Content That Drives Links: Your Proven Formula to Success

Creating content that attracts links is art. We have a formula to make it work each time.

[This article was first published here: Linkable Assets: How to Create Successful Link Magnets + Promote Them on Reddit]

Links are still a driving force behind any SEO strategy because they build trust, encourage Google to visit your site again and again, and pass direct signals, like link equity.

However, getting people to link to your site is becoming more and more challenging for many reasons: 

• There are too many link requests being sent and received. There’s clearly email fatigue going on in this area.

• There’s too much great content being created on a daily basis. It is hard to create something impressive enough for others to want to link to it.

• Link-building manipulations (e.g. paying for links) are quickly becoming a waste of time and money. Google has clearly figured out which links are earned (so they pass all the positive signals to the linked URLs) and which ones should be ignored.

As a result, digital businesses are dealing with a clear dilemma here: There’s no ranking unless your site is linked to, and it is next to impossible to get links that move the needle.

Dealing with this dilemma, we have come to a proven formula that allows us to drive powerful editorial links to our clients’ sites consistently:

Understand your target audience

This content targets people who influence your target customers (through their sites or social media channels). In other words, your linkable content may not drive direct leads or customers to your site but it will attract the interest of your link amplifiers (reporters, bloggers, etc.). 

Changing this mindset will help you research your topics from a different angle. Instead of trying to answer your customers’ questions, you need to know who they are following or reading. These influencers are your target audience in this case. You need to know what triggers them.

• Which topics are they writing about?

• Which stories are they sharing on social media?

• What are they discussing on forums and Reddit?

Come up with a truly unique idea

Creating just another infographic or report won’t get you too far. You need to add something unique and interesting enough for people to link to.

In our case, these approaches usually work:

• Use existing data but come up with a unique story based on that. For example, instead of simply visualizing how much more expensive houses have become over the course of 5 years, visualize how much smaller they have become for the same income. In this case, you’d use publicly available data (technically anyone can do that). But what matters is that you’ve come up with a unique story no one else took the time to put together.

• Collect unique data you were able to collect from your customers, peers, or target audience: 

  • Surveying your existing customer base works great (this can also re-engage them and remind them of your brand which may lead to more sales). 

  • If you don’t have a big enough customer base, take the time to personally reach out to your industry peers (LinkedIn connections, bloggers, social media friends) and ask them to complete your survey (this may help you establish connections with niche influencers and drive some leads or partnerships). 

  • Finally, if your budget allows, you can create your audiences on Linkedin or Facebook and collect data through social media ads.

• Visualize your data in a unique way (we use this method in combination with either of the above methods).

Validate your idea using SEO data

Creating something awesome will likely drive you some links if you distribute your content well (see below), but don’t expect every content piece of yours to go viral. 5-10 links after a publication may be considered a solid win.

What you really need to achieve here is to rank this page in Google. This way your asset will be discoverable through organic search, that’s how it will keep driving editorial links long-term.

It’s no secret that journalists and bloggers use Google search all the time to find data and stories to reference in their articles.

So once you have your unique story idea, spend some time researching keywords to have an idea of how your link amplifiers may discover your content when searching Google.

In other words, you need a keyword with some search volume, and that keyword should reflect a clear informational intent. Reporters are likely to use words like:

• Stats

• Stories

• Report

• Data, etc.

Your goal is to rank your asset in the top 5 of organic search results. In our case, our infographics are also highly discoverable through:

• Image packs

• Image search

Because they are done well, they quickly attract attention through search. This is partly the reason why we are focusing on visualizations: Images have more discovery channels than PDFs or text.

As a quick example, here’s the difference between some of our infographics' performance after a month and then after a year of publication. Even in the least exciting niches (like industrial software), our linkable asset was able to organically generate 10 times more links than immediately after the initial promotion period:

Take a look at the second column: These are the links no one asked for. These links were coming on their thanks to strategic planning and execution.

Distribute your content with “links” in mind

Once you have your content written and packaged well, think about how you can help it get noticed by people who can send those links. Again, your immediate goal here is to send initial links to your work so that it starts ranking in Google.

From experience, the most effective channels are:

• Reddit (it’s pretty much the home page for people who are constantly using it for fresh content ideas, like professional journalists and full-time bloggers). Using Reddit to distribute your content is a form of art: You cannot quite use the same methods from subreddit to subreddit unless you want to be banned or moderated. You need to truly become part of those communities.

• Direct email outreach: This is a no-brainer. Most reporters keep their DMs open and email addresses public for this exact reason: They want people to send them ideas. 

Both of these channels require a lot of testing and fine-tuning. 

• You need to get to know how relevant subreddits work to make sure you are following all the rules. Listen a lot to get a feel of what may be well received and what may be frowned upon.

• You need to establish yourself in those subreddits and actually share meaningful contributions to become part of the community. No one likes new accounts that just share links.

• You need to identify the most effective ways of finding journalists and how to best approach them.

We have been creating and distributing linkable visual assets for about 10 years now, so we do know how much time and work it takes to establish processes that are effective and safe. This strategy is also not about scaling. It takes a lot of creative thinking and unique approaches for each project we create.

Rinse and repeat

Now, to the most important part: You need to publish and distribute linkable content on a regular basis. There’s no point in creating one asset and expecting your site to rank for everything you’ve ever dreamed of.

It’s all about consistency, just like with any other marketing tactic you are implementing. Google needs to see that your site is consistently coming up with something good enough for various people to link to it, discuss it, and share it. 

That’s the gradual accumulation of all the positive signals that make Google see you and your site as a topical authority worth surfacing for their users.