One of the best ways to get traffic to your blog is by making a self-proclaimed link bait page. This is often done in a post, as I have done many times in the past. With a post, you can get a huge inflow of traffic to your blog just by pointing out something new that people find interesting. But while I already wrote about creating an effective link bait blog post, can you actually do the same thing in a link-baiting page?

Setting aside an entire page on your blog for the purpose of drawing traffic, boosting search engine ranking placements and signing up massive amounts of fresh visitors is easier than it sounds. I believe that every single blog on the net should set up their own dedicated “promo page” of sorts as an alternative to the homepage of your blog.

Why Is A Link Bait Page Necessary

Speaking in general, as bloggers… we can’t always be putting out our best stuff day after day. There are times when things break from the norm, and there are times when things get too informal or too professional. The lesson here is that people seeing the homepage of your blog for the first time might not get an accurate picture of what you do. The solution? Make a link bait page to give readers a sample of your writing and a reason to subscribe to your feed right off the bat.

The Method… Simplified
In making a link bait page, we don’t want to just throw up a page that has general non-specific information on it. We want something that is going to be as beneficial for us, as it will be for the viewers. What we need is a game plan.

What I recommend is first targeting your primary keyword phrase. By now, you should have your favorite phrase that you would like to rank highly on Google for. Using my new finance blog Bullish Bankers as our example, this phrase would be “investing ideas.” The advantages of using a link bait page, rather then just a post, is that it can be much more effective in creating a static destination to force through some killer Google ranks and really drive readers toward your subscribe page en mass. It’s a must-have part of any blog!

Link Bait Pages a’la Jim… A True One-Two Punch!
Once you have started your page, we are going to focus on boosting our Google rankings by linking over to it as much as possible. With a normal blog post, you can only do so much. With a page, we can literally dominate Google rankings.

Here is what I recommend for my one-two knockout punch:

• Change the “permalink” to your keyword phrase
  By making the actual URL include your targeted phrase, you are going to rank much better for the search engine results that you are seeking. A quick example? My BullishBankers.com link-bait page is located at “http://www.bullishbankers.com/investing-ideas/”, my targeted term!
• Use a catchy title that includes your keyword phrase
  If you haven’t figured it out already, the title of your blog posts is the most important thing in deciding where you will rank in Google results. When search engines poll for the best website to match a search term, the first check is in the title of said page… so we want our phrase right in there. It doesn’t have to be your target phrase alone though! The title on my demo page is “Top Ten Investing Ideas for 2008.” This is an example of a title that is catchy and useful!

What To Put On Your Link Bait Page!?
This is secondary in my opinion to organizing your search engine optimization, but equally important. Your content can literally be anything! It needs to be something catchy, easy to read and maybe even humorous. It should be a sort of easy to read sampler of the kind of content you have on your website, but not written like a typical blog post either.

Some suggestions:

• A List - Practical, easy to read and great for social media
• An Image - Or multiple images. Something funny or amusing
• A Joke - Humor works. Use it to your advantage
• A Cliff-Hanger - Something that poses a call for action, or a reason to read

No matter what you do, I feel that it is essential to include somewhere an option to subscribe to your blog’s rss feed or newsletter… or both! You need people to subscribe to your stuff, and there’s no better way to do this on a link-bait page. I decided to use an “above the fold” technique where I listed reasons that subscribing would benefit readers for free. Use what you have to offer to your advantage, free stuff is golden… so if you don’t have anything to give away, try to rub in that you have a free feed.

My Page is Done! … But How Do I Promote It?
Once you have everything good to go, it’s important to use your link-bait page to your advantage. Instead of linking to your main blog, why not link to your link bait page? If you have designed it effectively… it should be much more convincing than a look at your homepage to first-time visitors.

1. Linking Technique: Try to link to your page using your actual keyword phrase as much as possible. Google absolutely loves this, and for good reasons. If you have people linking to a page as “investing ideas,” with a url ending “/investing-ideas/” and a title “Investing Ideas” then you have yourself a first page result in most searches! The more people you can get to link to the link-bait using your keyword phrase, the higher you will rank.

2. Social Media Storm: One of the other effective ways to push an otherwise undiscovered gem into the spotlight is to use social media. I have seen tremendous success by having pages land on the famed Digg.com front page, and you can also increase all your rankings by using other programs like StumbleUpon or Reddit. Social media is good for more than just intermediate traffic, it can completely change the face of your website and link-bait page.

Essentially, we want to make our newly formed link bait page into our new homepage for anyone who hasn’t visited our blog before. The best ways to do this is to advertise it as your website when you link to you site from outside sources. Google likes individual pages a lot more than generalized website homepages when it ranks things in search engine results… so use this to your advantage!

Check Out The Bullish Bankers Link Bait - Investing Ideas

A big thanks for John Cow and his “Make Money Online” link bait page for being the basis for this project. As you can see, I borrowed and modified his subscribe image because I loved it so much and it fit with my design once I made some quick changes. This type of layout is very effective, because it presents a non-obtrusive call to subscribe on the top, and features some easy to read content on the bottom. I highly recommend using this approach, though there are many different ways to boost your SERPs and RSS subscribers using your link bait page.

-The Net Fool

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!