While link bait is frequently seen as more “Fun”, and it’s definitely more creative, than doing things like guest blogging or emailing people asking for links, it has its challenges. I wanted to share a few things I’ve learned about creating link bait from my experiences. If you have other insights, I’d love to hear them in the comments.

Keep a tight scope

In most cases you will want to keep your content extremely focused around your target, or the person that you are going to get to link to you (justin wrote more about this process here). While it’s tempting to try and cast as wide of a net possible, typically you will be more successful focusing on targeting one or two targets (and shaping the content around these demographics) rather than trying to create content that targets everyone.

While this is really important for a lot of link bait content, there will obviously be exceptions to this rule. A couple examples come to mind (if you can think of others, feel free to leave a note in the comments):

If your content or subject really is universally applicable – while this is very rare, there is some content topics that apply to almost everyone on the web. A good example of this would be facebook; just about everyone on the internet has a facebook account and has an interest in changes (especially when it involves privacy settings).
Think about how many links seomoz’s beginners guide has received.

Keep the scope tight especially Switzerland Business Fax List with revisions and additions. When you want to add in more content to make it better, or the client wants additions, you need to ask: “will adding x improve the linkability of the link bait”?
Offer something new

There are two aspects of this: perspective and information

Perspective
The internet is huge; sometimes it feels like everything has already been written about. Fortunately people tend to write the same thing. If you EF Leads want to write about a topic that has already been If everyone is writing about why something sucks, write about why it’s awesome. And don’t just say it’s awesome, back it up and make a case for why it’s awesome.