Linking Strategies Marketing Writing/Content

Creating Linkbait Content

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There was a time when people mainly consumed the information the internet provided them. Then came web 2.0, letting common folks create and consume content easily (over time) from their computers. 

And now, there’s so much content that it’s rather difficult to get your content ranked high and get people to notice it. 

If you have been in the SEO game for a while you probably know that backlinks are the key to ranking your posts. But often times, getting enough links is so darn hard that we simply avoid link-building.

The good news is – there is a solution!

You can create content that gets backlinks while you sleep.

Simple, huh?

Well, it’s almost that simple. 

The best part is, in this post, you will find a guide on how to create content that gets links (also-known-as linkbait content) and get your content noticed.

In simple terms linkbait content is the kind of content that gets you loads and loads of backlinks. 

Content that “good” is simple to imagine but, a bit harder to do.

So, keep on reading! We cover the ins and outs of linkbait content down below.

What is linkbait content?

Content is vastly diverse in terms of length, industry, medium, type, and so on. But, based on  quick research, linkbait content can be essentially classified into four categories:

1. Controversial news or entertainment

“First manned mission to Mars”, “Pope visiting a country for the first time” are some good examples. This type of news/content is general and attracts a very large audience. And what attracts a large audience also attracts a lot of websites to link to your content.

This content gets plenty of social media shares too which boosts the popularity of your content and even your website as a whole.

2. How-to guides and tutorials

There’s always someone looking for help with doing something. Sometimes, people are also looking for ways to improve what they already know how to do.

You can create something helpful; something that provides value to your visitors. For example, “Top 10 Facebook marketing strategies”, “How to get optimal performance out of an old -phone?”, “Setting up a DIY drone” is the kind of content you’d be creating.

3. Qualitative or quantitative research

Another great way to provide value to your prospects/customers is to conduct time-worthy and trustworthy research (by taking after a few very good examples). This will definitely build/improve your credibility and, as a result, fetch you more backlinks than you can imagine. For example, a study on successful email campaigns is very useful to many marketers and will get many backlinks.

If you can’t create your own research study, then you can at least link to, and cite, credible studies and researches.

4. Free stuff and tools

This is a no-brainer. Who doesn’t love free stuff, right? This is especially true when it’s topical for your audience and helps them with understanding you and your product/service better. If you’re not “big” enough to create your own app/tool to offer, you can look for great, new, free/paid tools and work with them.

How to find Linkbait content?

Creating linkbait content is quite tedious. However, it can be simplified into three steps:

  1. Choosing the type of linkbait content
  2. Choosing a good topic
  3. Creating the linkbait content

An easy and simple way is to do a Google search for a few topics you have in mind. Look through the results to get an idea of what kind of content is preferred by Google/people. By doing this, you are putting yourself in their shoes and gaining a new perspective.

To be more thorough you may need to use a keyword research tool to fix on a topic that could work for you. Of course, to get better insights, you have to pay more. But, if you expect big returns, then you have to spend a few bucks on these essentials.

Based on experience, there’s a remote yet distinct possibility that the hundreds of hours you put into this could be in vain. To lessen the chances of such, follow these three steps:

1. Compare with your competitor’s topic

To do this you can use a backlink research tool such as Linkody. 

Go through competitor top pages and pages similar to your topic idea to see if/how much success they’ve had with that particular niche. 

To get a clearer picture, check out more than one competitor. If they don’t have content related to your topic idea or if they appear to have had success (based on number of backlinks) with topics similar to yours, then you are good to go. 

However, if your competitors seem to have little/no success with similar topics, then look at their top pages to get inspiration for a new better topic.

2. See if you can create good/better content

Whatever topic you select, try to create an article at least twice as good as your top competitors on this topic.

Traversing through a pile of similar/replicated content is as fruitless and tiring to the user as it is to the content creator when their ROI isn’t looking up. So, if you’re selecting a topic similar to something on your competitor’s top pages, then as a rule of thumb, make sure you can create content that’s at least two times better.

If you cannot – pick another topic.

3. Do keyword research

As noted earlier, keyword research is highly recommended for assured success. You can find similar niches and ventures to what you had in mind. A tool like Ubesuggest 2.0. shows metrics such as monthly search volume and keyword difficulty.

How to create Linkbait content?

After all that planning and preparation, you can go on to creating your brilliant content masterpiece.

The following is not a list of commandments, but it is a good framework to base your work on. 

  1. Gather 3-8 content pieces similar to the content you have in mind
  2. Include the best parts and/or condensed parts of those in your content
  3. Add/cite images, case studies, research data that the other posts are missing
  4. Add a little bit of your own knowledge and experience

How to get your Linkbait content off the ground?

Even though it’s really linkbait content, you have to rub it a few times to see the magic happen. By rubbing, I mean getting a few backlinks manually.

For this, you’d go back to a backlink monitoring tool such as Linkody and fetch a few backlinks for similar topics.

  1. Compile a list of link sources you’d like to contact
  2. Send an email outreach to those sources

If you’ve followed the steps correctly so far, then you should have some success in getting backlinks.

To put it in perspective for you, this is how many backlinks you’d need:

Keyword Difficulty Number of backlinks needed

0-20

0

20-30

1-3

30-40

3-10

40-50

10-20

50+

35 and more

In Conclusion

Linkbait is content that gains backlinks from many sources automatically. It does require some groundwork after which it soars high like an admiral flag.

There are basically just three steps to linkbait content success:

  1. Choose the type of linkbait content
    1. Controversial news or entertainment
    2. How-to guides & tutorials
    3. Research and case studies
    4. Free stuff & tools
  1. Choose a topic
    1. Compare your formulated topic with your competitors’
    2. See if you can really improve on it if it’s a similar topic
    3. Do keyword research
  1. Create your content
    1. Create new content with information/data collected from similar content
    2. Reach out to get the first few backlinks

And you’re all set; go get ‘em!

About the author

avatar

Helvijs Smoteks

Helvijs is an SEO-mastering, content-smithing marketer who spends his days at Linkody helping SEOs monitor their backlink data.