Traffic: Reasons Why I Hate Link Baiting

For those who are unaware of what link baiting is: link baiting is a tactic where a website or blog posts content, pictures, videos, etc., in the deliberate attempt to get other websites to link to their website. Oftentimes, that content can be very irrelevant, distasteful, controversial for the sake of being controversial, and sometimes even just plain mind-numbing spam.

Link baiting (as general tactic) is great for getting links to your personal blog or website to boost your site's rankings but I do also however think that it also hurts the Internet as a whole. Oftentimes, link baiting involves complex methods and tricks that usually include dare I say, cheating. A lot of SEO gurus suggest link baiting to such an extreme that it in-the-shower shanks the search engine ranks of legitimate websites with valid and sometimes much better content than the websites employing the link bait tactics.

Now again, I'm not suggesting link baiting as a bad tactic or something one shouldn't do, I'm just saying that a lot of methods in employing link baiting are unethical and are in poor taste. When a website gets a disproportionate amount of links to quality of content of the site ratio, you the reader, and Mr. and Mrs. Googler suffer. And so here are some reasons why I hate link baiting:

1. Unbalanced links to quality of content ratio. When a website has a lot of links it pushes it up in the search engine rankings. If that rank is bloated because of an links the people using the search engines has to wade through more garbage to find useful content for them.
2. Link baiting is a gateway drug. While inherently link baiting isn't harmful to the Internet, enough of it can bring unbalance. And once that website tastes success it may look into other tactics that are definitely what people would consider unethical or illegal to build more links. Sorry to burst your bubble guys, but owning multiple domains for the sole purpose of building links is unethical.
3. More garbage web content. I think just about anyone will agree there is a little bit too much garbage that you have to wade through now-a-days to get where you want to go. When I search a term, I want the most useful, relevant site for me at the top, not the most SEO savvy site there to make a buck.

While that's not the most intimidating list (by any means) it does put a little point across of what I don't like about link baiting. So if you're going to engage in this tactic of website promotion, please link bait responsibly.