Content creation has become very complicated over the years. It is no longer enough to churn out short, easy-to-write pieces. While such pieces can act as anchors for your keywords, they won’t bring in many links because they provide very little value.
If you want to get links, you need to create content pieces that are worthy of linking. This requires effort and planning, but it can help you gain recognition in the industry. This article provides a definitive guide to help you create stellar content for your link building campaign.
1. Understand Your Audience
Image Source – digi-me.com
Forget about gaining backlinks from high-authority websites and focus on your target audience for a moment. Most content creators become focused on link building and lose sight of the true purpose of the content, which is to provide value to the target audience.
Before you work on a link building strategy, take time to understand your audience. Look at your past website traffic statistics, social media engagement, industry research, etc., to get a good idea about your audience.
You can then create a target persona or audience profile based on the data collected. For example, a job search website might want to target young professionals and recent college graduates. Their ideal customer might be between the ages of 25 to 35 from a specific geographic location.
You can create a similar profile and create content that might appeal to these individuals.
2. Identify Vacuums in Information
Once you understand your audience, it is time to move on to the actual link building process. Most creators struggle with finding the right topics for their campaign. Fortunately, there are many ways to get topics that can help you create link-worthy content. These include:
- Exploring question and answer platforms like Quora for common questions and concerns. You can find topics by searching the platform with relevant keywords or browsing through subject tags.
- Reddit is also an excellent platform to find questions and concerns regarding your field. You can even understand different perspectives on these topics by browsing through the discussions.
- Look at comments and discussions on blog posts and social media. You will be able to find things people want to know more about and can create content based on that.
This will help you find the best topics for your campaign. Filling the vacuum will naturally attract more links from reliable websites and will also gain your social shares.
3. Focus on Original Content
Original content is the most link-worthy asset you can possess. Content creators and major publications are always on the hunt for new and current information. Original content requires some time and effort, but it will keep providing links for a long time. The tips mentioned here will help you create original content:
- Conduct surveys on social media and your website. You can also collaborate with other platforms that conduct surveys and refine data to get assistance on the matter.
- Analyze pure data from your website and industry. This will allow you to identify patterns and present your findings to an eager audience.
- Collaborate with other businesses in your industry and pool your resources. This will allow you to find more information and establish good ties with your competitors.
Original content that includes valuable research, statistics, and numbers will always attract links. It’s not uncommon for such pieces to attract links several years down the line as well.
4. Create Skyscraper Pieces
Skyscraper is the latest buzzword in the content marketing industry and for a good reason. This piece of content provides a lot of value to anyone who links it. Skyscraper content evolves constantly and assimilates new information on a regular basis. This means that the data it provides is always current.
This type of content does require some effort. You need to update it every time there’s new information, but it isn’t as difficult as it sounds. You won’t have to rewrite all of the content, just alter what needs to be altered.
Skyscraper content will provide more value than any form of content. That’s one of the reasons why experienced content creators don’t hesitate to spend some time on it.
5. Create a Beginner’s Resource
Beginner’s resource guides are evergreen pieces of content. They can help improve your reputation, cement your authority in the industry, and draw backlinks from a wide range of high-quality websites.
Beginner’s resource articles require you to pool all of your knowledge and experience into coherent order. This content should be detailed, thorough, and easy-to-follow. These pieces aren’t short or vague by any means. Some beginner’s guides can be 10,000 to 15,000 words long.
This SEO guide from Moz is an excellent example of such content. It is a comprehensive and well-organized guide for everyone who is new to SEO. While it was created in 2015, it is still relevant and probably gets a lot of backlinks today.
You don’t need to publish the entire guide immediately. You can build it up over time.
6. Infographics Always Win
Image Source – 699pic.com
Did you know infographics can increase website traffic by over 12%? They’re also more popular and three times more likely to be shared on social media.
Infographics are attractive because they enhance the user experience. They don’t need to wade through several thousand words to get the information they need. Readers can get the gist and take in the most important points without spending too much time on the content.
Infographics draw many backlinks because they often include facts and data. They also are easy to create content around. This means content creators can expand on points that are mentioned in the infographics or just mention a particular statistic.
If you don’t have any graphic design experience, you can always hire freelancers to create infographics from the information you provide. This won’t be expensive and will still provide good ROI.
These tips will help you create content that brings in a lot of traffic and good-quality links. A great content marketing campaign is about providing value. Make sure your pieces are informative, current, and contain more than 1,000 to 2,000 words for the best results.
Author Bio
Justin Kemp is working as a Jr. content writer and blogger with Ranking By SEO. He can be seen blogging about digital marketing, SEO, SMO, PPC, etc.
