To be on top of a search engine ranking is the goal of most websites. A search engine ranking’s main purpose is to separate the more improved websites from the junk websites. This is primarily done by the search engines to provide their users with appropriate and significant results as well as quality content.

To be set apart from the herd and to stand out among the millions of websites, a website owner has to think of ways to gain link popularity. Link popularity is a very vital factor used by search engines to determine the rank of a webpage. Link popularity is measured by the number of links made by other websites to your website.

Why is it so important to have link popularity and why would website owners want to make it to the top as far as search engine ranking is concerned? The most obvious reason for this is that the higher the ranking, the more traffic the search engine is sending your way. If your website’s primary purpose is to promote an online business, think of the saving you can make on your advertising budget because of the potential clients the search engine is sending your way.

Link building or link popularity can be effectively achieved through the link bait strategy. A website who can not create links naturally must try to make use of the link bait idea. Link bait is an effective tool to increase traffic in your website. More often than not, link bait is a part of a search engine optimization plan. Link bait is any feature or content in a website that attracts or lures other websites to link to that particular website. Link bait should be interesting enough to catch other people’s attention and to entice them to make a link.

For a link bait to be successful and to get the expected result of generating more traffic, a link baiter can make use of several hooks. Link baiting can take the form of news, informational, humor, contrary and fear contents.

News hook – making your site the source of news tidbits and fresh information is one way of generating the much coveted traffic. Being the first to make a scoop on a current event will entice other webmasters to make a link to your website. News readers will turn to your website every time they want to know what is happening around the community and around the world.

Informational hook – the internet is an easy, fast and inexpensive means of access to information. Providing this useful information will encourage readers to make a link.

Humor hook – many people are looking for an outlet to break the daily routine. By providing jokes, funny stories and videos readers will be enticed to click on your site. Surfers will come back often in the hope of finding amusing content and will click on a link referenced link to see if other funny things are provided as well.

Evil hook- negative or mean statement about a person or a product will encourage a reader to click on a link to verify the validity of the statement.

Fear hook – is possibly the most effective link bait. A headline that stimulates the fear of the reader will have the effect of an influx of traffic. Readers will click on links to search for explanations.

Link bait may generate the desired traffic until your server crashes but after all is said and done, good quality content will push a website to the top of a search engine ranking.