For many people when Google tells you that you are more likely to be found by searching for their website, that’s a good thing. However, before you submit your site to the “high-ranking link” category, it’s important to recognize that some links do lead to increased clicks. This is called the “link bait” effect and it can be seen in Google’s best SEO data.

When sites with high-performing links link back to other high-performing sites in their category, they’re hoping to have more clicks than those of their competitors. Those high-performing links, however, aren’t always natural, as Google will look at the terms used by the linking websites to determine whether these links were organic or paid for.

The problem for bloggers, though, is that they don’t always want to pay for high-quality links. There are many sites that have a high volume of links, but some sites are in it for the clicks. These sites rely on linking strategy and mix and match strategies that include sharing links in your own blog posts, posting link-building examples on your site, and anything else to increase shares and clicks.

How Google Deals with Links in Its Rankings

In general, you should never pay to promote your site in Google search results. Google penalizes sites that pay to promote their own site over the content of content created and supplied by other sites, or if these sites are trying to use negative keywords to attack other sites by linking to them.

Likewise, in the event that a link points to your site without your permission, or worse yet, a link points to your own website to take advantage of your user’s search rankings, there is a penalty for each source of the link. Below is a link a blog I wrote earlier today:

Links that Were Followed by Link Bait Links

To put into perspective the consequences of linking to someone else, an average of 5% of links was penalized, so if you’re aiming for an average of 6% for the same exact or similar campaign, it’s likely that you will be receiving lower rankings, especially if link bait has infiltrated your campaign.

One thing that you can do to minimize the repercussions of link bait is to avoid clicking on irrelevant links in your Google search results, including site names from other blog sites you don’t follow. Also, do not click on the links provided in links from other sites that do not have a proven correlation to your blog post or blog page.

Links that Increased Pageviews

If the links to your blog are not linked to by other sites that don’t have a relationship with you, if the links are from organic link-building examples that should be used in a generic search engine optimization strategy, then the chances of your blog receiving a high-ranking position on Google is higher.

Another key component is that an increase in traffic should be able to raise the rankings of your site so that your blog will appear high enough that people won’t click on links and your actual site can gain search engine rankings. However, if your traffic is simply from a practice like linking to the very page your own blog page sits on, your blog will just see a lower ranking than it should due to artificially created links.

High Volume, High Volume Links = More Clicking Power

When considering Google’s link-bait evidence, it is important to keep in mind that there is a strong correlation between lots of links and more click-throughs on your site, as observed by the link-bait evidence.

For example, when the following blog was posted to Medium a few years ago, within a day more than half of the clicks came from linking websites. This resulted in a 73% increase in links and as a result, a 32% increase in site traffic.

How to Get High-Quality Links

If you want to increase your referral traffic from artificial link strategy websites, consider setting up Google Adwords campaigns, as this provides a wide variety of different versions of Adwords campaigns. Also, be sure to install Google Analytics to monitor your traffic from natural search and link-bait links.