The social media scene has hit a new high. Whether it be in the form of blogs, forums or some such offshoot of the Web 2.0 revolution, link baiting is becoming increasingly easy for the ecommerce site. Through link baiting you can enhance the volume of inbound links to your site and improve on your SERPs online.

Irresistible content

There are millions of users online out of which only a few thousands comprise the true linkerati. These are people who are very popular on the social media scene and links suggested by them get picked up by search engines. If these people or communities find information on your site useful or interesting they will link back to it. Through these link backs other communities and people get to know about your site and the result as you can imagine is tonnes of incoming traffic. Since most of the popular search engines base a site’s SERP on the volume of traffic, using link baiting as a strategy can prove useful to up your visibility quotient online.

It is achievable

Unlike what many experts say, link baiting is very much achievable. It is not a vague concept and even a simple tool or snippet of information on your site could quality as user-centric content. If this is so, then you can expect link baiting to be successful. As is the case with any social media site, the process of linking back to your site happens automatically and once it starts is expected to grow in an exponential manner.

Going beyond top ten listing

Link baiting may seem like a daunting proposition. Ecommerce site owners might find themselves asking the question ‘How do I strike a balance between link baiting friendly content and user-centric content?’ After all, it appears that the content for both purposes should be very different. However, what most ecommerce sites fail to realize is that for link baiting to happen your content need not be on the first page of StumbleUpon or Digg. It could be somewhere after the ten pages and still make it to the linkerati’s list of most wanted information!

Niche communities online

The internet is comprised of niche communities online and this is what makes link baiting possible. If you adopt humorous, outrageous or even funny formats for link baiting you can be sure to be linked back to the linkerati of the social media scene. For example, if a young kid wants a specific action figure for his upcoming birthday and your ecommerce site has a detailed picture and product description of it, chances are, your site will be link baited! This might be on a miniscule scale, especially when compared to the scale at which you need to operate, but it still is link baiting and it does increase your presence online!

How to articles are always a hit

No matter how much this has been done to death, it is still a truth that how to articles never fail to qualify as user-centric content. Try and include educational and informative articles that teach your users to do something associated with your site theme. For example, if you are selling interior décor items you could include articles on how to choose accent pieces for a room, or how to select the perfect color according to your requirements etc. This is not repetitive, recycled content. Instead it is high quality content, which deals with original subjects to teach your target audience how to do something.

Why these articles work

Imagine being linked to by leading online e-newspapers! That is the potential of having user-centric content on your ecommerce site. You can expect to be link baiting to some of the most influential sites online. These sites are taken very seriously by a majority of users online. Hence, if such a site links back to your ecommerce store or recommends content on your store, you can expect a huge wave of traffic coming in! Once these inbound links start increasing, you can expect to sustain incoming customers with more impressive content, engaging user experiences and good product descriptions and information. Through a holistic combination of all these aspects, you can hope to increase loyalty amongst your target audience and expand on sales.

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