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Home / Link Building / Behind LinkBait: Word Play and Creative Semantic Constructions in Hot Titles

Behind LinkBait: Word Play and Creative Semantic Constructions in Hot Titles

linkbait.jpg

I for one am too tired of “linkbaiting” titles (ala “XX lists”, rants or how-tos). In an effort to find examples of some creative titles I’ve been browsing hot Digg posts and the most viral celebrity blog I am aware of – Perez Hilton – to spot some linguistic and semantic tactics behind linkbait:

1. Abbreviations – using popular abbreviation reflecting either slang or professional jargon vocabulary:

Abbreviations

Abbreviations

slang abbreviations

2. Playing with antonyms (words with opposite semantic meanings), e.g. substituting a word in a well known (or set) phrases with its antonym:

Antonyms

3. Playing with well-known quotes:

Colloquialism
“Ain’t it the Truth?” is actually a quote – The Cowardly Lion from “The Wizard of Oz”

4. Using oxymoron – combining what normally cannot be combined (e.g. poor and rich):

Combinations

5. Playing with homophones (words with a different origin and meaning but having the same pronunciation) or using “pun” – deliberately mixing two similar-sounding words:

Homophones

homophones-02.jpg

6. Incomplete sentence (i.e. “you guess what should follow“):

Incomplete sentence

7. Lexical “distortion” – often used in slang – creating new words by intentionally incorrect word spelling:

Lexical Distortion

8. Semantic “distortion” (somewhat related to #2) – substituting one word in a set phrase with any other word for comic / unexpected meaning:

Malapropism

9. Playing with neologisms (i.e. creating new words):

neologisms

neologisms.jpg

10. Creating words that have two meanings and can be interpreted in two (often opposing) ways:

two meanings

11. Question-answer play: asking and instantly answering a question:

question answer

12. Repetition: intentional usage of one and the same word twice:

repetition

repetition

Post image: fish cartoon

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Ann Smarty

I am Ann Smarty, owner of SEOsmarty.com. I've been in the SEO industry for two decades. I am the former Editor-in-Chief of Search Engine Journal and a contributor to Mashable. These days I am running Viral Content Bee and writing for Moz, Buzzsumo, Wix and many others!
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