Ryan Caldwell who I think of as someone who really knows his stuff regarding human psychology and the web has published an interesting look into the psychology involved with creating link bait material. As Ryan mentions in his article and I agree, the best types of links you can get are human powered. That is, people publishing content with a link to your site within that content. The article covers three basic areas:
- Evoke Re-active Emotions
- An Appeal To Reason
- Polishing It Off
When I first started writing for Performancing.com when it was under the editorial directive of Ryan, I had a couple of interesting conversations with him regarding how to create link bait material and his tips have provided beneficial to me when put into practice. To make a long story short, he has his pulse on what makes people tick and his SearchEngineJournal piece provides just a glance into his link baiting strategy.
Obviously it works because here I am linking to the article!
3 thoughts on “The Psychology Of Link Baiting”
Thank you for this article. I have used a few techniques for link baiting in my own blogs, but one of the best methods I have discovered to work for me involves EMOTION. Sometimes I would post a particularly annoying article just to irritate my readers, especially those who are unique visitors. They get angry, but they also link to my post!
Ryan has hit the most important part of marketing: Emotion.
A good way to grade this point, is what the teenagers of today do on the internet. With myspace, facebook and all the other social networking sites out there, they live and breath and connect to others with pure emotion. It’s no longer just something to do to pass the time, (as it was in my teenage years WAY before the internet) it’s survival of emotions and identity.
Thanks Jeff! (And Ryan of course)
There are so many things that go into writing successful content.
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