Use Clickbait, It’s Good for You

Yes, there is a good kind of clickbait.

When we hear the word clickbait, we often think of flashy news headlines or titles on social media. You may think of websites like Buzzfeed and Upworthy which capitalize on the use of clickbaity titles. These titles are often formatted like this: “This person just did something: You’ll never guess what happened next” or “X isn’t working, here’s how Y can fix that.”

Clickbait makes a promise that should be fulfilled in the body of the article, post, or video. If an article is titled, “10 Things You’re Doing Wrong,” the article should tell you what those 10 things are (and hopefully it would also tell you how to do those things correctly).

Clickbait can increase clicks on a website–and therefore increase engagement with a website–but clickbait has earned a bad reputation through its misuse. 

The Dark Side of Clickbait

Although clickbait makes a promise, many websites have utilized the benefits of clickbait by using titles and headlines that make attention-grabbing promises with no intention of fulfilling them. Upworthy, a news site known for inventing the clickbait headline style (You’ll never guess what happened next), titled their 2013 article with this headline: See why we have an absolutely ridiculous standard of beauty in just 37 seconds.

This article is not even 100 words long, and most of it is an anecdote about the author’s own experience. The author does not tell us why we have a ridiculous beauty standard but instead links to a Youtube video. This video shows a model getting her makeup done for a photograph that is then heavily photoshopped.

The article’s title implies that it will quickly explain to us why our beauty standards are so ridiculous when instead, it tells us more about the author than the topic and points us to a Youtube video. The answers promised by the article are not there, and to boot, reading the article and navigating to the video took me longer than 37 seconds.

Beyond being annoying to internet users, bad clickbait practices have taken on different forms and have even been proven to be tied to the spread of fake news. Some clickbait aims to increase engagement by baiting “hate clicks,” a practice which involves posting controversial content or unpopular opinions to increase content readership. Here is an example borrowed from Katie Way’s article about hate clicks on Contently:

The Cut posted an article in 2018 about Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas’s relationship, calling Priyanka a “global scam artist” for marrying Nick. This article received a lot of user engagement, but this engagement was an overwhelming amount of hate clicks and negative feedback. The Cut has since removed the article and left an apologetic statement in its place. Although The Cut received a large amount of clicks and engagement with their post, they damaged their reputation by relying on hate clicks to support that user engagement.

“A brand that’s based on hatred and inherent shock value is not a brand that people will keep coming back to,” says Katie Way. “You won’t really retain an audience that way. Maybe you can, until you say something that they disagree with. Or until they realize it’s all ethically shady.”

While increasing engagement with your website is good and important, abusing the power of clickbait can be counterproductive, damaging your website’s reputation among readers. And if Google takes notice of your bad clickbait practices, your website’s SEO ranking might suffer.

While clickbait may seem to help the success of your website at first–with readership and sharing of your articles on the rise–abusing clickbait will hinder your website’s long-term success. Once readers realize that your website is all flash and no substance, they will lose trust in your website and likely not return–especially since following a trail of headlines and images that have nothing to do with a website’s actual content is annoying and inconvenient.

Good Clickbait

Despite clickbait seeming all bad and deceptive, it can actually be used for good. And if you want to increase your user engagement, you should be using clickbait. No matter what content your website has or what topics it covers, your headlines and titles need to give readers a reason to click on your website. Using clickbait is all a matter of balance.

If you read various articles about clickbait, you will find that there is no one approach that everyone has agreed on. Some writers consider all clickbait to be bad, while others separate “good” clickbait from “bad” clickbait. Maria Carpena of WebFX explains how clickbait by definition “is not inherently bad.”

“‘Good’ clickbait is a pair of engaging headline and provocative thumbnail that leads users to the expected content. ‘Bad’ clickbait tempts users to click, without delivering the promise of the headline and image. Worse, it leads to an irrelevant or malicious website.”

Differentiating between good and bad clickbait is important because incorporating clickbait into your online publications is important, but it must be done in the “good” way.

To make responsible clickbait, you need to do your research to help optimize your SEO. What keywords are your audience using in their searches? Online tools like KeywordsFX can help you answer this question and apply the results to your publications. Put in the work to find your audience and meet them where they are. The closer your title’s language is to the language readers are using to search for information, the more likely they will be baited to click on your article.

Consider the style and tone of your publication as well when writing titles. Some websites like Buzzfeed can use the dramatic and gimmicky clickbait titles and still retain reader engagement because they follow through with the promise that their titles give. For example, Buzzfeed’s article 16 Things You Probably Don't Know About Pedro Pascal But Def Should does in fact go on to detail 16 facts about actor Pedro Pascal (whether we def need to know them is up for debate though).

But if your publication has perhaps a more formal or academic tone, you’ll want to format a title that intrigues the reader while also reflecting the more serious tone of your publication.

At the end of the day, if you want your website to succeed and stay succeeding long-term, keep a dedication to quality and transparency at the core of your work. While clickbait has its dark side, it can be a helpful (and potentially necessary) tool to encourage audience engagement and increase readership on your site. So yes, use clickbait. Just make sure to play nicely.