I discovered a new word today: Linkbait.

These days I´m using a lot of time learning more about the ways of Google and other search engines and although I find myself pretty knowledgeable in search engine optimization there´s still a lot to learn. Not least because the rules of the game keep changing as the search engines optimize their algorithms and as the black hat SEO people find new ways to get high rankings quickly.

Anyway, back to linkbaiting. Linkbait is like trying to create a viral buzz about yourself or your site. So it basically means creating some kind of content that makes people link to your site more than usual.

While linkbaiting might sound a bit like surfers getting caught on the bad SEO persons hook, some believe that linkbaiting is an art and it really isn’t as bad as it sounds, says Matt Cutts.

In my opinion linkbaiting as a concept isn’t something all that new, but trying to think about it and focus on getting links and visitors by placing content that they would like is a good exercise. I belive the “is it good or bad” discussion boils down to whether you intentionally try to write to get people linking to you, or it just happens by accident. It’s probably the loss of the romantic idea of the internet and its workings as something that just happens by itself, and people waking up to the fact that everything as well as the internet can and will be manipulated to earn money, that makes linkbaiting sound as a bad concept.