When buying links from link brokers, don’t just sign up for any old inventory. Call up Text-Link-Ads, Text-Link-Brokers, Linkworth, etc. and tell them your budget and that you need to stay under the radar. Let them put together a custom package for you - just send them your top converting terms and judge the links based on how the other link advertisers are ranking for the anchor text they provide. Ask for a few sample clients, check their rankings and do a linkdomain command at Yahoo! to check out the network. If it looks natural and relevant (and under the radar), you can feel more confident about the service. On rule of thumb I use - I ask myself if a visitor to the page might be tempted to click on the link in the same fashion as AdSense or YPN - if the answer is “yes” or “pretty close,” it’s a good signal.
Rand mentioned that there are multiple types of linkbait, those that are known as controversial and those which are informational or comprehensive. I view them both as being in the same category though…evoking emotions and thus links. 
I just updated my ebook again. I added quite a bit of information about designing / creating / formatting / packaging / launching / and marketing link bait. While it will surely change in future versions, here is some tips from the current version, similar to my recent WMW Pubcon talk on viral marketing.
You know what linkbaiting has been getting a bum wrap lately. Everyone from Nick W, to Eric Ward, to a majority of the readers at copyblogger. Well I’m going to take the unpopular and politically incorrect stance of defending link bait.To sum up this problem I’m going to borrow a quote from Cool Hand Luke, “what we have here is a failure to communicate”. Many of the people who seem to be bothered by this “linkbait” term mostly have an issue with the word “bait”, and connotation that it implies tricking or deceiving someone into doing something they aren’t aware of or don’t want to do. For example putting up a post entitled something like “13 Secrets to Leading a Deeply Meaningful and Spiritually Fulfilling Life” followed by flickr pictures of the the prizes from 6 boxes of cracker jacks and 7 Chinese fortune cookies scrolls. That’s not link bait, that’s just a street flasher doing his thing.
When I talk about link bait I talk about something that’s going to get you links. It may be a single kick ass content post or it may be a series of posts spread over several days. Maybe it’s creating some funny videos on youtube or putting up some goofy pictures on flickr. Whatever it is the content is it’s going to deliver. It’s going to educate, entertain, or engage the reader or viewer. Maybe it will make them think, laugh or cry. But no matter what it does when I get your attention and sit you down and tell you my story, it’s going to deliver. Is everybody going to like my story … nope, but not everybody likes pepperoni on their pizza either, and that’s ok.
I’m an attention whore, I admit it, I’ve got a big ego, and I need to feed it. There aren’t many things that get me excited as crafting an idea into something valuable, workin’ it, and seeing the traffic, and links come rolling in, plain and simple I like kickin’ it up to 11.
Sure some people complain that I’m creating unnecessary hype, and great content is all you need to get links. Puuuuhleeze, either lead follow or get out of the way. Content without promotion is like locking William Shakespeare in a closet to write for you, you’ll have great novels that no one will ever know about or read.
So C’mon lets grow up and get over this anti-linkbait posturing and naive self serving belief that you’re not selling something. Whether it’s a product, idea, or just a story you are selling it. In the end what you need is great content combined with great promotion. Don’t be afraid to get up and blow your own horn from time to time and stop waiting for other people to do it for you.
Is anyone else sick of link baiting yet? I sure am. It’s dominating talk on all the SEO forums and conferences; it’s gumming up the works of all of my favorite social bookmarking sites; and it’s forcing me get off of my lazy rear and make good content.Damn that link baiting.
Of course, it’s also the most cost- and time-efficient way of building relevant, trusted, editorially-given backlinks; it’s the critical success factor in getting ranked in Google for competitive keywords; and, it’s making smart SEOs a veritable boatload of money.
1) Ensure you pick up all pages that mention your site but don’t link to you.
I’m going to let you in on a secret here…. Not everyone on the internet links to external websites, and when they blog about your site or mention your site they may not link to you. That’s right, some people don’t know how to, some people don’t feel the need to, some people haven’t even thought about it and some people are just plain lazy. This means that if you can find these people that talk about (but don’t link to) your site then contact them, ask them to simply add a link to your site where they have mentioned it and hey presto, you have a nice relevant and topical link! Getting these links is like taking candy from a baby and in some cases you can even get decent anchor text.
So how do you go about finding these pages which mention you but don’t link to you? The manual way is to run searches such as:
http://www.sitename.com
“sitename.com”
“sitename”
Don’t forget to run these searches in Google, Yahoo, MSN and Technorati (and anywhere else with a search function!). Just remember that often the top results will all link to you anyway (especially with the full url searches) so be sure to crawl all the way through the results.
You can also set up some automation to automatically find new pages/blog posts about your company. Google Alerts is one way, I prefer our Reputation Monitor which is a tool for monitoring your online reputation but has some interesting applications as a link building tool.
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