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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
Additionally, enrich your content’s shareability and viral momentum by:
By increasing your content’s visibility and ease of sharing, you maximise its potential to attract backlink opportunities organically.
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:
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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:
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:
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.
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:
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.
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'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.
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.
