Building high-quality backlinks is crucial for improving your website’s search engine rankings. When multiple authoritative websites link to a page, it tells search engines like Google that the content is valuable and relevant, leading to higher rankings and better visibility in search.
Think of it as a vote of confidence for your business!
While there are various methods for building links, one tactic has proven to be the most effective: content marketing. By creating interesting, valuable, linkable on-site content, brands and businesses can attract backlinks from other websites naturally (or with a little nudge in the right direction with manual outreach).
So, what’s the secret to quality link building content? How can you guarantee authoritative websites will link to it?
Here, we share some tips to inspire the process and garner success.
Step #1: Identify your target audience
The first step in creating link building content is to understand who your audience is. This involves analysing your current customer base and the broader market — understanding their interests, challenges, and preferences will allow you to tailor your content to meet their needs, increasing the likelihood of it being shared and linked.
Step #2: Create valuable and interesting content
Quality is king in the world of content. Content that is engaging, informative, and original tends to attract more backlinks. This could range from in-depth how-to guides and tutorials to compelling infographics and insightful case studies.
The goal is to create content that provides value, solves a problem, or offers new insights into a topic.
Newsjacking
Newsjacking leverages the public’s attention on a specific news story to create linkable content. By putting your own spin on a popular news story, you can inject your content into the conversation and attract links from other publishers.
During a heated political campaign, The New York Times created a webpage that curated over 239 Donald Trump quotes, capitalising on the widespread coverage and discussion.
Trending topics in pop culture
When a song, game, meme, movie, TV show, or celebrity captures the attention of millions, you can create content that references the trend while remaining relevant to your target audience.
For example, Spotify’s “Wrapped” campaign taps into the year-end zeitgeist, where people are reflecting on their year and are keen to share highlights. The annual feature generates personalised infographics about the user’s listening habits, which are highly shareable on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
This campaign not only engages users and encourages social media sharing but also enhances brand visibility.
New and original data
Incorporating original research, statistics, and data into your content can significantly increase its value. Conducting surveys, analysing industry data, or presenting unique findings can make your content a primary source of information, which is more likely to attract authoritative links.
Realestate.com.au, for example, provide regular reporting and analysis of Australian property market trends. Utilising their property listings and market data, they create informative reports and articles that provide insights into various aspects of the Australian real estate market, like trends in property prices, rental rates, and market demand across different regions of Australia.
The unique and valuable insights in these reports lead to coverage by other media outlets, bloggers, and industry commentators, resulting in quality backlinks.
In-depth guides
Websites often link to authoritative sources when referencing a topic or best practices, making in-depth guides an attractive resource for both readers and publishers. For example, Moz’s comprehensive “Beginner’s Guide to SEO” has attracted over 2,500 links from various websites.
How-to resources
How-to guides offer step-by-step instructions for solving a problem or acquiring a skill, making them highly linkable content. By creating the best instructions for a particular task, your website can become a go-to resource and earn links from other websites.
Simple Green Smoothies created a how-to resource on making green smoothies to build authority and promote their brand in the health food space. Covering 15 topics in one article, there’s a lot to learn from one how-to article, making it a valuable content source for health-conscious readers.
Repurposing content into free courses and challenges
Repurposing how-to content into a free course or challenge creates linkable content that re-engages audiences over a period of time. Bloggers, influencers, and publishers who participate in a challenge or course are likely to share it with their audience, generating links and attention.
Health.com’s push-up challenge is a prime example of this type of linkable content that offers a clear roadmap for achieving a goal. They have repurposed one all-encompassing infographic into a month-long pushup challenge, complete with how-to videos.
Massive “10x resources”
Creating massive resources that provide the most in-depth information on a specific topic stands out from other content. It becomes the leading resource on a topic, earning numerous links from other websites.
Buffer, a social media management app, is known for creating massive resources that dive deep into a topic, attracting links and social shares. Some of their blogs have a 10+ minute read time, covering the basics through to the more in-depth, professional-level information (with social media posts, videos, and infographics scattered throughout).
Step #3: Promoting your content to targeted publishers and influencers
Networking and building relationships with key figures in your industry can lead to more backlink opportunities. This can be achieved through guest blogging, collaborations, or simply engaging with influencers on social media.
The goal is to get your content in front of relevant people who have the power to share it widely.
Find publishers likely to reference your content
When reaching out to publishers, focus on those that have linked to similar content in the past, regularly link to related content, and cover the industry relevant to your content. Conduct research to identify publishers whose habits align with your content and add them to your outreach list.
Find publishers with high domain authority
Prioritise websites with high domain authority. Use tools like Moz Pro-Link Explorer to identify websites with high authority rankings. Additionally, ensure that these websites use do-follow outbound links that pass SEO value and authority.
Find publishers with influence over other publishers
Targeting influential websites in your industry can have a trickle-down effect. When authoritative websites share your content, it often leads to coverage from other publishers, resulting in more links. Focus on a few prominent blogs that have a strong influence in your industry rather than targeting multiple smaller blogs.
With a well-executed link building content strategy like this, your website can achieve higher visibility and authority
Building backlinks through link building content is an effective strategy for improving search engine rankings. By creating valuable and interesting content, you can attract high-quality backlinks from authoritative websites — and promoting your content to targeted publishers can further enhance your link-building efforts.
One final tip: it’s important to remember that content creation is not a one-time event. It’s essential to monitor and adjust your content to ensure it stays fresh and relevant and continuously create new content to create new backlink opportunities.
Need a hand with links and creating link building content? Contact the team at Gorilla for a free proposal and quote!
