to Keep Fast Food in Your Diet
• 11 Colorful Optical Illusions
• Seven years since — looking back and forward on 9/11 [PICS]
• E-Mail Addiction: Five Signs You Need Help
• 10 Things Millionaires Won’t Tell You
• Is hip-hop haunted by ghostwriters?

In the last couple of weeks, have you created anything similar to the above content? Have you produced something interesting, useful, and/or entertaining that has a good chance of attracting links?

If not, you’re missing out on a lot of links that lead to a huge search traffic increase - not to mention the direct traffic from those links as well as improved branding and reputation.

Linkworthy content is the backbone of a good linkbuilding strategy.

Linkbait vs. No Linkbait

Here are two graphs to help you understand the importance of this type of content.

In the above graph, you’ve blogged for two weeks without publishing anything linkworthy. You get two authority links, which increase your link popularity. The blue color represents link popularity.

I’m being generous with the two authority links. Many blogs will not get an authority link for months.

Compare that graph with this graph.

In this graph, you cut down you post frequency to spend time creating linkworthy content and emailing authority sites to tell them about your content.

A couple authority sites linked to you. You got a great amount of link popularity. Not only that, but the link popularity from the linkbait is bleeding over to your other posts and those posts are ranking better. See with Google, if you build authority links, even the pages that don’t get links receive a boost in ranking.

Imagine if most of your two week periods looked like graph #2 instead of graph #1.

In a couple months, you’ll be an authority site with a ton of search engine traffic. Other people will be emailing you to link to their site. You’ll be well-networked in your niche because you connected with other bloggers through your emails. And your branding will have improved because you’ll be known as the blogger that wrote that great resource or that funny list. You’ll be known for your linkbait.

Why the Higher Word Count for Linkbait?

I symbolized linkbait with the higher word count because linkworthy blog posts are usually much longer than the average blog post. Also, these posts have more elements like video and images.

Long posts stand out from the crowd of short posts. They are unique and bloggers are more likely to link to unique posts.

Why Keep the Short Posts?

There are a couple reasons to continue publishing short posts.

• Quality linkbait takes a lot more time to create.
• Short posts serve as great search engine fodder. The more blog posts you publish, the more keywords you target.
• If your site is consistently updated, readers will expect new content and return to your site more frequently.
• Your blog looks active.
• It shows your passion and expertise for your niche since you always have something to say.

Basically, doing a mixture of short posts and linkbait is a good SEO strategy.

Balance is the key. And if you don’t have a lot of time to blog, if you produce just one linkbait a month, you’ll be way ahead of most blogs.

Why Linkbait Works for SEO

The reason linkbait works so well is because Google’s algorithms are heavily based on the quality of links. Google used to focus more on anchor text but anchor text has taken a back seat to domain link popularity (aka the number of high quality links pointing to your site).

Yes, you still want keywords in your anchor text and title tags. However, it’s much better to have a link from about.com with the anchor text “click here” than a link with great anchor text from a blog without much traffic or PageRank.

Why Other Blogs Can Get Away Without Doing Linkbait

Some blogs didn’t have to linkbait to get their search traffic. Usually, they were one of the first to enter the niche. Since they had this advantage, they got a bunch of great links because of the lack of competition. I’m assuming most of you are blogging in niches that are already established with many competing blogs. In this situation, you’ll need to differentiate yourself from the other blogs with your linkworthy content.

Also, Google tends to rank older sites better than newer sites. But if you’re consistent with your linkbait, over time you’ll overtake those blogs that don’t publish much linkbait.

Learn More About Linkbait

It will take a whole new post to cover the basics of linkbait creation. The main principle is to take some time to do research on the sites in your industry. What are they linking to? Why are they linking? Then, based on that information, you can create content that they would want to link to.

Also, here are two resources to help you get started.

• Screencast Video: Here is an Easy 4 Step Formula to Create Linkworthy Content
• The Link Baiting Playbook: Hooks Revisited

Your Turn

How often do you create linkbait and market it to other bloggers?

Is there such a thing as too-frequent posting, though? I would say that for blogs, there is only such a thing if you consider the front-page life-span of a post. While many users are already comfortable with reading content on their RSS feed readers, most are still accessing your site via the front page. This means they type in the URL on their browsers, hit enter, and land on your site’s main page.

So in that regard, it does pay to keep the important stuff at the front page, at least long enough for people to read it. If your front page displays five posts at a time, and you publish twenty posts in a span of one hour, then chances are those 15 other posts pushed to 2nd, 3rd and 4th page status don’t get as much exposure as the last five ones.

Some bloggers like to delineate between regular and important posts. So how do you keep important posts on the front page? One trick here is to re-design your site such that posts tagged as “features” become “sticky” ones, meaning they stay on the front page even when they’re already overridden by newer posts in terms of freshness.

Still, experienced bloggers would recommend a posting frequency of one to three times a day. That’s frequent enough to be considered fresh, but not too frequent that people are not overwhelmed by the postings. At least this goes for one-blogger blogs.

PerformancingAds is a great tool for advertisers looking to get the word out about their product or service. And it is especially effective for running targeted advertising campaigns that focus on specific categories of blogs such as Personal Finance blogs or Auto blogs.

What’s In It For Me?

Always put yourself in the shoes of your audience because they will be asking that question. Keeping WIIFM in mind means figuring out how your blog can appeal to the people you want to reach.

Reading your blog needs to be a rewarding experience for both the regular readers and first-time visitors. You need to demonstrate this through all aspects of your blog, from the design to the functionality to the content.

Once your audience understands why they should be reading your blog, you must move on to what you want them to do on your blog. You need to be able to communicate to the benefits of bookmarking, subscribing, linking, and returning to your blog.

What are the more specific calls to action you wish to achieve on your blog? It could be a Digg or a Stumble. It could be a click on an affiliate link or any other advertisement. It could be directly buying your product. As you become more specific with the expectations you have of your audience, you must communicate them more clearly.

Connecting with your audience is an essential feature of successful blogs. And being mindful of WIIFM at all times is the way to do it.

There are several different ways to look at your blog, and these are the most important ones:

Focus. Do the topics you write about match the general objectives of your blog? Are there categories or areas you might have overlooked so far? Can you handle writing about these new topics should you add them to your list?

Experience. Are your readers having difficulty reading your blog? Do they have trouble finding certain things, like archived posts or that feed subscription link? Do they understand what feeds are? Do you encourage them to leave comments? Do you react to their comments? Is it time to redesign your blog?

Promotion. How popular is your blog? Can other people find your blog through search engines? Who are linking to your blog? Do you link to others as well?

Start by answering these questions to yourself for each of your respective blogs, and then feel free to ask more. Never stop wondering what you can do to improve your blog.