Definition

Content deliberately crafted to be controversial, shocking, or irresistible enough that other sites will link to it, boosting SEO. The journalistic integrity vacuum where rankings live.

Example Usage

Our '10 Reasons Your Competitors Are Destroying You' post is pure link bait, but it generated 300 backlinks, so mission accomplished.

Origin

SEO and content marketing tactics, early 2000s

Source: SEO and digital content marketing terminology

Related Terms

Intermediate

CPL

Cost Per Lead—the metric that tells marketers exactly how much they're paying for each potential customer who might, possibly, maybe convert someday. The number that determines whether your campaign was 'efficient' or a 'learning opportunity.' Lower is always better, unless you're explaining why you spent the entire quarterly budget in three weeks.

📣 Marketing / Advertising
Advanced

demand-side platform

Software that allows advertisers to automatically purchase ad inventory across multiple exchanges and networks through a single interface, because manually buying ads on ten thousand websites would require immortality. Abbreviated as DSP by people who enjoy acronyms.

📣 Marketing / Advertising
Beginner

upselling

The practice of encouraging customers to purchase a more expensive or upgraded version of what they're already buying. It's the art of making people feel inadequate about their original choice.

📣 Marketing / Advertising
Intermediate

sentiment analysis

Using natural language processing to determine whether customer feedback, social mentions, or reviews express positive, negative, or neutral opinions about your brand. It's teaching computers to detect sarcasm, which goes about as well as you'd expect.

📣 Marketing / Advertising
Intermediate

frequency capping

Limiting how many times the same person sees your ad, based on the radical notion that showing someone the same message 47 times in one day might be counterproductive. It's the marketing equivalent of knowing when to stop talking.

📣 Marketing / Advertising
Intermediate

heavy-up

Temporarily increasing advertising spend or frequency in specific markets or time periods, usually to counter competitive pressure or exploit opportunity. The marketing equivalent of sending reinforcements.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

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See “link bait” in Corporate Speak, Gen-Z Slang, Pirate Speak, and more.

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