Unless you are very new to SEO, you know that the most important ranking factor is having inbound links to your site. The more and the higher quality they are, the better chances you have to rank high. And the most efficient way to build high quality inbound links is to have great, exceptional, and remarkable content.
The really big question is how to create such content and what is a great content at all. Most webmasters think they are creating great content but the truth is their content is just average, or at the best case it’s just good. And this is not enough to attract real links.
Being sexy is link magnet too. Veronica Belmont is a good example.
Photo by Lan Bui
Here is the “secret” of the great content. It can be many more things than an article. But let’s start with articles – what kind of them are making a killer content:
Articles
Great content can be a long, well researched, well structured and visually appealing article. Such an article can’t be written for an hour or two – it can take days to plan, research, analyze, collect data and draw the conclusion. It’s like writing a paperwork for the University but it should be easy to read and appealing to the readers. Examples of such articles are many of the pages on Wikipedia (although some of them are too academic and boring). Such articles rarely make it on Digg-like sites, but they acquire quality links slowly over time. The good news is that writing such article does not require much talent or being a genius. It requires just hard work, research, good writing and editing. Being an expert in the field you are writing about helps a lot.
Great content can also be an insightful text that changes people’s lives. Such articles don’t necessarily include any statistical data or research – they are just a result of the author’s experience, erudition and original ideas. Examples of such articles are the best posts of Steve Pavlina or Zen Habits. The bad news is that you really need a talent to create such content.
Sometimes even articles that are not long and deep can be great content and attract links. Such genius little pieces are many of Seth Godin’s posts. Well, you need to be a genius to write like him all the time, but everyone can produce a genius piece once in a while.
Articles that are very funny or shocking can also make great content and attract lots of links but in most cases their success is limited in time compared to the others. This is the kind of content that makes it on Digg and other social bookmarking sites.
Finally, large and useful resource lists and checklists also often score as great content. The key here is that the lists must be really vast and complete, containing links to other resources, and be really useful. Some crappy “101 methods to make money online” in most cases doesn’t make great content unless you really present 101 doable, well explained, realistic and working methods. Here is an example of a great checklist that gained a lot of links and keeps doing it (regardless I disagree with some items).
Just don’t forget one thing when you are trying to build links with articles. They should be interesting to enough people that would eventually link to them. A research about the recent corncrake’s population in Florida maybe will not make it.
Collections and Resources
| Sometimes the great content isn’t intended directly for the end user. It can be some easily searchable/sortable or organized collection of data or resources on some topic that could help other webmasters, writers and so on to complete their work. For example years ago even publishing a HTML code for a drop down with all countries was a linkbait content. Nowadays you will need to work harder, but the idea remains the same – helping others to do their work by providing easy to use data. It may require some programming work and software or hardware resources but can be a very powerful tool for attracting links. |
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This type of content requires no genius, just a lot of research and hard work, and of course being able to pick what type of data exactly to organize and offer.
Images and Videos
Images can be very powerful for attracting links and often work even better than text. One of the reasons is that while almost everyone can produce decent text sitting at their desk, producing images requires either knowing to work with specific software or getting outside and taking good pictures.
Like articles, images can be great content in several ways:
Images that are original, amazingly beautiful, funny, shocking or exclusive can attract a lot of links by their own. Examples of this can be seen everywhere:
- Bloggers like Hugh Macleod and Punny Money attract a lot of links all the time with their funny fresh comix-like drawings
- Blogs and sites that publish celebrity snaps also make great content, regardless whether you and me like this.
- Being on the right place at the right time can lead to taking a newsworthy photo which also is a great linkbait.
- High quality photos like these on Cazurro make good content too.
Producing images like these requires at least a bit of a talent or journalistic flair. But there is another category of great visual content that everyone who is willing to work hard can produce. This is images that are informative, detailed, scientific, explanatory or instructive. It certainly requires some skills, but nowadays there is enough easy to use software that can help you do this. The harder part will be researching and analyzing the data, unless you are creative and can create something out of nothing. What exactly can be these images?
- Free or commercial plans for building various stuff. For example this site has over 16,000 house plans.
- Infographics. Infographics are great and not as hard to create as long as you can find and analyze interesting data. Here is how to create an impressive infographic.
- Visual guides. Visual guides that explain concepts which is hard to understand are killer content. See for example this great illustrated guide to Matt Cuts comments by Rand Fishkin.
- All kinds of schemes, diagrams and drawings that explain technical concepts or show step-by-step instructions.
- Videos. Nowadays a lot of people prefer to watch videos rather than to read. Producing video is not anymore that hard, you only need something which is worth recording. Instructables is a great example how to turn instructional videos into huge link magnets.
In addition to that videos can be used everywhere where images are used, sometimes even with better results.
Images as link bait often work even better when created as resources for other webmasters. Think about Flickr, how many inbound links it has? A quick search in Yahoo with the “linkdomain” command returns 273 million links. Nice, eh? Of course building a site like Flickr isn’t that easy, but you can enjoy a good amount of inbound links by providing:
- Niche image galleries with Creative Commons Attribution license
- Free vectors
- Free clipart
- High quality paid packages
There are two ways that such content attract links: first webmasters link to it because it’s a good resource. This will happen if your images are good, no matter free or not. Free tends to attract links, but great attracts more and higher quality links – even if it’s not free. The web is full of free stuff, but the great stuff remains scarce.
The second way to gain links is trough the CC “Attribution” License or other license that requires whoever uses your image to link back to the source. This works best with great and free content.
Tools
You probably don’t think about tools as form of content, but essentially they are. Great tools have the same power to attract links, direct traffic and achieve high search engine rankings like the other forms of great content. The key once again is to make tools that are really remarkable. If you build yet another moon phase calendar you will hardly attract links.
Here is what you need to aim for if you want to build a great tool:
- It should be useful. This is the most important criteria. Wordtracker is useful that’s why there are hundreds of thousands links to it. No matter it’s not free.
- It should be user friendly. The tools of 37 Signals are user friendly and attract links.
- It can be free. Being free helps a lot more with tools rather than content. The supply of free tools is much lower than the supply of free articles or free images. But your tool will not attract links just because it’s free. You either need a tool that is better than the other free tools doing similar work or you will need to offer for free something that everyone offers for a fee.
Tools, similar to images, can work also as “widgetbait”. If your tools are great and you allow other webmasters to use them, you can require attribution link showing you as the source. A while ago even stupid tools worked, but today you need to have something really valuable.
Product or Services
Maybe your products or service are not literally “content”, but they may work just like it for attracting links and ranking your site. If your product, service, or customer service is exceptional you will get links to it. It doesn’t need to be free. You don’t need any great articles, tools or images on your site. Think about this:
- If you are the best dentist in your neighborhood, your site will get links from social networks and personal blogs. No SEO work required!
- If you are selling the cheapest netbooks online, your site will get links from all over the world.
- If you are an amazing freelance writer, your site will get links from happy clients even if there is no content on it.
- If your shopping cart software is the easiest to use, your site will get links.
Of course having content, writing tutorials or offering free tools helps. But if you can offer remarkable service or product, focus on that rather than on writing your blog. Everyone can write blog. Not everyone can be the guru in your niche.
Content can have many different forms and shapes. Don’t write only articles. See what your top competitors are doing to rank better than you. Maybe they have better and more detailed instructional videos. Maybe their blog publishes the funniest articles. Maybe it’s just that their product stands out in a way that can’t be beaten. Or maybe they are giving a lot of free tools and getting quality inbound links for that. Well, they may also rank because of thousands of links from satellite sites, directories and gray-hat tactics 
Then usually you don’t need to worry, follow the “great content” path and you will outrank them soon.
And finally an important note: Often you may think you have produced a great piece of content (article, image, tool, whatever), but it’s only good. If this piece doesn’t attract any links, don’t cross this method over thinking it doesn’t work. Just try next time and make sure you beat your previous effort in quality.
Did I miss an important form of great content?
Yesterday the Wodrpress blog was far ahead for searching the phrase with quotes. Reminder: it’s the other blog that has the signature links! Both blogs never ranked in the first 20 pages for “building dog houses” without quotes.