How to Create Content That People Want to Link To

Good marketing content works hard for you: it draws in new customers and leads, earns coverage on other websites, and builds your reputation as a leader in your field. Link-building is still part of that picture. Quality links from respectable websites remain one of the strongest ways to raise your visibility in search, whatever anyone tells you about links no longer mattering.

People should want to link to your content

This actually isn’t as difficult as it sounds, you just need to give it some thought, especially when it comes to research and promotion. Here’s how you do it.

Aim for Best in Category status

To achieve this, you need to think like a toddler. If your biggest competitor has just published “Ten Unique Ways to Use Your Plushies”, you hit back with “12 Amazing Ways to Show Off Your Plushies”. See – not only are you offering more, but your ways are amazing and involve showing off, not just using them.

The highest clickthrough rates go to posts and articles with the most examples, the most images and which offer the best results. They don’t even have to be at the top of the page. They just offer more bang for the buck (or click).

It’s not all about the words, though…

Make the complicated easier

Although longform posts and articles are back in vogue because Google appreciates longer, well-crafted and more detailed content, your content doesn’t have to always be a thesis.

If it’s an article about starting an allotment then you’ll want lots of detail and images, but for something like baking the best brownies known to man, you don’t need so much info. Too much info will put readers off, especially if it takes longer to read about them than it does to bake (and eat) them.

However, some of your rivals will still be doing longform, so there’s an opportunity to write a concise guide on brownies that’s backed up with images and a video. Getting straight to the point is how you attract readers – and linkers.

You should look at your sector and ask yourself if it’s full of shorter articles that don’t offer enough detail, or whether it’s the other way around and then do the opposite. What you’re aiming for is to solve people’s problems and to stand out while you’re doing it.

Turn your work into reference content

Lots of journalists and bloggers use reference content in their own work. If they can signpost their readers to useful videos, articles and how-tos, then they look generous and helpful and they back up what they’re saying. If you can be used in this way by a journalist or decent blogger, then you’re on to a winner. Just make sure that your content has real facts, figures, examples, footage and data so that bloggers can back up their own content and opinions.

Reference content works best in grey areas, where there’s no definitive answer or where there’s definite “sides” you can be on. So, politics, parenting, animal welfare, dieting… Wherever there’s debate, dive in with your reference content. What’s more, reference content tends to be used for a lot longer than posts on amusing ways to flash your plushies.

Generate a bit of controversy

All publicity is good, so draw attention to yourself by being unique, contrarian or just downright zany. If your product is unusual, or you have an amazing backstory, flaunt it for all it’s worth because people love to link to new, unusual or controversial topics. Think about the dreaded clickbait and linkbait; these used to draw people in by being controversial, but now you must be able to back up this initial draw with genuine, interesting and informative content.

Just be careful that you don’t damage your identity and brand, though. People should come away feeling informed, empowered, amused, angry and ready for action or just warm and fuzzy. Not let-down, bored or revolted for no good reason.