What is Link Baiting?
Link baiting, seems, from the sound of it, to be one of those 'black hat' techniques to fool search engines into giving you top rankings
In fact, though, link baiting if done correctly is a perfectly legitimate search engine optimisation technique - lauded by the people who work for search engines.
Link baiting is simply a sophisticated way of building links to your sites.
The idea is that you create unique and clever content that, by its nature encourages people to link to it.
In a sense that's exactly what search engines have always encouraged you to do - create interesting content, which will rank well because people link to.
In practice what this means is thinking outside the box with your content. A clever bit of search engine optimisation will focus not just on getting your keywords and coding right - it will also focus on how to make your content stand out in a way that makes people want to link to it. If you have no links pointing towards your site, it's virtually impossible to get good rankings for your chosen keywords.
Some examples? Well, much of link baiting has been developed by bloggers - using techniques like rebutting a popular argument. Make a considered and well thought out counter argument to a received wisdom, linking to some of its prime proponents, and there's a good chance that people will cite you with a link - even if they disagree with you!
The key lesson of link baiting, though, is to understand the importance of links and to realise that there are lots of easy and legitimate ways to get links.