I think that the term link bait is usually used to describe some content which is specifically designed to receive links - whereas the bulk of your content may provide general information, a link bait page, such as something "viral", funny, controversial, may be slightly off topic, but something that people will link to.
I have attempted many things, and so far failed. For example, my site is on health and fitness, so I wrote an article on
pole dancing for fitness (which is actually becoming popular in London at least) in the hope that people would link to the article because it is a pole dancing video, and not because it is a fitness video. So link bait can mean many things, but really it is literally bait to get a link.