Link bait is producing content or a feature which attracts sufficient interest that it encourages users to share it and link to it. This is most often a legitimate and ‘white hat’ strategy for building inbound links to a website which delivers both high quality, sustainable links.
There are a wide variety of strategies marketers and webmasters use to develop link bait. The key element is that the content is likely to encourage discussion, sharing or linking out of vanity–for example a list of fifty best video makers on the web might result in quite a few links from the people in the list out of vanity. They may also choose to share the link with their networks.
Other interactive link bait includes videos, pictures and other tools (weight loss calculator widgets etc) that users are likely to want to share with their friends, or on their blogs or websites. The main positive marketers gain from these types of link bait is that they have the potential to go viral and deliver huge returns in legitimate high quality links.