[Estimated read time: 9 minutes]
In a recent Whiteboard Friday about 10x content, Rand said to expect it to take 5 to 10 attempts before you’ll create a piece of content that’s a hit.
If you’ve been at the content marketing game for a while, you probably agree with Rand. Seasoned content marketers know you’re likely to see a percentage of content flops before you achieve a big win. Then, as you gain a sense for why some content fails and other content succeeds, you integrate what you’ve learned into your process. Gradually, you start batting fewer base hits and more home runs.
At Fractl, we regularly look back at campaign performance and refine our production and promotion processes based on what the data tells us. Are publishers rejecting a certain content format? Is there a connection between Domain Authority (DA) and the industry vertical we targeted? Do certain topics attract the most social shares? These are the types of questions we ask, and then we use the related data to create better content.
We recently dug through three years of content marketing campaigns and asked: What factors increase content’s ability to earn links? In this post, I’ll show you what we found.
Methodology
We analyzed campaign data from a sample of 345 Fractl campaigns that launched between 2013 and 2016. To compare linking performance, we set benchmarks based on the industry averages for links per campaign from our content marketing agency survey: High success (more than 100 placements), moderate success (20–100 placements), and low success (fewer than 20 placements).
We looked at the relationship between the number of placements and the content’s topic, visual assets, and formatting. "Placement" refers to any time a publisher wrote about the campaign. In terms of links, a placement could mean dofollow, cocitation, nofollow, or text attribution.
Which content elements can increase link earning potential?
The chart below highlights the largest differences between our high- and low-success campaigns.
We found the following characteristics were present in content that earned the most links:
- Highly emotional
- Broad appeal
- Comparison
- Pop culture-themed
The data confirmed our assumptions about why some content is better than others at attracting links, as all four of the above characteristics were present in some of our biggest hits. As an example, our Women in Video Games campaign checked all four of those boxes.
It paired a highly emotional topic (body image issues) with a strong visual contrast. It also included a pop culture theme that appealed to a niche audience (video game fans) while also resonating with a broader audience. To date, this campaign has amassed nearly 900 placements, including links from high-authority sites such as BuzzFeed, Huffington Post, MTV, and Vice Motherboard.
Read on for more takeaways on how to increase your content’s link-earning potential.
Content that evokes a strong emotional response is extremely effective at earning links.
Emotional impact was the greatest differentiator between our most successful campaigns and all other campaigns, with those that secured over 100 placements being 3 times more likely to feature a strong emotional hook than less successful campaigns.
Example: The Truth About Hotel Hygiene
Our Truth About Hotel Hygiene earned more than 700 placements thanks to a high "ick" factor, which gave it emotional resonance paired with universal interest (most people use hotels). We’ve also found including an element of surprise helps strengthen the content’s emotional impact. This study definitely surprised readers with a shocking finding: The nicest hotels had the most germs.
Example: Perceptions of Perfection
In our Perceptions of Perfection campaign, audiences were surprised to see drastically how designers altered a woman’s photo to fit their country’s standards of beauty. The surprise factor added an additional layer of emotionality to the already emotional topic of women’s body image issues, which helped this campaign get nearly 600 placements.
Choose content topics with wide appeal to increase potential for high-quality links.
So we’ve proven emotionally provocative content can attract a lot of links, but what about high-quality links? We found a correlation between high average domain authority and content topics with mass appeal. Broad topics appeal to a greater range of publishers, thus increasing the number of relevant high-authority sites your content can be placed on.
Some verticals may have an advantage when it comes to link quality too. Campaigns for our travel, entertainment, and retail clients tend to have a high average domain authority per placement since these verticals naturally lend themselves to content ideas with mass appeal.
Some examples of campaign topics with a DA-per-placement average above 55:
- Cities That Hate Tourist
- Most Googled Brands in Each State
- Data Breaches by State and Sector
- Airline Hygiene Exposed
- Deadliest Driving States
Pro tip: A site’s influence matters more than the type of link you’ll acquire from it. Don’t fear nofollow links; for two of our best-performing campaigns of all time, the initial links were nofollows from high-authority sites. A nofollow link on a high-authority site can lead to syndication on hundreds of other sites that will give dofollow links.
Use rankings and comparisons to fuel online discussion.
Contrast was a recurring theme in our high-performing campaigns, with strong contrasts achieved through visual or numerical comparisons. More than half of our highest-performing campaigns centered around a ranking or comparison, compared to just a third of our lowest-performing campaigns. Pitting two or more things against one another fuels discussion around the content, which can lead to more placements.
Example: Comparing Siri, Cortana, and Google Now
Comparing Cortana was a hands-on study for which participants gave a command to their virtual assistant and rated their satisfaction with the response. Comparing the three most widely used smartphone assistants attracted the attention of techies (especially Apple fans) as well as the broader public, since most people have one of these assistants on their smartphone.
Example: Airport Rankings
The Airport Rankings campaign looked at which airports offered the best and worst experiences, based on data including the volume of canceled flights, delays, and lost luggage. Local publishers loved this campaign; many focused on the story around how their regional airport fared in the rankings. Since most travelers have lived through at least one terrible airport experience, the content was extremely relatable too.
Pro tip: Side-by-side visualizations pack a high-contrast visual punch that helps drive linking and social shares. This type of contrasting imagery is extremely powerful visually since it’s easy to process. It helps evoke an immediate response that quickly engages viewers.
Incorporate a geographic angle to earn international or regional links.
Did you notice a majority of the broad-topic campaigns with a high domain authority listed above also had a geographic angle? In addition to broad appeal, geography-focused topics help attract interest from international and regional publishers, thus securing additional links.
Example: Most Popular Concert Drugs
The Most Popular Concert Drugs, one of our most successful campaigns to date with nearly 1,900 placements, examined the connection between music festivals and drug mentions on Instagram. Many global sites featured the story for its worldwide festivals, including publishers in the U.K., France, Italy, Australia, and Brazil. Had we limited our selection to U.S. festivals, it’s doubtful this campaign would have attracted as much attention.
Example: Most Instagrammed Locations
As with the example above, pairing a geographic angle with Instagram data proved to be a winning formula for the Most Instagrammed Locations campaign. We featured the most Instagrammed places in both the U.S. and Canada, which helped the campaign secure additional coverage from Canadian publishers.
Pro tip: To extend a campaign’s reach to the offline world, consider pitching relevant TV and radio stations with geo-themed content that offers new data; traditional news outlets seem to love these stories. We’ve had multiple geo-focused campaigns featured on national and local news stations simply because they saw the story getting covered by online media.
Include pop culture references to pique audience interest.
Our campaigns with more than 100 pickups were nearly twice as likely to incorporate a pop culture theme than our campaigns with fewer than 20 pickups. Content that ties in pop culture is primed for targeting a niche of dedicated fans who will want to share and discuss it like crazy, while it simultaneously resonates on a surface level for many people. Geek-culture themes, such as comic books and sci-fi movies, tend to attract a lot of attention thanks to rabid fan bases.
New School vs. Old School
Trending pop culture phenomena are best for making your content feel relevant to the current zeitgeist (think: a Walking Dead theme that appeals to fans of the show while also playing up the current cultural obsession with zombies).
On the other hand, old school pop culture references are effective for creating strong feelings of nostalgia (think: everything in BuzzFeed’s ’90s category). If your audience falls within a certain age bracket, consider what would be nostalgic to them. What did they grow up with, and how can you weave this into your content?
Example: Superhero Hideouts
Superhero Hideouts was a side-by-side visual comparison of fictional character lairs. To maximize the appeal to movie buffs and comic book fans, we featured 35 popular characters' hideouts — ranging from the Batcave to Hogwarts.
Example: Sitcom Cribs
Sitcom Cribs looked at the affordability of the living spaces on various TV shows — could the “Friends” characters really afford their trendy Manhattan digs? By featuring a lot of older TV shows, this campaign had a high nostalgia factor for audiences familiar with classic ’90s sitcoms. Including newer TV shows kept the campaign relevant to younger audiences too.
Pro tip: To increase the appeal, feature a range of pop culture icons as opposed to just one, such as a list of movies, musicians, or TV shows. This adds to the range of pop culture fans who will connect with the content, rather than limiting the potential audience to one fan base.
Earning high-quality links is just one benefit of creating content that incorporates high emotionality, contrast, broad appeal, or pop culture references. We’ve also found these characteristics present in our campaigns that perform well in terms of social sharing.
In particular, emotional resonance is a key ingredient, not only for earning links but also for getting your content widely shared. Our campaigns that received more than 20,000 social shares were 8 times more likely to include a strong emotional hook than campaigns that received fewer than 1,000 shares.
How can you ensure these elements are incorporated into your content, thus increasing its linking and sharing potential? In a previous post, I walk through exactly how we create campaigns like the examples I shared above. Check it out for a step-by-step guide to creating engaging, highly shareable content.
What observations have you made about your most successful content? I'd love to hear your thoughts on which content elements attract the most links and shares.
Very interesting post Kelsey. Pulling on those emotional strings certainly does engage readers.
What are your thoughts on the correlation between number of links and 10x content? Does the very best content, as Rand described, necessarily always result in a greater number of links than other content?
Or are there other measurements you think we can use to identify the most successful content we produce? Such as conversion rate, traffic, engagement rate, etc.
Also, does the advice regarding broad topicality and pop-culture references hold true with every targeted audience?
Hi Doug, thanks and great questions!
What are your thoughts on the correlation between number of links and 10x content? Does the very best content, as Rand described, necessarily always result in a greater number of links than other content?
There is probably a lot of awesome 10x content out there that has gone unnoticed and failed at attracted links. Unless you already have a massive audience, a strong promotion strategy is a must no matter how great the content is. Although even sites with huge audience rely heavily on promotion. Check out how many distribution channels BuzzFeed uses to get its content out there: https://blog.naytev.com/what-networks-does-buzzfeed...
Or are there other measurements you think we can use to identify the most successful content we produce? Such as conversion rate, traffic, engagement rate, etc.
Your success metrics will depend on your goals. For example, for our clients whose main goal is attracting high quality links, we look at the overall Domain Authority of all the placements we get them to gauge quality. Others want their campaigns to attract a lot of awareness, in which case we'd closely watch metrics that tell us a lot of people saw the campaign, such as the number of impressions and social shares. We're publishing a Fractl blog post about this next week, so be sure to keep an eye out for it #shamelessplug
Also, does the advice regarding broad topicality and pop-culture references hold true with every targeted audience?
If you want to get your content in front of a lot of people and attract links to it then, yes, broad topicality and pop culture references will help draw interest from a wide range of people. But your idea should still tie back to your brand or industry somehow. I outline how to come up with ideas that will appeal to a broad audience while also being relevant to your brand's industry here: https://moz.com/blog/want-a-viral-hit-here-is-an-inside-look-at-our-ideation-process
Hi Kelsey, some really interesting piece findings, and it was an enjoyable read, I especially like the Lara Croft post, nostalgia really does make a difference :)
What means of promotion did these pieces have?
Where would you say the links mostly came from, link building or were they more natural links from the content being found?
Thanks, Tim! Our promotions team does outreach to get our content placed on a handful of high-authority sites and from there it takes off from all of the syndication and visibility it gets through the popular sites. For example, the Perceptions of Perfection campaign was featured on BuzzFeed and Huffington Post on the same day, so from there a lot of other sites picked it up.
Wonderful piece Kelsey with well organized examples.
I really like the point emotional hook in case of earning links but unfortunately it is unpredictable to be sure. As content marketing is very vast so it is almost difficult to figure out the key factor. Well I think it could include many more other factors with emotional resonance to get shared and publicize by as many as.
It's very hard the hitting words for users while preparing content. Even one word may take attention of users, or make them go away. As you said, it you find correct words, they tend to share your link on their blogs/sites or social media. Thanks for the tips you giving.
Hi Kelsey, very insightful post indeed! IMO, posts such as Perception of Perfection and Truth about Hotel Hygiene will always pique audience's imagination since they cater to a wide range of audience segments. While invoking strong emotional responses is a great tactic to earn attention (and links/brand mentions), It may not always be possible for the content marketers to dedicate as much resources due to several reasons including budget constraints. More often, sometimes it can be extremely difficult to create interesting content around some niches that don't really have a mass appeal.
There is always a way to make content readable. Doesn't matter how bland the topic is. So don't get bogged down buddy, just keep giving it a go.
This should be in Favorites for everybody! Such a great post!!
Big and great post Kelsey!!
Yes, it's true: Content that evokes a strong emotional response is extremely effective at earning links. I think this is the most important "highly emotional", because finally, people we are emotions.
Many thanks!!
Kelsey, thanks for the great post -- there are a LOT of amazing ideas here.
I hate to risk beating a dead horse, but are these not all examples of great publicity campaigns? As people probably know by now, I fail to see the difference between "publicity" and these types of "content marketing." As I wrote in this guide to publicity campaigns on Moz, the process of brainstorming, executing, and analyzing the results of the two seem to be virtually the same thing.
Personally, I think if our two posts could be combined into a lengthy e-book, then people could learn a lot about creative campaigns that would earn them a lot of publicity (and all of the natural by-products of massive exposure such as links, traffic, and branding)! :)
Thanks, Samuel! I agree these are all examples of publicity campaigns. I think we just use different words to describe the same thing. :)
I think you'd be interested in these examples of our online campaigns that attracted offline PR: 7 Content Marketing Campaigns That Attracted TV Coverage We didn't lift a finger to attract the TV coverage, either...rather it was an awesome byproduct of creating online content that attracted a lot of attention. :)
And I like the sound of us potentially mashing up some of our past content. Stay tuned, Mozzers...
I agree these are all examples of publicity campaigns. I think we just use different words to describe the same thing.
Thank you! But since "publicity" came before "content marketing," cannot we all agree just to use the real term and learn about its best practices, which have been developed for 100 years?
The digital marketing world has gone from "off-page SEO" to "inbound marketing" to "content marketing" -- and now we're right back to "publicity." Which is what we should have been doing all along, albeit over digital channels rather than offline ones.
Love the process of highly engaging and sharable content from your company. I was on frac.tl a couple days ago after browsing through the moz list of recommend experts and found Frac.tl/ your case study on hotel hygiene exposed.
We love that style of content creation. You are an inspiration to content writers and content marketers nationwide.
Thanks so much, Brenan! Really means a lot to hear that, I passed along your awesome praise to our team. :)
Thanks Kelsey
Great piece of research, loved your content creation style. Really speaking your content has potential to inspire many content writers and content marketing professional’s , I started my career as content writer but turned out offle in terms of writing skills , so you can say I was content writer who wrote just for sake of writing content.
Had I been reading posts like here before, I would had been a good content writer and continued with it which in reality didn’t happen, thinking that I wasn’t good in content writing skills I moved on to SEO and now to PPC , but after reading posts over here I am feeling to start with content again (thou I have a blog but content is created by another content writers, I hardly write it).
Regards
Pulkit Thakur
I liked the precision and nicety in your post. thanks for sharing.
Very interesting article there.."Perceptions of perfection", perceptions change drastically in different geo locations.
Hi Kelsey :)
Great read. Very informative and I enjoyed reading it very much. Although I cannot help to think that this would be the perfect check-list for creating pure click-bait content too, which makes it even more difficult to create quality content in general.
Best,
I am loving the pop culture references in this article. The lines of what constitutes SEO is blurry. Would you consider the perezhilton.com creator to be an SEO expert? I would. He creates content that people link back to. If you are presenting yourself as an SEO expert what does that mean exactly? You may as well be Jonny the Clown who creates viral videos on youtube.
Terrific post Kelsey. Like others in the Moz community, I think the real world examples of digital marketing content are the best. It provides better depth and knowledge for users.
The examples are great and give credence to what you can do with great content which hits emotions and is promoted to the right people. Sounds like you have built a solid group of outreach partners which share content routinely. What do you recommend for:
1. building a solid outreach community on limited time
2. good pitches to outreach individuals which get the most attention?
I think many of us produce good content but the outreach is the hardest and most important part. I dont have the time to build the kind of relationship I'd like with individuals who will be influential in sharing the content and therefore when I reach out, it is difficult to get them to listen, let alone share or link.
Looking forward to your thoughts.
Hi Kelsey
We are emotional beings and as emotional beings we like emotional things. That easy. Therefore, a page with emotional content will always be more likely to get better links
Hi Kelsey,
Very nice stuff and thanks for detailed explanation. Now i definitely going to share this article with my content writer. Because he always miss important factors which are require to get an edge over other same posts. I hope this strategy work for me.
That was a really well explained post!
I personally think that to get more readers you have to dare, to tell a story, maybe a story that few people would tell but a lot would feel related to. In the end, a lot of people may be guided by reason, but in the last moment the emotions are the ones to decide.
Kind regards,
Thanks, very useful and to the point with great examples of of things to bear in mind. Will for sure make use of your suggestions, specially on emotional touch.
It seems from what you describe that more time should be paid probably to the thinking and design proces than to execution of the campaign.
This is fantastic in so many ways, and the biggest point is make a person react to your content trough emotion and you will get a quality links, but more so traffic to your campaign. Through your research I think many people can see how and what works in terms of getting your audience or other audiences to help drive your brand, topic, or cause. When a reader feels strongly about something from the search tool they use to a gender topic such as women in video games all the creator has to do is present it well and BOOM that 10X effectiveness will happen from what I gathered.
As most say data does not lie and this is a fantastic depection of that, so thank you for this wonderful contribution to the Moz community and I look forward to future articles.
Great post and brought a ton of great ideas to the top of my head. Thank you! Quick question--what tools, if any, did you use for your content analysis?
I wish I had a better answer, but...we manually reviewed every campaign to compile the data regarding which elements were present in the content (such as emotionality, pop culture, geography-focus, etc). It made for a time-consuming, but worthwhile, endeavor! We already had performance metrics gathered since this is done for each campaign.
Thanks for the reply and that helps a lot! Also, that does sound like it was a time consuming endevor--nice work on taking the time to do that!
In present times, we mostly write with the intention of getting as many likes as possible in support of it, without actually, truly, in reality writing something. Same goes for topics, we pick up, select for writing further on one. Posts, which have got the maximum number of likes or looks the most attractive visually, catches our or a writer's interest, attention. One starts writing on it, without even giving any second thoughts about it, while there may a lot of other good contents, which in the absence of likes or not being visually so impressive, remain just in oblivion.
Excellent study Kelsey.
I have a business blog. I had the crazy idea of making a right schemes to overcome more easily the subject by students and thus bring traffic to my website. In one day, the results confirmed Analitycs 500 different users me to download these diagram. I think I made the mistake that they were completely free and without entering a lead for download. But good has been a strategy that few companies do. An advisory legal issues notes distributed free to students is the easiest them over the memorization process. My achievement is that previously lacked visits.
Your examples have given me ideas for new strategies
Hi, Informative article, Facebook Instant Article will also gain some link to articles. what you guys think about the facebook instant article will it make any impact on Traffic of Blog page website
Hi Kelsey
Excellent studio !!!!
You know? I believe it. We are very emotional beings and in the end we will end up doing things driven by our emotional unconscious. Almost always the emotion trumps reason
Congratulations for the post !!
Great post. Our blog is still in its early stages at https://thenutritionalsource.com and can really dervice value from your high quality SEO content for content marketing. Thanks for your help!
I think the stories about people having more success that stories talk about things
Nice post! Thanks Kelsey!!!
This is brilliant, I hope to someday achieve something similar myself. Lots to learn first though!
Hi Kelsey, I wanna learn more about email marketing.
Thanks, great high quality post!
This was a great read. Thank you for sharing your findings. I am new to the blogging world and this has given me some solid direction.
www.thisstrangelife.com
Great Post short & high quality SEO content for content marketing.