Although linkbait is a fairly common term in the SEO industry, it is someting entirely new to most professionals in the Health and Fitness industry. Is link “bait” part of link “building”? What’s the difference? Is it viral marketing? How should I approach link baiting for my fitness website? Do the same linkbait practices apply across all content genres / niches, or do health websites require completely different tactics than cell phone ring tones?

 These are all very good questions, some of which have been asked by First Page Fitness clients. For starters - yes, linkbaiting is a form of link building, but link building is not necessarily linkbaiting. Make sense? A good SEO will apply many tactics to their link building campaigns, from directory submissions and buying links (oops, did I say “buying” links?) to creating the kind of content that people will want to link to - which is linkbait. If linkbait sounds familiar, it is because the SEO industry has been talking about it before it was called linkbait - even before SEO was called SEO. It comes in many cliched forms, such as “content is king.” The difference between this type of common knowledge and the linkbaiting of today is that link bait has gotten much more complicated, much more intelligent and much more effective - when done properly.

To answer one of the other questions, no linkbait is not the same as viral marketing. I think Todd Malicoat said it best in a recent blog post about linkbait hooks:

“The goal of viral marketing is exposure and branding. The goal of linkbaiting is links! The process may be very similar but the measurement of success is quite different.”

As the Stuntdubl blog entry above hints at, the general principles of linkbaiting are indeed shared across various industries. Let’s take his list of “link baiting hooks” as an example. While Todd was certainly not thinking of the health and fitness industry when he wrote that post, each of type of linkbait hook has its place in this industry, just as it does in gadgets, celebrity gossip, news, etcetera. Allow me to illustrate:

News Hook
Create a news section on your website and become an authority in your niche. And again Todd has a great point: “If you go too broad you won’t succeed. If you go too niche, you will have a hard time finding a substantial audience.” Is there enough news out there to merit a section dedicated to news for the Health Spa industry? As for “finding a substantial audience” I will have to disagree. The goal here is not to get tons of traffic to a page. The goal is to get links, and a highly targeted page can get links, even if there are few regular readers, if it is one of the only resources online for that specific niche. So is it worthwhile to create a health spa industry news page? Well it certainly was for this place (42,869 incoming links) and this place (17,700 incoming links), and the few dozen other spa websites out there with tens-of-thousands of links coming in. Hey, and they each just got one more link!

Contrary Hook
This is an often-used hook in the health and fitness industry, even if the people using it do not realize what they are doing. The fitness industry is exploding at the seams with so-called “common knowledge”. While Todd’s examples seem to lean more towards the “attack” hook method, I find many perfect examples of this “contrary hook” being used in “Top Ten Myths of…” lists. The idea is simple: Take ten ideas thought to be common knowledge and turn them on their head. Be careful though! Do not fall into the trap of playing devil’s advocate with no way to back up your argument. Sure, you are likely to get links by writing an article on how eating Twinkies can help you lose weight, but your authoritative reputation is likely to suffer as a result. But perhaps something like “Why the Trainers Are Wrong About Long, Slow Cardio Sessions for Fat Burning”. I would like to point out the body-type differences between Olympic sprinters (left) and Olympic long distance runners (right). Whose body would you rather have?

Attack Hook
This method is very similar to the one used above, but instead of arguing against a certain concept, you are arguing against a particular person. This is best used by disagreeing with someone who gets a lot of attention already. For instance, if a famous personal fitness trainer wrote an article about how long, slow cardio sessions burned more fat, you could counter with the above example of how it burns more muscle as well.

Resource Hook
A very common resource hook is the glossary. If you can’t find a glossary about the words used in your particular niche, you should create one ASAP. Most likely there are already a few out there, so you will have to come up with other ideas. The trick is to be detailed. It is not easy to create a good resource. It takes time and effort, and shouldn’t be done if you don’t have those to give.

Humor Hook
This one doesn’t take too much explaining, but it does take considerably more effort than you might think. Videos are great for creating humorous linkbait. Just be sure to include your website for a few frames at the end, and keep the video on your own domain if possible.

Incentive Hook
Try giving away small prizes for winners of an online weight loss competition, or free fitness DVDs (there is a reason this site ranks #1 for Yoga DVD on Google). Just remember that incentives are not the same as buying links. You are giving something away with no expectation of a link, although they happen to be positive byproducts of your generosity.

Ego Hook
This is where the fitness industry has the advantage over most others. There are very few industries out there with as much vanity and narcissism as the fitness industry. Top Ten Bodies, interviews with personal trainers, profiles about industry experts, quoting college professors, or something like this.

I did not go too in-depth with this post because there are plenty of great linkbaiting resources out there. Rand over at SEOMoz is one of the best, and Todd’s post mentioned above is what sparked this blog entry. The point is to make one thing clear: The health and fitness industry can benefit from the same basic linkbaiting tactics used in other industries. The target audience might be different, but the methods are the same.

Happy Link Baiting!
(Wishing I was a graphic designer so I could draw a cartoon of someone baiting a fishing hook with a top-ten list…)