Do your link building results look something like this?
- Start doing outreach
- Get links
- Stop doing outreach
- No more links
Everyone talks about the long-term benefits of using content marketing as part of a link building strategy. But without the right type of content, your experience may be that you stop earning links as soon as you stop doing outreach.
In this sense, you have to keep putting gas in the car for it to keep running (marketing “gas” = time, effort, and resources). But what if there was a way to fill up the car once, and that would give it enough momentum to run for months or even years?
An example of this is a salary negotiations survey we published last year on Harvard Business Review. The study was picked up by TechCrunch months after we had finished actively promoting it. We didn’t reach out to TechCrunch. Rather, this writer presumably stumbled upon our content while doing research for his article.
So what’s the key to long-term links? Content that acts as a source.
The goal is to create something that people will find and link to when they’re in need of sources to cite in content they are creating. Writers constantly seek out sources that will back up their claims, strengthen an argument, or provide further context for readers. If your content can serve as a citation, you can be in a good position to earn a lot of passive links.
Read on for information about which content types are most likely to satisfy people in need of sources and tips on how to execute these content types yourself.
Original research and new data
Content featuring new research can be extremely powerful for building authoritative links via a PR outreach strategy.
A lot of the content we create for our clients falls under this category, but not every single link that our client campaigns earn are directly a result of us doing outreach.
In many cases, a large number of links to our client research campaigns earn come from what we call syndication. This is what typically plays out when we get a client’s campaign featured on a popular, authoritative site (which is Site A in the following scenario):
- Send content pitch to Site A.
- Site A publishes article linking to content.
- Site B sees content featured on Site A. Site B publishes article linking to content.
- Site C sees content featured on Site A. Site C publishes article linking to content.
- And so on…
So, what does this have to do with long-term link earning? Once the content is strategically seeded on relevant sites using outreach and syndication, it is well-positioned to be found by other publishers.
Site A’s content functions as the perfect citation for these additional publishers because it’s the original source of the newsworthy information, establishing it as the authority and thus making it more likely to be linked to. (This is what happened in the TechCrunch example I shared above.)
Examples
In a recent Experts on the Wire podcast, guest Andy Crestodina talked about the “missing stat.” According to Andy, most industries have “commonly asserted, but rarely supported” statements. These “stats” are begging for someone to conduct research that will confirm or debunk them. (Side note: this particular podcast episode inspired this post – definitely worth a listen!)
To find examples of content that uncovers a missing stat in the wild, we can look right here on the Moz blog…
Confirming industry assumptions
When we did our native advertising versus content marketing study, we went into it with a hypothesis that many fellow marketers would agree with: Content marketing campaigns perform better than native advertising campaigns.
This was a missing stat; there hadn’t been any studies done proving or debunking this assumption. Furthermore, there wasn’t any publicly available data about the average number of links acquired for content marketing campaigns. This was a concrete data point a lot of marketers (including us!) wanted to know since it would serve as a performance benchmark.
As part of the study, we surveyed 30 content marketing agencies about how many links the average content marketing campaign earned, in addition to other questions related to pricing, client KPIs, and more.
After the research was published here on Moz, we did some promotion to get our data featured on Harvard Business Review, Inc, and Marketing Land. This data is still being linked to and shared today without us actively promoting it, such as this mention on SEMRush’s blog and this mention on the Scoop It blog (pictured below).
To date, it’s been featured on more than 80 root domains and earned dozens of co-citations. It’s worth noting that this has been about far more than acquiring high-quality links; this research has been extremely effective for driving new business to our agency, which it continues to do to this day.
Debunking industry assumptions
But research doesn’t always confirm presumptions. For example, Buzzsumo and Moz’s research collaboration examined a million online articles. A key finding of their research: There was no overall correlation between sharing and linking. This debunked a commonly held assumption among marketers that content that gets a lot of shares will earn a lot of links, and vice versa. To date, this post has received an impressive 403 links from 190 root domains (RDs) according to Open Site Explorer.
How to use this strategy
To find original research ideas, look at how many backlinks the top results have gotten for terms like:
- [Industry topic] report
- [Industry topic] study
- [Industry topic] research
Then, using the MozBar, evaluate what you see in the top SERPs:
- Have the top results gotten a sizable number of backlinks? (This tells you if this type of research has potential to attract links.)
- Is the top-ranking content outdated? Can you provide new information? (Try Rand’s tips on leveraging keywords + year.)
- Is there a subtopic you could explore?
Additionally, seeing what has already succeeded will allow you to determine two very important things: what can be updated and what can be improved upon. This is a great place to launch a brainstorm session for new data acquisition ideas.
Industry trend and benchmark reports
Sure, this content type overlaps with “New Research and Studies,” but it merits its own section because of its specificity and high potential.
If your vertical experiences significant change from one year, quarter, or month to the next, there may be an opportunity to create recurring reports that analyze the state of your industry. This is a great opportunity to engage all different kinds of brands within your industry while also showcasing your authority in the subject.
How?
People often like to take trends and add their own commentary as to why trends are occurring or how to make the most of a new, popular strategy. That means they’ll often link to your report to provide the context.
And there’s an added promotional benefit: Once you begin regularly publishing and promoting this type of content, your industry will anticipate future releases.
Examples
HubSpot’s State of Inbound report, which features survey data from thousands of HubSpot customers, has been published annually for the last eight years. To date, the URL that hosts the report has links from 495 RDs.
Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs have teamed up for the last seven years to release two annual content marketing benchmark reports. The most recent report on B2B content marketing has earned links from 130 RDs. To gather the data, CMI and MarketingProfs emailed a survey to a sample of marketers from their own email marketing lists as well as a few lists from partner companies.
In addition to static reports, you can take this a step further and create something dynamic that is continually updated, like Indeed’s Job Trends Search (171 RDs) which pulls from their internal job listing data.
How to use this strategy
Where can you find fresh industry data? Here are a few suggestions:
Survey your customers/clients
You have a whole pool of people who have been involved in your industry, so why not ask them some questions to learn more about their thoughts, needs, fears, and experiences?
Talking directly to customers and clients is a great way to cut through speculation and discover exactly what problems they’re facing and the solutions they’re seeking.
Survey your industry
There are most likely companies in your industry that aren’t direct competitors but have a wealth of insight to provide to the overall niche.
For example, we at Fractl surveyed 1,300 publishers because we wanted to learn more about what they were looking for in content pitches. This knowledge is valuable to any content marketers involved in content promotions (including ourselves!).
Ask yourself: What aspect of your industry might need some more clarification, and who can you reach out to for more information?
Use your internal company data
This is often the easiest and most effective option. You probably have a ton of interesting data based on your interactions with customers and clients that would benefit fellow professionals in your industry.
Think about these internal data sets you have and consider how you can break it down to reveal trends in your niche while also providing actionable insights to readers.
Curated resources
Research can be one of the most time-consuming aspects of creating content. If someone has pulled together a substantial amount of information on the topic in one place, it can save anyone else writing about it a lot of time.
If you’re willing to put in the work of digging up data and examples, curated resource content may be your key to evergreen link building. Let’s look at a few common applications of this style of content.
Examples
Collections of statistics and facts
Don’t have the means to conduct your own research? Combining insightful data points from credible sources into one massive resource is also effective for long-term link attraction, especially if you keep updating your list with fresh data.
HubSpot’s marketing statistics list has attracted links from 963 root domains. For someone looking for data points to cite, a list like this can be a gold mine. This comprehensive data collection features their original data plus data from external sources. It’s regularly updated with new data, and there’s even a call-to-action at the end of the list to submit new stats.
Your list doesn’t need to be as broad as the HubSpot example, which covers a wide range of marketing topics. A curated list around a more granular topic can work, too, such as this page filled with mobile email statistics (550 RDs).
Concrete examples
Good writers help readers visualize what they’re writing about. To do this, you need to show concrete evidence of abstract ideas. As my 7th grade English teacher used to tell us: show, don’t tell.
By grouping a bunch of relevant examples in a single resource, you can save someone a lot of time when they’re in need of examples to illustrate the points they make in their writing. I can write thousands of words about the idea of 10x content, but without showing examples of what it looks like in action, you’re probably going to have a hard time understanding it. Similarly, the bulk of time it took me to create this post was spent finding concrete examples of the types of content I refer to.
The resource below showcases 50 examples of responsive design. Simple in its execution, the content features screenshots of each responsive website and a descriptive paragraph or two. It’s earned links from 184 RDs.
Authority Nutrition’s list of 20 high-protein foods has links from 53 RDs. If I’m writing a nutrition article where I mention high-protein foods, linking to this page will save me from researching and listing out a handful of protein-rich foods.
How to use this strategy
The first step is to determine what kind of information would be valuable to have all in one place for other professionals in your industry to access.
Often times, it’s the same information that would be valuable for you.
Here are some ways to brainstorm:
- Explore your recent blog posts or other on-site content. What needed a lot of explaining? What topics did you wish you had more examples to link to? Take careful note of your own content needs while tackling your own work.
- Examine comments on other industry articles and resources. What are people asking for? This is a gold mine for the needs of potential customers. You can take a similar approach on Reddit and Quora.
- What works for other industries that you can apply to your own? Search for terms like the following to see what has been successful for other niches that you can apply to yours:
- [Industry topic] examples
- types of [industry topic]
- list of [Industry topic]
- [Industry topic] statistics OR stats
- [Industry topic] facts
No matter which way you choose to proceed, the time investment can help you garner many links down the line.
Beginner content
Every niche has a learning curve, with various words, concepts, and ideas being foreign to a beginner.
Content that teaches noobs the ins and outs of your vertical has long-term linking potential. This type of content is popular for citations because it saves the writer from explaining things in their own words. Instead, they can link to the expert’s explanation.
And the best part is you can tap your internal experts to provide great insights that can serve as the foundation for this type of content.
Examples
101 Content
Moz’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO is a master class in how comprehensive beginner-level content becomes a link magnet. Not only does the guide have backlinks from more than 1,700 RDs, it also edges out the home page as the most-trafficked page on the site, according to SEMrush.
“What is...?”
Beginner content need not be as massive and thorough as the Moz guide to be linkable. It can be as simple as defining an industry term or concept.
Moz’s meta description page, which has backlinks from 244 RDs, is a solid example of an authoritative yet simple answer to a “what is?” query.
Another example is the first result in Google for the query “what is the Paleo diet,” which has 731 links from 228 RDs. It’s not a 10,000-word academic paper about the paleo diet. Rather, it’s a concise answer to the question. This page has served as an excellent source for anyone writing about the Paleo diet within the last several years.
If a lot of adequate top-level, definition-style content already exists about topics related to your vertical, consider creating content around emerging terms and concepts that aren’t yet widely understood, but may soon be more mainstream.
The perfect example of this? Creating a definitive explanation about content marketing before the entire world knew what content marketing meant. Case in point: Content Marketing Institute’s “What is Content Marketing?” page has amassed an impressive from 12,462 links from 1,100 root domains.
How to use this strategy
Buzzsumo recently released a new tool called Bloomberry which scours forums including Reddit and Quora for questions being asked about a keyword. You can search by time period (ex. questions asked within the last 6 months, all-time results, etc.) and filter by source (ex. only see questions asked in Reddit).
Use Bloomberry to see what beginner questions are being asked about your keyword/topic. Keyword ideas include:
- [Industry topic] definition
- How does [industry topic] work
- [Industry topic] guide
- What is [industry topic]
After doing the search, ask yourself:
- What questions keep coming up?
- How are these common questions being answered?
Bloomberry is also useful for spotting research opportunities. Within the first few results for “SaaS” I found three potential research ideas.
Pro tip: Return to these threads and provide an answer plus link to your content once it’s published.
Yes, you still need to promote your content
Don’t mistake this post as a call to stop actively doing outreach and promotion to earn links. Content promotion should serve as the push that gives your content the momentum to continue earning links. After you put in the hard work of getting your content featured on reputable sites with sizable audiences, you have strong potential to organically attract more links. And the more links your content has, the easier it will be for writers and publishers in need of sources to find it.
What types of content do you think are best for earning citation links? I’d love to hear what’s worked for you – please share your experiences in the comments below.
Hiya Mozzers! Here are a few questions to kick things off in the comments:
Thanks for the great post Kerry! Much needed topic, for sure.
My favorite, long-time, continual link earner is iFixIt's Guides: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide - it helps people, it's succinct, it's easy to use, it loads fast, and it doesn't try to be fancy when pragmatic is what searchers need. As a result, it's continually earning links from places that talk about devices and products, and it ranks for a boatload of search terms, too.
Thanks for sharing, Rand! Love this example, and great point about pragmatic vs. fancy. I'm amazed at how little text is on that page overall.
Hello Kerry,
This is a well researched, beautifully written and very impressive blog, really loved it.
I agree with your idea of Quora & reddit. We should go to Question and Answer site (i.e - Quora.com), search the topic that want to write a blog on, get the answers given by so many experts there and then use their written examples, idea and tips into your blog.
Because, placing some of the most unique ideas, examples, thoughts and suggestions on a single place help to boost the content, no only once, but also more than twice. And there is no harm doing this, even you will help people. Just make sure don't copy their answers, just read some of the best answers, get those words into yourself, write down in your style.
Thank you !
I am love with this: "If your content can serve as a citation, you can be in a good position to earn a lot of passive links."
This article make consider the "marketing gas" is worthy if our content really can achieve that level. Besides, thanks for the introduction of Bloomberry, great tool with "real" example.
Bloomberry is great! I've only just begun diving into how it can be applied to content ideation, but have a good feeling it will become a tool I use regularly.
What a fantastic and timely (for me) article! I am in the process of completing link magnets for 2 of my clients. I had the concept down, but your article is so very practical. Thank you!
Glad this is helpful for what you're currently working on, Julie!
Hi Kerry,
Great article, thanks for sharing!
I have been pushing for fresh research for a while but it is hard to collect the data and make the time. Being in an agency, we often have the client supply us with their business data and we spin it into articles for them.
But we also often curate other reliable resources and it seems to have some good results. The more we read the better the output is (so that 10k academic paper on the paleo diet is a great place to start to get that concise answer). I think a strong curated article needs more than one source and serves to be a place where a user can get multiple sources summarized for them.
And to answer your second question – I believe content is a good source if it has original data (or sourced data) and clearly explains what it did to reach its conclusion. I also check for easy grammar issues since I think that shows how much time someone spends on something :)
Hi John-Paul, thanks for the insights. Love your point that the more you read about the topic, the better your output. Bad grammar can destroy credibility so quickly, I agree with you on that!
Hi Kerry, thank you so much for putting this article together.
I found it to be extremely insightful. Building valuable content is something I find to be the most difficult. You did a great job laying out a strategic process to craft valuable content and generate quality backlinks from it.
Have you found that specific types of content work best to generate backlinks? Research studies? Videos? Infographics? Etc.
Thanks
Extremely well researched piece on how to write great content that will continue to attract links even after the promotion period is over. I particularly liked the part of researching on websites like Quora and Reddit.
To take it one step further if you have sufficient expertise you can also answer questions on these website as an expert. It will enable you to get a closer look at what topics are very popular and what information your audience is eager to read.
I am currently answering questions on SEO and related topics in Quora and have already got over 35,000 views. This is helping me to get first hand information on popular topics and as an additional benefit I can also get traffic to my website by including RELEVANT LINKS wherever they are required to give additional information in the answer.
Impressive results from Quora, Joseph! Thanks for sharing. Answering questions on Quora is definitely one of those "I wish I had time to do" things (I think a lot of people feel this way) but after hearing your success I might pop over there and answer some marketing Q's...
Ditto Kerry! Yowser Joseph that's a considerable return from Quora. Welldone!
Thanks Brendon. But it involves a lot of time. Other benefits are if your answers are good enough and you reach the top 10 most viewed writer in the preceding 31 days for a particular topic you get a most viewed writer tag displayed. For example in Nov 2016 I managed to be the most viewed writer in On Page SEO, Meta Tags, SEO Services, SEO Companies and Google Webmaster tools.
These tags are good for publicity and also to show prospective clients that you have the requisite knowledge to do the job successfully.
Thank you for this article.
Someone ask me about linkbuilding in mobile-world.
We are running on a different URL for our website when it goes mobile (f.e. name .com to name .com/ mobile-index). Does we have to find individual links from other websites in mobile version with different URLs if we want to improve the mobile SERPs? Whats are the differences between linkbuilding in non-mobile version an in mobile version but with different URL (non responsive) when we talk about linkbuilding strategy?.
Thank you
I suggest you rethink the duplication of content on multiple subdomains (and the spreading of link juice in the bargain).
Hi Jose Ramon,
if things are set up properly, the inbound link juice will be accumulated, no matter if the inbound links are pointing to your mobile content or desktop content.
In your case it looks like we are talking about a dedicated mobile version without amp, so have a look at this article in the Google developer help:
https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile-si...
The cross-reference between desktop and mobile version will help Google to understand the relation between your desktop and mobile documents and you should be fine.
If you are using AMP, it is slightly different but still as easy (see for reference: https://www.ampproject.org/docs/get_started/create...)
Hope this helps!
Chris
Great content. Now I am trying to develop the best strategy for local businesses and small webpages or blog. A good starting point would be such a relavant survey or investigacion, maybe good enough to be on the local media?
Thank you very much.
Fabulous Post, Kerry Jones.
As we all Know "Content is King" for any website, especially who are doing SEO for any website.
For writing unique content, we should read some important blogs website, daily updates from the related news.
Can you tell me which blogger is good to read as per today to write content?
Thanks.
For the last whole time, earning links seems impossible to me because they didn't share my content, they just get our products and share it for FREE and this is so frustrating.
Dear Kerry! I'm so sad... more and more I try I don't get more about SEO. I think I'm doing something wrong. It's sooo difficult for me to earn links... I'll try this method you've posted
Earning natural links is not an easy task, just make extraordinary piece of content and start sharing it.
Love this, Kerry!
The success of the SuperOffice blog (1 million+ readers per year). is entirely based on "the missing stat" strategy. Search for any stats in relation to CRM, customer service and customer experience and the SuperOffice blog ranks highly. Not only does the content generate insane amounts of traffic, but it continues to earn links way after publish date.
Thanks, Steven! Just had a peek at the SuperOffice blog and loving what I see. Bookmarking to use some of your studies as examples in the future.
Also... I'm really digging this simple ROI calculator: https://www.superoffice.com/crm/calculator/
Super! Thanks Kerry.
Hi Kerry,
Great article!
re: "...what makes a piece of content a good source?"
For me personally, if I'm writing a blog post referencing ideas put forward in someone's content online, I have to be able to qualify their content. I've come across many poorly researched and rarely or ineffectively referenced claims on fairly respectable SEO sites.
Without links to verifiable source material in an article, I can't in good conscience base my writing on the article. It does a disservice to readers, and in some instances perpetuates myths resulting from inadequate research practices in the original content.
Your article was a breath of fresh air in that regard!
And thanks also for providing some interesting ideas for brainstorming content material.
Brian
"It does a disservice to readers, and in some instances perpetuates myths resulting from inadequate research practices in the original content." <-- So true in many industries, which is why the "missing stat" can be useful for way more than just attracting links. Can put an end to falsehoods spread within an industry.
Its a very informative and useful article for me as it described me how to create content that keeps on earning links and increase the visibility over search engine.
Great article Kerry. It seems as though people don't want to hear these link bait content strategies, for they require some additional work.
Often times they fail to produce the expected results, especially in certain verticals, so I guess webmasters try once, fail to execute on outreach, and then proclaim this strategy as not effective enough.
I've tried few times with creating resources using stats and graphs (invested in some design as well) for a niche website of mine, but it failed to deliver.
Another approach that works better for me, especially in the "How to", health, fitness and wellness department, is creating large resources on solving a certain issue, using multimedia content.
For example, our guide on how to lose belly fat exceeds 4500 words, including 3 full length video workouts (original content), plus 10 recipes with original pictures. It is multimedia, packing few resources into one page, solving a very specific issue.
Sweeten this with a downloadable calendar, checkbox, or a pdf. resource, and you have a very legit-looking link bait piece of content.
I liked this part:
It seams to be easy and clear)
Hi Kerry,
I've been trying (and mistaking in) different kinds of content to see which one was more effective. In the end, I think that the one that engages better is like: 10 things you can do... why would you use...?
When you try to solve someone's problem it's always going to get more attention. For example, if i write SOME OF THE BEST BEACHES FROM MALLORCA, I won't get as much attention as 5 TOP BEACHES TO DISCOVER IN MALLORCA.
With all of this I'm just trying to explain that I totally agree with you. If a post is really helpful or interesting, even when not promoted it will still be linked.
Have a lovely day.
Thank you Kerry for this type of interesting and important content. Unique content & Value of your content will help to get more social shares, back-links and value in you. But you also have to write your valuabe content in a way so everyone can understand.
Excellent article. We recently published a case study on 1.38 million Facebook posts and it did really well without much outreach, here is the link if you wish to check it out.
It is still getting one or two links a day plus we added the link in reddit where it got up-voted to over 90 votes and getting a lot of referral traffic so I am absolutely with you on this one. Any statistical data is a continued source of links.
Hi Kerry,
An interesting, complete and well researched article :)
I used to use Quora or Reddit to explore ideas from different niche markets and I had nice results in niche markets like Marketing or SEO using both websites. When we need new ideas to write articles, they are a highly effective. However, the most difficult part is provide useful information to readers to work the user's response correctly, since on the Internet not all the information is good and sometimes we can find for example, spam articles.
Congratulations for this amazing article!
Some excellent ideas in here, thanks Kerry. I like the idea of a short authoritative article that provides a concise definition and becomes a "go to" definition. Definitely food for thought there.
Certainly a thought provoking article, Kerry. Well done!
Thanks for this topics to know us on the moz blog section. This is very helpful for us. I want to follow this tactics. But I have a question. That is I want to sell amazon affiliate product to earn affiliate commission. I select the health related products. as I work health job and know about health needs for people. I have created a blog on blogspot named "Save Health" . please tell me the solusion.
Great article Kerry,
I've incorporated some of these strategies in my content creation, but you've introduced me to ones I haven't thought of. I'm definitely going to try Bloomberry.
You deserve all appreciation for writing such a detailed and in-depth article. More importantly, explaining everything in such a systematic and simple way is not a very easy thing.
I am really amazed to see that an article about list of 20 high protein foods can get links from 53 domains.
I also really like two of the tools you mentioned, Buzzsumo and Mozbar. They are quite simple, but do their job well.
Even after reading this article, i have to admit that creating an epic link-generating article is not very simple.
It really needs lot of brainstorming sessions , hardwork and patience.
I appreciate these content suggestions. Worth the time to invest and build something that will last and help others.
I am content writer in seo .My doubt is that Is content is that much important in seo ? How can i earn through content ?? I m not getting ??? can you please explain in an easier way ?