Blasphemy, I hear some of you saying. Linkbait, if promoted properly on social media sites, brings lots of traffic and, if you’re lucky, lots of links from other bloggers.

But it’s a hit and miss situation that sometimes ends up with overloaded web servers, cancelled hosting accounts, and even lots of nasty comments on Digg, if the article sucks, is poorly categorized, or both. This can be emotionally and/or financially draining, if you’re doing this long-term. A site consisting only of linkbait might eventually turn readers away.

Now, I’m not saying don’t linkbait. As a hired linkbaiter myself, I’ve seen the value of quality linkbait. (And really good ones are not easy to write, despite the sudden explosion of linkbaiters out there.)

But Pandia presents a comprehensive alternate link building plan [via Sphinn] based on a few simple principles. There’s also a really clever set of terms to describe certain types of content and services, and their temporal behaviors.

Consider this premise that Pandia puts forth: Quality content, such as a tutorial, that pulls X visitors per day over a year might actually pull more traffic than an average linkbait promoted on Digg. That is, a page pulling even 10-20 visitors per day, every day, might be far more effective on a holistic level than a linkbait.

Why? Because those 3,000+ visitors over a year might actually be more targeted than a sudden influx of social media visitors. Do you think you can write lots of good content that steadily pulls in 10-20 visitors per day? I’ve had a few CSS tutorials pull in regular traffic, comments, and links for a good year now. A gallery of simple fractal images on one website pulls steady traffic, thanks to Google Image Search and a few links from high PR websites.

On the other hand, good linkbait promoted well can and does pull in massive amounts of primary and secondary backlinks that supplement traffic for a long-time. And the links come early on, which has an effect of pulling future traffic and backlinks in a manner very similar to compound interest. My own feeling is that you want to build a website that has a balance of textual and visual content types.

If you’re just starting a new weblog, consider that not choosing effective blog categories can affect your search engine rankings. After two years of regular blogging, I’ve made a lot of mistakes re my categories for my oldest blogs. I’m now of the firm opinion that you have to think of each category archive page as a home page itself. You can build some of your site’s SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) authority through your category archives. Here are a few tips for creating worthwhile blog categories.

1. Be broad but descriptive.
   Categories should be broad rather than very specific, but should not be too general. Specificity will come from the keywords in your articles. Fragmenting category topics further means you’ll end up with too many categories at some point in your blog’s future. Picking good categories means knowing what your blog is really about.
2. Don’t be wordy.
   One or two words for a category name is best. You don’t want long sentences but you do want user-centric categories.
3. Minimize categories.
   Limit the number of categories, else you run the risk of having too few articles in each one. There’s no hard and fast rule, but I now try to limit a blog to no more than 15 - fewer if possible. Authority of category archives comes partly from the quantity of articles in each category.
4. Be conservative.
   Only create categories as you need them. If you strongly feel a new article needs a new category, then add a suitable category, keeping it broad enough to represent future articles. If you think that a category will only ever have one or two articles, then you need to rethink that category. Can it be incorporated with something else?
5. Build authority.
   Link to your category pages from within article text, on occasion, even with alternate anchor text. This can add SERPs authority to your category archives.
6. To multi-categorize or not.
   This is a controversial point. I always use 1-3 categories for every article I post in a blog, though there may be some justification in using one category per post.
7. Sub-categories are unnecessary.
   Some blog platforms allow you to create sub-categories under a parent category. This is unnecessary, and sometimes makes your navigation look awkward.
8. Use your blog platform.
   Tags are not categories. No need to use tagging from Technorati or other sites, unless your blog platform does not have categories. If it does not, you could use Technorati or del.icio.us tags (Blogger/ Blogpost-specific). Alternately, you could categorize manually.
9. Emphasize category volume.
   Most new visitors to a blog want to know what it’s about, and they often turn to the categories, hoping to get some idea of how many articles are in each. You can do this by displaying the number of posts and/or using a tag cloud.

Here’s a bit of link love for a few articles of interest I came across that are related to design, blogging, and information presentation.

1. CSS tutorials.
   Snook.ca suggests that there are six keys to modern CSS-based layouts for websites and presents a list of article links for you to check out. I’ve previously read or browsed many of the articles, and they’re worth looking at.
2. Free web templates.
   If you can’t be bothered to learn CSS or just don’t have the time, free templates abound. Tech Magazine has a big list of links to sites offering free templates. Styleshout offers free templates and has links to others. You’ll find links and/or downloads for both static templates and various blog platforms.
3. Custom RSS feed buttons.
   Don’t like the orange square with rounded corners that is the standard RSS button? Make your own thanks to a Photoshop tutorial from PinkZAP.
4. Who is your blog audience?
   Do you know who your audience is? If you have a business blog, it’s more than possible that your audience may not be the people that you want for customers. Dawud Miracle explores the issue of blog audience.
5. Online presentation tools.
   If you’re in a business where you have to give regular presentations, be it to clients, venture capitalists, or what have you, you’re probably familiar with Microsoft Powerpoint. Did you know that there are numerous competitors that run in a browser? Mashable presents a list of 30 online presentation and slideshow tools.

There are many ways to build links and traffic. Some are organic methods, others are borderline or completely unacceptable as far as search engines (SEs) are concerned. Here’s a sampling of some common methods. Most were acceptable as earlier as last year, though some SEs may be penalizing them, if detectable.

1. Article directories.
   While article directories such as Ezinearticles and GoArticles can help build links and traffic, make sure that you do not submit the exact content as on your site. Rewrite articles you’ve already published at least a few weeks in the past, and rewrite them. Submit those to a select few good article directories. Do article syndication right, and it’ll benefit you.
2. Directories.
   Pick a few good authority directories such as Yahoo! Directory, Dmoz, EatonWeb, Aviva Directory and JoeAnt.
3. Guest blogging.
   Guest blogging can gain you links, traffic, and new subscribers. There are many sites and blogs looking for guest writers. Even Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Cilnton is looking for a guest post. If you don’t support her, maybe your favorite candidate is doing the same.
4. Good grammar.
   Some bloggers simply will not link to a site where the writer comes off as illiterate. It’s worth your time to spell check your articles before posting them, for numerous reasons.
5. Comments.
   Comments on other sites, if they allow you to include your site URL, will at least bring some traffic. Some sites even use “do follow”, so search engines will follow through and index your pages.
6. Forums.
   At most forums, you can add your URL to your member profile, which will appear whenever you participate in discussions. Some forums do expect you to post a certain number of times before your URL will show in your signature. Of course, the more helpful your forum postings, the more likely you are to draw traffic. If those visitors are bloggers, you might even pick up a few links to your site, eventually.
7. Linking out.
   Be a link leaker. In your articles, link out as often or more than you link in. If you are linking to relevant articles elsewhere, your readers will appreciate this, as will the other bloggers - either of whom may eventually link to you.
8. Set trackbacks.
   If you’re not tech-savvy, trackbacks may take some time to understand. They work like this. Blog A writes an article and links to Blog B. Blog B has trackbacks turned on. When Blog A publishes the article, it sends a “trackback” notice to Blog B. Now, a little snippet of text from Blog A’s article appears in Blog B’s article’s trackbacks/ comments section. Now, just by allowing trackbacks, you might actually induce more people to link to you. (Unfortunately, there’s also lots of trackback spam these days.)
9. Link exchanges.
   Link exchanges, like several of the techniques in this list, must be done carefully if you decide to use them. Some search engines such as Google are possibly discounting reciprocal link exchanges.
10. Purchased links.
    There are several types of purchased links:
    1. Sitewide in navigation bars.
    2. End-of-post.
    3. In-post.

    Google in particular is cracking down on paid links (both buyer and seller) by penalizing the authority of any page carrying paid links or pointed to by them. The problem for them is that some types are more subtle than others, and they are asking people to snitch to them. Some experts feel that Google is doing this because they don’t want to lose AdWords revenue. Others assume it’s simply because paid links skew PageRank.

    Regardless, if you are careful, paid links can work for you. Here are some considerations:

    1. In general, in-post (editorial) links are always better than sidebar/ blogroll links, most especially if they are relevant.
    2. You can buy links that are displayed at the end of a post, though these are more detectable.
    3. Sitewide nav bar links may have less value in the future, depending on the search engine.

    A couple of the more popular link brokers are Text Link Ads and Text Link Brokers.

11. Purchased ads.
    If you’re concerned about buying links, the next best think is a purchased ad - which is really a link anyway. Still, Google is trying to force their hand on everyone and recommends that anyone selling ads (or links) should use the NoFollow attribute in paid links. That’s so that Google does not follow and index a linked page. Obviously, not everyone agrees with Google on this and ignore this suggestion for their ads.
12. Purchased reviews.
    Purchased reviews are viewed by some as a way to get some blogger to say something nice about you if you pay them. Others feel there is nothing wrong with this. There’s enough of a market that there are at least seven well-known pay per review sites. A few are PayPerPost, ReviewMe, SponsoredReviews, and LoudLaunch.
13. Review exchanges.
    If you don’t feel like paying for a review, some bloggers offer review exchanges, which might be viewed the same way as reciprocal linking by some search engines.
14. Press releases.
    If you have something worthwhile to announce about your site/ business, using a web press release might be useful. Some sites even allow you to include a live link (as opposed to the just the text of your URL).
15. Video with watermarked URL.
    If you post any original content at a video sharing site such as YouTube, Revver, or dozens of others, make sure that your site’s URL appears at the beginning and end of the video. It may not be linkable, but if it’s easier to remember, it could pull a lot of traffic. Alternately, if you use SplashCast, you can actually link to your site from within their media player.
16. Linkable content.
    You’ve read it all over the place: content is king. It’s true because good content is inherently linkable. Create lots of it. Here are a few types to consider.
    1. Good and/or entertaining content.
    2. List-style linkbaits.
    3. Resource linkbaits.
    4. Tutorials.
    5. Free themes.
    6. Free plugins.
    7. Profiles of bloggers or other people important in their niche or industry.
17. Social media marketing.
    SMM, or Social Media Marketing, coupled with linkable content can be immensely valuable for traffic and link building. Keep in mind that there are several types of social media sites, each with different rules. Here are a few.
    1. Member-voted news sites [Digg, Sphinn].
    2. Social profile sites such as [Myspace].
    3. Social bookmarking sites [del.icio.us].
    4. Professional networking site profiles [LinkedIn].
    5. Wikis [Wikipedia].
    6. Hybrids [Stumbleupon].

    All of these sites either allow you to set up a profile with your link and/or allow articles to be posted. Some do not like if you submit your own article. Respect the culture at each, and ask a friend to submit articles if necessary. Using good titles and descriptions, as well as the right category, makes an enormous difference.

18. Blog Carnivals.
    Blog carnivals are an ideal way for new blogs to get some link love and traffic, and to network with other bloggers. And it’s usually from topically related sites so search engines love it. [Check out our Carnival of Small Business and Startups.]
19. Feed subscription buttons.
    Placing these prominently on your site “above the fold” tends to help increase subscribers. If they can’t find it, they won’t subscribe. Subscribers are sometimes bloggers, some of whom may someday link to you.
20. Blog and ping.
    Blog and ping amounts to having your blog platform signal various blog directories or blog search engines whenever you post a new article. Those sites in turn publish a list of “recently updated blogs”. Some come and index your page, making it freshly searchable. Targeting certain times of day can be more beneficial if you post several articles per day, rather than posting them within a few minutes of each other. Also, if you are targeting a specific geographic region, try to post before the beginning of the work day in their time zone (typically before 8 am in a zone).
21. Affiliate programs.
    If you have a product or service that you sell on your site, consider starting an affiliate program. Not only does this expose you to more potential customers and bring traffic, you shares your profits with others, which builds good will. It’s often but not always a win-win situation.

This post provides a bit of link love around the design blogosphere. Don’t forget to check out the last item in the list, which talks about our new free blog logo campaign. The campaign runs for a limited time and is open to qualifying established blogs.

1. Color theory.
   Don’t know Chartreuse from Charcoal? ColourLovers offers a handy reference, 32+ common color names [via Digg], with many provided by commenters. But if you just want to go green, check out their 130+ green color palettes.
2. Favicons.
   Favicons (fave-icons) are those 16×16 pixel images that you see in certain browsers in the address bar. (Not all browsers support them yet.) They’re a sort of micro-brand, and in browsers such as Firefox which have multiple tabs, it’s easier to find a particular site amongst the tabs (if you have several open).

   Don’t know how to create a favicon? No problem. If you have an image/ logo/ picture that will scale down well to around 16×16, then you can use pretty much any of the 20 best favicon online generators.

3. Stock photos.
   Hongkiat lists over 30 websites offering stock photos and royalty-free images. Some of the services offer completely free photos. Others offer low-cost images for a one-time fee (i.e., royalty-free).
4. Best typeface forward.
   Smashing Magazine presents a snapshot of 80 different typefaces for design. Many of these will work fine for online design that’s turned into graphical form, but not necessarily as actual text fonts on a web page.
5. Free logos.
   If you have a blog that’s at least a year old and is about any of design, small business, marketing, SEO, blogging, freelance, productivity or something closely related to these, you might qualify for Logo Design Work’s free blog logo campaign. We’re giving away 10 free blog logos each month, for a limited time, to qualifying blogs.

   Please read the rules to see if you qualify. Then fill out the brief questionnaire to give our designers some info about your likes and dislikes.