Link Bait and ‘link baiting’ are used to describe content deliberately created and targeted to attract links from other websites.

Webmasters have always tried to create content that attracts visitors (and therefore links since many visitors are other webmasters) but the popularity of social sites like Digg, del.icio.us, MySpace and YouTube, and the millions of blogs, has made it easier to reach large groups of people with specially designed content.

The content can be a controversial, informative or current article, a game, a joke, a download, a video, or an online tool. Anything that another webmaster might find useful and compelling enough to link to.

Some link bait (such as tools and scripts) automatically generate a link back to the site that provides it just because it is used.