Butanido-Autoblog online

I'm going fishing.

I'm a vegetarian but I'm still going fishing after I've finished this post. I'll cast my bait and hope to pull in a few big juicy links.

I tried fishing with my Celebrity Insider blog on Wednesday and I reeled in a couple of big 'uns. The links sent me over 1200 hits with, hopefully, more to come.

I'm obviously talking about link bait or link baiting. It's where you write some sort of post on your blog that will entice other blogs to link to it.

There's all sorts of posts that might just work. Those experts tell us they come under such categories as:

News hooks:
Get in first with some news item relative to your niche.

Attack hooks:
This is where you write some strong stuff about someone, another blog or maybe a program.

Resource hooks:
You give out some useful information, preferably something not too well known.

Contrary hooks:
Being controversial can generate a buzz. Depends if you want to say go head to head with an opposing opinion.

Funny hooks:
A humorous story, an amusing cartoon a funny fact etc. I saw one the other day which seemed to have worked for the guy concerned. The title was Cooking With Viagra and was directed at women who want ... well use your imagination. As there were recipes it got links from others.

There are lots of other categories. It simply has to be something that you think might be of value to others.

The post I did on Wednesday was: Exclusive - Was Sarah Larson A Go Go Dancer.

You may not have heard of Sarah Larson but she is George Clooney's new girlfriend - but none of the websites actually knew who she was. They mostly said she was an actress and model - blogs often play follow the leader.

An actress or model is usually easy to trace and it got me thinking as to why the big guys hadn't any info on her.

I did some investigating and found out who I thought Sarah Larson might be. I wrote a shortish post, with substantiating photos, and used the word 'Exclusive' in the title.

On Thursday the post got picked up by a couple of biggish websites and the hits started to come in from these sources.

Now in the world of celebrities it's difficult to get on the first Google results page with a big name such as George Clooney. There's too much competition from established websites, magazines, national newspapers and so on. But if you have something that might just be 'exclusive', about something associated with the star, then there is a voracious appetite for such items.

So I'd suggest, if you aren't already doing so, you try some fishing yourself in whatever river runs through your blog niche.

If you are successful any links you get will be of more value than going down the exchange link route. Give it a try.

Good fishing,
Mike.