Linkbait

Linkbait is anything on your site which induces visitors to return to your site on a regular basis, thereby making it desireable for those people to link to your site rather than type in your address in their browser every time.

Like what?

A list of current sports scores. A picture of a pretty girl that gets changed every day. News of movie stars and other entertainers. A blog on a specialized subject. Any site that provides a specialized reference tool.

Number four is what I personally do. But remember, with regard to incoming links, search engines are rating you in large part by the QUALITY of the incoming links.

All of the examples on the above list of examples might get you some regular traffic. Any social media traffic can generate a substantial amount of links to a web page. But how important are these links to Google? Often, not very.

I’ve said it before: sustainable quality traffic and quality linking is, over time, rooted in quality content. Period.

The key is already inside you

Did you do the web surfing experiment? If so, did you come up with a list of general subjects that you seem to be quite interested in? You can use this information as clues to what you should be writing about as well as how your site might be monetized.

For example, you might have found yourself searching sites about sewing or about woodworking. Or you might have looked at a lot of sports sites, baseball in particular. To me, this means that you might be happy joining those particular crowds. You might be happy writing about those subjects. Do try and make the niche as narrow as possible so as to somewhat limit the competition for the same readers.

And monetization? That should be pretty obvious: send people to sports sites, baseball sites, sewing sites, crafts sites, woodworking sites. Sell, on commission, products that you are interested in yourself: sports products and equipment, baseball fanware and memorabilia; sewing patterns and fabrics, woodworking books. You get it. If you are interested in the subject yourself, it should be pretty easy to write reviews for the products you are trying to sell, as well as blogging about the latest information regarding the subject.

Your blog should be fun for you, not work. Start out on the right foot by not trying to write about something you don’t personally care about. That’s too hard to do.