...because the "trout" -- the quality links -- are always out there.

Bait your hook with a worm and drop it gingerly in that gurgling crevice of water. Before it has sunk six inches, if there is not one of those black-backed, orange-bellied, Taylor Brook trout fighting with it, something is wrong with you or your worm ... for the trout are always there.

-- Bliss Perry, Pools & Ripples Fishing Essays, 1927

Are your link-bait articles delivering fat, healthy, glistening, rainbow-hued trout when you drop them into the internet's gurgling crevice of links? Or are they attracting only the dregs of the deep, bottom-feeding links from sub-standard sites that deliver zilch direct customers and contribute nothing to your search engine return position.?

To steal a quote from Bliss Perry, if you aren't landing any "big ones" with your link bait there is definitely "something wrong with you or your worm" because the "trout" -- the quality links -- are always out there.

Strangely enough, the major cause of link-bait failure is mindset. Far too many webmasters are so busy running their businesses they don't have time for the more relaxing aspects of life -- like fishing. They don't understand that there is bait and there is BAIT. Good bait attracts the big, meaty fish; bad bait attracts the skanks -- or, very often -- no fish at all.

if the SEO effort is outputting garbage, the results coming in will be garbage as well.

Not having the mindsets of real anglers, these webmasters don't realize that link-bait articles have to deliver the same end-user value and benefits as any other article to be effective. If your link bait consists of little but some keywords wrapped in meaningless verbiage it will fail. If you concentrate only on mass by treating the web as a high-tech cesspool for dumping hundreds of thousands of repetitive, poorly written link-bait articles, your effort will fail.

Like link building, keyword optimization, meta tagging, blogging and all other search engine optimization (SEO) tools, link-baiting is very susceptible to the reverse Garbage-In-Garbage-Out (GIGO) Syndrome ... if the SEO effort is outputting garbage, the results coming in will be garbage as well.

To help you fill your basket with the kind of quality link fish you deserve, here are five do's and don'ts for creating link bait. In our next Linking School article, we'll talk about how to use LinksManager and other techniques to best distribute them.

First, here's the five don'ts ...

1. Never, ever use so-called "article-writing" software. We're not even going to discuss this one, we'll just give you an example of a paragraph run through one of the best-selling of these illiteracy generators.

Before being diced and sliced by a well know program we will alias as "Super Article Processing":

"On the other hand, FlyMiwok is not just for business travelers. Our model is designed more for gridlocked ground travelers of all types than it is for frequent airline fliers. Using FlyMiwok, a grandparent in Palm Desert can visit a grandchild in Long Beach while spending just two hours in transit and fewer dollars than an airline coach ticket on transportation. Surfers on a Saturday safari can get from San Bernardino to the beach and enjoy more time hanging ten than trapped in their car. A person in Temecula can leave work at 5:30 and be in Century City in time to take his or her lover to dinner and a 7:30 show."

Are there better word crunching applications than Super Article Processing? No. Many are even, unimaginably, worse.

After Super Article Processing:

"On the other hand, FlyMiwok is not belonging considering business travelers. Our model is designed more for gridlocked ground travelers of imperforate types than sound is for frequent airline fliers. Using FlyMiwok, a grandparent prerogative Palm Desert can visit a grandchild in crave Beach term spending just two hours in crossing besides fewer dollars than an airline coach ticket on transportation. Surfers on a Saturday safari from San Bernardino to the beach can acknowledge more time uncertain ten than trapped connections their car. A person in Temecula care cede bustle at 5:30 and be pull Century City in time to take his or her lover to dinner besides a 7:30 show.

Are there better word crunching applications than Super Article Processing? No. Many are even, unimaginably, worse.

2. Don't drift too far off topic. For the links you're baiting to do you any good, they have to be relevant to the content of your site.

3. Don't be careless and make mistakes. Operators of high-quality websites and blogs are well aware that their reputation can be tarnished through guilt by association with sloppy, inaccurate, ungrammatical linked content. Use Google to check any facts you're not sure of and a spell checker to provide the right letters for the words you can't spell. How do you handle words you can't spell well enough for the spell checker to recognize? Do what the pros do, use another word.

4. Don't over-stuff your link-bait articles with keywords. Proper keyword seeding is as important in link-bait as it is on home page content.

5. Don't hire a link-bait writer who isn't a native reader, writer, speaker and hearer of your site's native tongue.

This is not extreme patriotism or racism. It is commonsense that applies equally to all cultures and countries. Articles in English for the U.S. market are usually more effective if written by Americans instead of Indians and articles in English for Indian markets are generally more effective if written by Indians. This has nothing to do with language skills, it has to do with command of cultural references and use of idiomatic expressions, because ....

And now the "do's" ...

The more personal and one-on-one you can make the "conversation" seem, the more effective the article will be.

1. Because ... because link-bait articles should generally be written in a conversational style as if you were discussing something really interesting with a few of your friends. Not an auditorium full of your friends, just a couple of them. The more personal and one-on-one you can make the "conversation" seem, the more effective the article will be.

2. Do forget the term link bait altogether. What Google has frequently said about website content and linking strategies -- that they should be designed to benefit end users as if search engines didn't exist -- is equally true for link bait. The more you try to analyze and intuit what words and phrases will attract links, the less likely you are to get them. Write your articles as if you were trying to sell them to a magazine or get an A on a term paper and you'll be fine.

3. Do communicate with your article writer if you hire one. Nobody knows your business as well as you do and nobody who's being paid a few bucks to write 300 words is going to spend hours learning your business before putting fingers to keyboard. Working with a writer is a collaborative affair ... your part is deciding what has to be said, his part is deciding the best way to say it.

4. Do remember that your site consists of more than a home page. Not counting "housekeeping" pages devoted to things like ordering, contact info, link partners, about us, etc., almost all pages in a site have content that is worth one or more -- frequently a lot more -- link-bait articles. Have a page with 10 products on it? Chances are a good article can be constructed for each one of them.

5. Do provide in-depth, unique information. Ever since link bait caught on as a way to exploit Google's beauty pageant/popularity contest-biased ranking algorithm, thousands and thousands of articles -- good and bad, literate and illiterate, short and long -- on every subject under the sun have been posted to the web.

Good or bad, literate or illiterate, short or long, the vast majority of articles on any given subject have one thing in common -- they all say basically the same things. Which makes competing for links a crap shoot since most webmasters aren't going to link to ten pages with essentially the same content worded a bit differently.

Tapping your personal reservoir of knowledge about your business to create articles with beyond-common-knowledge facts and experiences will bait your hook with exactly the kind of worm link-seeking "trout" like best.

Ahh! The old fishing hole... so peaceful and relaxing. Doesn't even matter if I catch a single fish -- ah! Come on you stupid fish, take the bait! Don't make me come down there! -- Homer Simpson

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