The sustainable path? Creating a content marketing machine that naturally earns those coveted inbound links over time through exceptional audience experiences, including crafting valuable blog posts designed as linkable assets to attract backlinks.
How do you do it? That’s the purpose of this guide, which has everything you need to know about building backlinks through content marketing.
Producing high-quality, link-worthy content assets
Before worrying about building backlinks, the first step is creating amazing content worthy of garnering those links in the first place. All you need to do is tap into your expertise to develop assets that provide unique value to your audience. Easy, right? Well, not quite, but it doesn't change the fact that building quality backlinks through top-notch content is, like, really important for establishing prominence, trust and relevance for your website.
And while it's not easy, it can be done. Here are some proven formulas for developing link-worthy content:
Original research and data-driven insights
Few things are as authoritative and citable as original research and data analyses. Conducting surveys, studies, experiments or mining existing datasets means you can unearth fresh insights that other publishers will reference. Industry benchmarks, market analysis reports, original case studies and statistic-backed trends are prime examples of linkable assets.
For example, HubSpot's annual State of Marketing Report analyses survey data from over 1,000 marketers to uncover emerging trends, challenges and priorities in the industry. This original research full of proprietary data and statistics gets cited by publications, bloggers and other brands routinely.
Comprehensive guides and resource hubs
Become the go-to source for definitive knowledge on topics core to your business by publishing extensive guides, tutorials, and “ultimate” resources. When crafted with quality visuals, formatting and supplementary tools, such as interactive charts, downloadable templates and embedded videos, these pieces establish your brand as an authority worthy of inbound links. Comprehensive guides can also be featured on a resource page to attract backlinks.
Moz’s famous “Beginner’s Guide to SEO“ is a free, expansive resource covering everything from how search engines work to technical optimisation and link building strategies. At over 190,000 words and packed with visuals, tools and expert insights, it’s frequently linked to by publishers as the authoritative SEO guide.
Uniquely valuable tools and calculators
While guides educate, interactive tools and calculators provide direct utility that keeps users engaged with your content for longer. A creative business loan calculator, carbon footprint analyser or return on investment (ROI) modelling tool could secure backlinks by addressing relevant audience pain points innovatively.
Newsjack with timely, trending content
Use your industry expertise and perspective by piggybacking on trending news, events, cultural moments and "newsjacking" opportunities. Provide insightful commentary, unique data points, or related resources around hot topics for a surge of interest and linking potential.
Making sure content has maximum visibility and shareability
Of course, the most exceptional content holds limited backlink value if your target publishers can’t easily discover it in the first place. That’s why enhancing your assets for search engine visibility and social shareability is an all-important investment. Earning backlinks from other websites helps, as these backlinks act as votes of confidence and can significantly boost your search rankings.
On the technical SEO front, make sure your content checks all the boxes for on-page elements like:
- Targeting relevant keywords with high search volumes
- Using descriptive, click-worthy title tags and meta descriptions
- Incorporating keywords naturally throughout headers and body copy
- Optimising load speed, image tags, internal linking and other factors
Additionally, enrich your content’s shareability and viral momentum by:
- Promoting it across owned social channels and online communities
- Collaborating with influencers for initial amplification
- Incorporating tweetable quotes, embedded social sharing tools and click-to-tweet links
- Using striking, branded visuals built for high engagement on visual platforms
By increasing your content’s visibility and ease of sharing, you maximise its potential to attract backlink opportunities organically.
Forging relationships and conducting outreach
Now, this is what most people associate backlinks with—form a partnership or do a bit of PR and get a reputable source to link back to your content. In an ideal world, this is perfect. But it’s far from easy.
The truth is that strategic relationship-building and outreach are often required to secure many high-quality inbound links proactively. Outreach is a crucial link building tactic for acquiring backlinks. How do you do it though?
Some proven tactics for identifying and connecting with relevant publishers include:
Guest posting and contributing content
One of the most direct paths is guest posting. This involves reaching out to the site owner to contribute free, value-packed content to authoritative industry publications and blogs. Not only do these placements instantly put your expertise in front of new audiences, but they typically include an inbound link back to your own website or content assets as an author bio.
When done thoughtfully and at scale, guest posting represents a reliable backlink source. Just be sure to vet the publication’s relevance, authority, and audience alignment first.
Skyscraper technique and content migrations
Here is an advanced strategy involving finding a piece of content that has already attracted numerous quality backlinks, then creating a more comprehensive, robust version of that asset —essentially outperforming the original "skyscraper" piece.
From there, you can conduct outreach to sites linking to the original, pointing out your new superior alternative as a better reference for their audiences. If successful, those existing backlinks get redirected or "moved" over to your definitive skyscraper content.
Broken link building and fixing broken links
Broken links on a web page are a nuisance for website visitors and a red flag for search engines. But for creative content marketers, they represent linking opportunities in disguise.
By using tools to detect broken links on authoritative sites, you can identify the dead pages’ original sources or contexts. Then conduct outreach offering your relevant content as an up-to-date replacement resource. Many publishers will happily repair those broken links by attributing your asset.
Exploiting unlinked brand mentions
It's likely that your company, products, digital assets/.lokl;’ and other owned properties already have unlinked mentions sprinkled across the web. Through persistent brand monitoring and manual curation, you can discover these existing references then politely request that publishers add a functional link back to the appropriate destination.
While laborious, this practice of "link reclamation" can quickly boost your inbound link count from quality sources over time.
Content syndication, slide decks and downloadable assets
Creating downloadable versions of valuable content like whitepapers, ebooks, slide deck presentations or data-driven reports provides another avenue for earning backlinks. When relevant industry sites reference your insights or quote your original data within their own content, they’ll often link back to your hosted asset’s URL as the cited source. Additionally, these downloadable assets can be featured on resource pages to attract backlinks.
Publishing downloadable content across third-party syndication networks further amplifies its reach and syndication partner link-building opportunities.
Of course, any scalable link-building outreach requires persistence, personalisation at volume and stringent lead scoring and prioritisation. The right tools and processes are essential to manage these campaigns efficiently without compromising quality or risking spam penalties.
What might this approach look like in action?
Let's say an HR software company wants to attract more backlinks to improve its SEO. It could create a comprehensive annual report on "employee engagement and retention trends" packed with original data and insights from surveying thousands of workers and HR professionals.
Once the report is produced as a visually-appealing PDF, the company would host it on a prominent page of their website, making it available as a free downloadable asset for anyone to access.
Then, its team pursue a few key promotional avenues:
- Conduct outreach to respected HR publications, online journals, trade magazines and blogs alerting them about the new research report. Provide sneak peeks at some of the most compelling data points. When those sites want to cover the findings, they'll link back to the HR company’s website to access and cite the full report.
- Work with third-party content syndication partners like industry resource libraries, research hubs and publications that re-publish and host contributed content. By uploading the report PDF to those syndication channels, the asset is exposed to new audiences where other sites may discover and link to it.
- Post about the report release across the company’s online channels like its blog, email lists and social media accounts. Make the PDF easily downloadable and shareable. As followers engage with and share the asset, it creates more chances for backlink acquisition.
Continuously producing high-quality, downloadable content assets like comprehensive research reports and promoting them strategically allows the company to reliably build a stream of earned backlinks from relevant, authoritative websites referencing their original data over time.
Keeping a pulse on backlink progress, quality and evolution
Simply launching content assets and forgetting about them is a surefire way to let valuable backlink potential go to waste. Instead, the best marketers keep a watchful eye on their backlink portfolios using modern tools and analytics capabilities. Additionally, avoid acquiring spammy backlinks from untrustworthy sources as they can lead to penalties and negatively impact your SEO efforts.
Comprehensive backlink monitoring allows you to:
- Track your content’s overall external link counts
- Evaluate the quality and relevance of each linking domain
- Surface new quality link acquisition opportunities to pursue
- Identify and disavow toxic, spammy links to preserve search presence
- Measure backlink influence on organic traffic, leads, and revenue
- Benchmark your backlink profile’s growth compared to competitors
The top SEO platforms like Ahrefs, Semrush, and Moz provide backlink monitoring suited for all skill levels. They’ll quickly become your team’s go-to resource for strategic backlink analysis and identifying areas for improvement.
As your content marketing reaches maturity, this granular backlink intelligence lets you make data-backed decisions around:
- Which content topics, types and promotion channels yield the best backlink ROI
- How to prioritise future content investments based on proven link value
- When to implement advanced tactics like the skyscraper technique
- Where you may have backlink gaps or opportunities compared to competitors
Ultimately, integrating backlink reporting into your measurement plan allows you to extract maximum SEO value and continuously refine your content strategy’s overall impact based on real results.
Looking ahead: prioritise content evolution in 2024 and beyond
Much like the rest of the digital marketing landscape, content creation and backlink-building best practices won’t remain static. Emerging trends like AI-assisted content workflows, short-form video’s continued rise and audience demand for immersive experiences are already shaping the future. High quality backlinks will also play a crucial role in future SEO success, as they demonstrate authority and are essential for improving website rankings.
To stay ahead of the curve and make sure your backlink acquisition engine remains well-oiled, embrace these innovative approaches:
AI augmentation and content personalisation at scale
While AI-generated content has its drawbacks when published verbatim, these language models excel as force multipliers for skilled human teams. Leverage them for quick content ideation, outline creation, smart writing enhancements and producing infinite personalised asset variations at scale. Additionally, AI can help build backlinks through personalized content that appeals to specific website owners and audiences.
Diversify content formats for omnichannel experiences
Text and visual assets are no longer enough to captivate audiences and earn links consistently. Interactive content types like audio experiences, virtual and augmented reality, and immersive multimedia stories represent the next horizon. An omnichannel content infrastructure will be expected.
Short-form video content will continue commanding attention
Short-form video content's influence and audience engagement show no signs of peaking soon. Mastering bite-sized formats like TikTok clips, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and beyond will be essential for brands coveting backlink growth—both directly and through heightened visibility.
Focus on building audiences, not just content
Thanks to innovations in the creator economy, it will no longer be enough to create great content alone. Cultivating direct connections with engaged fan bases, whether through membership programs, subscription models, ambassador networks or other means, will supercharge content's shareability and linking potential.
Ultimately, the brands that flourish at building backlinks through content marketing will avoid complacency at all costs. Pair relentless high-quality publishing with calculated experimentation as consumer behaviours, search algorithms, and best practices continually shift.
Summing up: Links
Building an authoritative backlink profile is a cornerstone of organic growth, but it requires a delicate balancing act fueled by strategic content marketing and genuine audience value. Commit to consistently creating exceptional content assets that educate, entertain, inspire, or provide measurable utility. Backlinks can significantly improve the ranking of a relevant page by directing visitors to more information about a particular topic.
Foster relationships and collaborate with other publishers. Leverage savvy outreach and content amplification tactics. And crucially, keep an agile mindset for evolving your approach as the content landscape constantly reshapes itself. By blending art with science, you can harness the compounding power of backlinks.
