Inbound links are one thing marketers want a lot of. Yet, they are usually the hardest and most time consuming thing a marketer needs to create. I’m going to walk you through five different types of content you can create that will help you generate inbound links. The most important thing is to create the content for the reader and not the search engines.
Search engines are not going to create links to your website, people will be creating the links. And people will only link to content that is valuable enough for them to reference, need to remember, or just generally enjoy. The following content tends to provide some of the highest-quality inbound links. I’m not talking about directories or no-follow links.
Educational
I love educational content. This entire blog you’re reading now is educational content and it has generated 24 links in just six months. Educational content can be described as content that teaches people something or helps answer one of their questions. The articles are typically short and have key takeaways or downloadable resources attached to them.
Newsworthy
Content that is timely and relates to very recent news in your industry or news in general can generate inbound links. Think about all of the people that are searching for information on a news story or industry topic that is relevant is to your business. Write some blog articles about the story, so you get to the top of the search results. Say in the articles that anyone can use the article for reference. In exchange, you ask for them to link to your article.
Infographics
Infographics are blowing up these days. People love not only sharing infographics, but love embedding them on their blog and writing their own opinion about an infographic. We embed and link to a lot of different infographics on the HubSpot blog. They are definitely more time consuming to create, but with the right topic and promotion strategy, they can generate some serious links.
Trends
Writing about industry trends will educate and provide value for your readers. Try to include data in this type of content because people can reference the data in the article. Creating an infographic with the trend article would be an awesome one, two punch. These articles tend to get more links because people will reference the articles data, which helps support the article, and provides more value than just an opinion.
Videos
Don’t you just love watching videos online!? Almost everyone does and they are one of the most frequently linked to types of content. Your videos should be a mix of educational, informative, and entertaining content. HubSpot's Science of Blogging presentation found videos embedded in blog articles get more inbound links than photos.
Getting the Content Noticed
Press releases are a great way to get the above content types noticed. Most press releases will create inbound links for you because they get syndicated. Writing guest blog articles is another great way to get the content noticed and the links rolling in. Guest blogging is one topic we will cover during this Friday’s SEO Content Camp webinar.
HubSpot Tip: Under the Analyze tab in HubSpot, go to Blog Analytics and click on the "Inbound Links" column to sort by your inbound links. Look at which articles have generated inbound links and use that information to write similar articles.
What types of content have you created that have helped you generate links?
Image credit: missionalthoughts.wordpress.com
