Youve probably heard that to rank in Google “you need to publish high-quality contentâ€. And while this is true, its also super hard to take action on.
(After all, what does “high-quality content†actually mean?)
So yeah, you DO want to publish awesome stuff on your site.
But it needs to be the type of high-quality content that people share on social media… and link to.
Thats because, as you might already know, Googles algorithm is largely based on backlinks.
The more backlinks your site has, the higher youll rank.
And the best way to build backlinks to your site?
Publish content that people will actually link to.
(Also known as “link baitâ€.)
Here are a few ways to increase the odds that people link to your content.
Become a Data Source
In other words:
Publish something that other people can cite in their blog content.
For example, in 2019. we partnered with Pitchbox for this huge email outreach study.
This post was packed with data, stats and figures. Which is the type of thing that bloggers and journalists LOVE to link to.
For example, one of our findings was that less than 10% of all outreach emails receive a response.
And bloggers and journalists quickly started to cite that stat as evidence that most outreach fails.
Focus on Long-Form Content
I talked a little bit about longer content back in step #1.
Well, as it turns out, longer content is ALSO great for getting links.
While theres no “perfect†word count for blog posts, content thats 3k+ words tends to do best when it comes to link building.
Publish Visual Content
Im talking about stuff like:
- Infographics
- Maps
- Charts
- Flowcharts
- Videos
Visual content is GREAT for getting links.
For example, a while back we published this infographic on our blog.
Yup, we had to do a lot of email outreach to get the word out.
But when we got this infographic in front of the right people, they were happy to embed it on their blog.