Link bait creation falls under the category of link building, therefore being one of the major seo strategies of all times. Link bait proved to be an untimed strategy that can lead to large number of backlinks pointing back to your site from other authoritative (and not so authoritative) websites.
Matt Cutts defines link bait as anything "interesting enough to catch people's attention." Eric Ward, also known as the godfather of linking, describes it even better: "link bait is more or less anything you create anywhere on the web that inspires other people to link to it."
As well as a funny picture, inspiring quote or a shocking article, even "Top Five Annoying Things About Chocolate Cakes" can prove to be link bait. It doesn't matter whether your target audience is internet marketers, fat people or individuals interested in learning "how to make an onion salad without crying," - they are people, and there are plenty of things that can resonate as link bait with them.
The key to a sustainable link building (and baiting) is quality content. As much as fun, scary and exciting is a great link bait - nothing comes even close to a blue ribbon "how to" post. When you come to look at it, anything that doesn't improve your readers' life in one way or another will fade eventually. However, high quality content constantly proves to be the one thing people generously keep linking to over and over again.
However, I may be wrong. Maybe the true utmost powerful link baiting strategy is to combine the Fun, Scary, Exciting and Mysterious with Superb Quality. It may very well sound as a perfect link bait strategy, however, who am I to conclude such a verdict? Instead, I would ask you to tell me if you think it's a good idea to invest your time in combining the better of two worlds?
I guess the best way to find out is to conduct a proper study, but to tell you the truth, I am too lazy to actually do that. Instead, I love to be an active part of other blogs to see what makes people tick and react. I often find myself commenting on a post with what seems to be the rest of the planet, however, occasionally I become a witness of one of the major blogs (with over 20,000-30,000 RSS Subscribers) getting literally a "speck" of comments.
And that's exactly what you need to be paying attention to, if you want to master link bait. The key to understanding what people consider to be link bait is in understanding what people consider to be "unlikable" content. This concept is based on copywriting. You need to find out your prospects' major problems in order to come up with a list of targeted benefits to touch them on an emotional level.
Link bait seems to work really well in SEO/Tech related blogs and social networks. However, stating the obvious, most websites are not in this field, which makes link baiting a lot more difficult than it should be. Coming up with link bait blogging about diet, dog training, fire ants or any other highly targeted niche is rather ambitious, but very much possible.
I believe with the unending development of highly targeted social bookmarking websites, it is becoming easier to evolve into the link baitee (if it makes sense) with highly targeted, specific content. However, just as in any other niche, you need to be good. No, scratch that... You need to be OUTSTANDING.
At the end of the day, no matter how you look at it, link bait is just like fishing. You fish for backlinks and eyeballs with quality content being the bait. The raw benefit of this seo strategy is: more views, more visitors and more subscribers. In other words - more traffic and long term link building with no additional effort on your part.
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