Search Engine Optimisation Web Log (BLOG)
Editor: Matt Paines

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Great content or just Link Baiting

Last week we were involved in presenting to a local Enterprise group on the merits of SEO. After the presentations, having been accosted by various individuals as I attempted to get my hands on the free grub and wine one such attendee started to take exception to something I'd said about Link Baiting.

Link baiting is the practice of putting something on the internet that people want to link to. Whether it be a free tool, a blog (guilty as charged) a video download, podcast, you name it. The point here is that Link Baiting maybe a dirty word, I know at SES in London my good friend Dixon Jones of Receptional and I had this very same debate, although it was less about the morals, more about the terminology Dixon wanted to call it something more politically correct (PC), as I recall.

Anyway back to last week, if Link Baiting is so wrong, then isn't the mere fact that someone provides a service for free or provides a service that people like or enjoy also wrong. The entire internet is full of such "Link Baiting" whether it be deliberate or unintentional. The fact that XSEO provides SEO Tutorials for Free must be wrong, yet thousands of people have downloaded them and benefited from them.

Is it defensible in the process of marketing a web site to exchange links for links sake, with sites that have no interest in endorsing your service or you theirs. No whilst Dixon has a point, maybe the word Link Baiting is not PC but the process is valid, shouldn't a sites worth not be derived by what it delivers to the user.

M.P