Creating Link-Worthy Content Without Cost

Create Link-Worthy Content Yourself

The perennial clash is knowing that SEO is the most obvious and effective way to drive traffic towards your website but coming to terms with the fact that it’s all for nothing without quality backlinks.  Backlinks are still the engine in the car, what looks good on the outside is nothing without what is actually driving it forward. High-quality backlinks are the backbone of every successful targeted SEO campaign strategy.

They help on multiple levels, not only improving rankings of the site but your content such as blogs and any infographics you have up.  There is the potential to boost not just your homepage but every page on the site with just one heavyweight backlink.

How can I get backlinks easily?

Well, I’m sure you can find some shady SEO operator to black-hat your way to the top, with toxic link-building but rest assured Google is on top of these kinds of techniques now, and you receive heavy punishment. The days of game link building and buying links en masse are over, these days you need to earn your backlinks.

The most straightforward way to start is through link worthy quality content. This may not be the fun side of the business, but it’s the engine room.  So let us take a look at how to engineer your content to work for you.

1. Use Your Data to Create the Content

Start with obtaining your data.  All bloggers are authority orientated, focusing on research-backed content. So if you can put together valuable data, people will talk and link to it and link third-party sources for further link building advantages.

In a recent collaboration between Moz and Buzzsumo the study concluded that insights and data evidence equals the highest link sharing ratio.

Moreover, that’s what I just did, gave you useful information, but I had to link it back to the source of an actual study, not just my say-so as you don’t know me and therefore I have little credibility for you to just straight out believe me.

To get a high volume of backlinks from high-authority sites, studies using respect journalists work best.

You’re Backlink Profile

If you look to garner original research, the trend is this leads to increased traffic driving backlinks. So start from the standpoint of asking yourself is this share-worthy? Which moves us onto our second point.

2. Make your Headline Stand-out – Grab the Reader

What’s the secret behind grabbing a reader’s attention?

Age old marketing techniques and phrases come to mind:

It’s not what you say it’s how you say it. On almost every advert it’s the headline that grabs the interest.

If you have a case of writers block or in this case headliners block you can use free online analysers like Sharethrough to give you a helpful rating.

Keep spinning and trying different angles until it grabs you. Remember you need to create a reaction to engage the reader.

3. The 3 Elements

Content must have these 3 characteristics:

• Must be Unique,
• Must be Interesting and
• Must be Actionable

In this world of content marketing, you should always follow the 80/20 rule.

Now you’ve read through that you will question how and why that is a rule-of-thumb when there is so much poor content out there. More and more we search for trend, and one page 1 and 2 of Google find an article from 2012 or even older.

Answer: Because that is the most relevant content in your search for that topic. Period. If you make unique content, it attracts and stands the test of time.

Be sure to have an opinion, make it engaging, be fresh and provide subject matter; boring is NOT AN OPTION.

Personalise it, share an experience with people, and show them new data you’ve gathered. A useful tool is to make it actionable, tell your readers what to do and how to do it, your following will grow and likely be shared. 

4. Authoritative, Well-Sourced Content

Credibility is a powerful tool for link building and sharing. Provide authoritative sources for your claims and your credibility rises.  At the start your reader base has never heard of you so why should they take what you say as the truth.

Research, research, research, ensure your information is accurate and checkable, and soon you are the go-to author from a growing base of followers. 

The Next level

Outbound links help SEO out a lot. Link to other bloggers and sites, if they reciprocate, it’s a domino effect.  Notify people about it through your social media outlets, especially the companies mentioned in the article; you may even get it shared with their audience and a link back.

5. Ensure Your Content Isn’t Here Today and Gone Tomorrow

Who remembers the front page of the newspaper three days after it went to print unless it was global news? You’ve probably answered that in your mind already, exactly! Information can be shared but can lose priority quickly.

Make sure your content stays relevant.  What I am writing about currently is the engine room of how SEO works and will be for a lot longer than that headline in today’s newspaper.  This gives you the opportunity to link build over a more extended period. It is known as Evergreen Content.

Backlinks

If your content remains relevant, people will over time earn future backlinks through someone else writing or mentioning it in their content writing.

Let’s summarise

To drive backlinks here’s a quick summary of what to remember:

• Use your own original data
• Engage your reader
• Supply useful information
• Give advice – Have an opinion
• Write evergreen content about evergreen topics
• Backup your statistics and claims
• Write a head-turning headline

 

Sure this may be time-consuming, but if you get it right from the start, that one piece of work continues to generate you valuable backlinks and work for you for free for years to come.

Guest article written by: Sandy Bennington is an experienced tech blogger with an interest in business affairs, she loves eating out and is quite decent in the kitchen herself.  She is associated with SEO Company Kuwait who specialize in SEO and Digital Marketing Services in Kuwait.