Is Linkbait On Its Last Legs?

Many popular optimization strategies center on the practice of link baiting, which is SEO slang for developing content with the express purpose of luring in a large number of inbound links. As companies like Google continually tweak their algorithm to prevent the system from being gamed, analysts are beginning to wonder if linkbaiting has much of a future.

Everyone wants link love. Content producers are always looking for that juicy piece of linkbait that will pull in obscene amounts of traffic, generate tons of inbound links, and ultimately lead to higher search engine rankings. From a marketing standpoint, those all seem like worthy enough goals to pursue, right?

There comes a point, however, when linkbait transitions from viral content to something that ends up annoying users in the long run.

Jennifer Slegg gives her take:

But like any hot SEO technique, as soon as it starts getting done to death - as arguably link bait is now - the powers that be at Google simply turn one of those many shiny knobs and suddenly the technique starts to count less and less in the serps until those link bait links don’t seem to add anything at all. Or worse, sites utilizing it to an extreme level get penalized.