How to Create Content that Keeps on Giving
Link building is an integral component of any content marketing strategy. And good link building takes strategy, too.
In a lot of ways, link building is a lot like investing.
The whole idea behind investing is to take something (in this case, money) and get it to work passively for you over time (and grow, ideally).
Good, effective link building should work the same way. You want your content to keep working for you over the long term, even after you’ve stopped actively promoting it. You want those backlinks to keep a-coming.
But if you are finding that the backlinking buzz dries up as soon as you stop promoting, then something is missing from your strategy. You don’t want your input-to-output to be a 1:1 ratio. You want your content to keep getting those backlinks on it’s own momentum, not just on yours.
“There’s no prize for hitting publish”
–Rand Fishkin, founder of MOZ
So how do you keep the link-love coming for the long term?
We wish we could say it was as easy as it was in the good ol’ internet days.
Once upon a time keywords ruled in the land of search engine algorithms, and content quality was of lesser concern than keyword quantity. But the Google of today is far more sophisticated and persnickety than its early incarnations. (If successful content marketing only required throwing some keywords on page and hitting publish, we’d all be out of a job.)
Today’s oversaturated landscape demands KILLER content.
But even that is not enough. Producing Nobel-worthy content doesn’t guarantee anyone will find it (and link to it) any more than showing up in Hollywood guarantees you’ll become a movie star.
In order for your content to stand out in the crowd and ultimately generate it’s own momentum, it has to serve a purpose. It has to serve as a starting point, a source in and of itself.
Remember writing that hair-pulling, torture-fest of a research paper in high school? The one where you had to have X number of primary sources and X number of secondary sources and you lost years off your life trying to navigate MLA or APA citations?
THAT’s what you want your content to be. A reference resource other writers, bloggers, pundits, and industry influencers can use and **ding ding** link to.
Image courtesy of Steve Rayson @Content Marketing Institute
And the good news is, you don’t have to have a PhD or a research lab or superpowers for your content to be trustworthy, valuable, and–most importantly–linkable.
What you do need is for your content to fill a specific informational need or content gap within your given vertical. Spend some time really exploring and analyzing the places and resources you look to for information about yours.
- Are there any questions you see popping up repeatedly? Are there adequate answers available?
- What sort of information do you WISH was out there?
- What problems are people encountering and/or what solutions seem to be missing?
- What could really stand to be updated, clarified, or improved?
With those questions in mind, think about how you, your business, and your content might step up.
There are also several types/categories of content that tend offer good, long-term staying power as far as backlinking is concerned–assuming of course the content is accurate, relevant, original and/or insightful.
- “What is” or “Beginner” content that answers common questions or simplifies complex/high level topics: i.e. 101, Beginner’s Guide to, How to____, ____ for Dummies.
- Curated resources – a.k.a “The Ultimate Guide to” and stats/facts collections, etc.
- Original research, new data, or industry trend reports
- Strong, authoritative political, editorial, and opinion posts
At the heart of it all, what you really need to do before creating a piece of content is to ask yourself: WHAT will this content do for my consumers and WHY would they link to it?
If you start building your content from there, you’re headed in the right direction.
Don’t get us wrong, you’ll still have to promote your content, especially in the short term. And link building is only one part of a comprehensive content marketing strategy. But backlinking is one of the most powerful amplification tools out there. It is evergreen and has a much bigger impact on search engine ranking than other forms of social sharing.
TheeHouston Agency is Here to Help
If you need a little (or a lot) of assistance creating a digital marketing strategy–content marketing, SEO, WooCommerce, responsive web design, you name it–TheeHouston.Agency is here to help. We consider ourselves masters at all things digital, so get in touch and let’s see what we can do for you and your business! Please call us at 281-764-9070 or click here to schedule a consultation with one of our web design experts.
