For those who haven’t heard, link baiting is the act of creating a piece of content or some type of utility that will generate inbound links to your website from other quality websites.

Let me tell you, I love the thought of creating things that people want to (and do) link to…and it is always my hope that the content we are producing here at InsureMe will be linkworthy. However, making linkworthy content that actually gets links isn’t easy – but as someone who does SEO, I realize how important highly linkable content is to an optimization strategy.

But the question I was pondering today (yes, I ponder) is how important link baiting skills are to today’s affiliate marketer. Is link baiting an attainable and sustainable organic optimization strategy for affiliates or is it something best left to big companies and big name bloggers?

I would argue that in the long run, being a proficient linkbaiter (read: quality content creator) will be essential to the success of an affiliate marketer who relies on natural traffic for income. Lately, I have seen a lot of anecdotal evidence that brings me to this conclusion. For example:

The number of indexed links (at least for our site) is going down in both Google and (especially) Yahoo!. This shows me that both search engines are doing a better job of finding and discounting “bad” links like site-wide paid links and two-way reciprocal links.

Fewer and fewer affiliates are showing up on the first page of the search results. I have a feeling this has to do somewhat with bias on the search engines’ part and somewhat with the fact that larger companies are getting a clue about SEO – and that big companies get a lot of good links for free.

Paid text link “ads” are becoming even sketchier than before. Search engineers really hate paid links and I think they are putting a lot of effort in identifying sites that sell links and are taking away their “link juice.” As a link buyer, you have to face the fact that your paid links’ juice might not last forever…and if that’s all you got you might be in trouble.

If you operate in a vertical with a lot of people who are successfully creating linkbait, you will rapidly fall behind in the search engine rankings. On the flip side, if you are successfully generating hundreds of quality links through link baiting when your competitors aren’t, you will be in a very good long term position for optimization success.

I think that last point is key, especially in verticals that are not yet in the link baiting mindset (I would include insurance as one of those verticals). As an affiliate, you have a unique opportunity to set yourself apart by creating amazing content that will not only draw a number of links but will also help establish your credibility in that vertical. In turn, this will not only help your site and your link building, but it also might open new doors when it comes to your business.

So I guess my main point is this – if you are an affiliate, and SEO is your primary method of income, now is the time to start learning about linkbait and producing linkbait of your own.

But how do you do that you ask? Great question…more on that tomorrow…

But a parting question for today. Am I full of it? Is linkbait really all that important to affiliates or is it best left to companies that can afford to experiment with the fickle taste of today’s consumers? Let me know your thoughts…