Why Linkable Content Should be the Foundation of Your Link Building

Linkable content and link building go hand in hand. Not only do you need to spend time creating linkable content so that other sites will organically want to link back to you, but you need it to convince websites you reach out to that you’re worth a backlink. 

One of our primary criteria as a link building agency when working with a client is that they have solid linkable content in place.

We have had people reach out to us, who would really like to work with us, but it’s just not possible to achieve the kind of results we want and are used to achieving with their current catalog of content. 

There is either not enough of it, or it’s not good enough quality to build backlinks to. 

The bottom line: links are very important and it’s extremely difficult to build them without a significant number of quality pages on your website. 

In the below article, we will dive into why, exactly, linkable content is so important and why it is very difficult to both acquire backlinks organically over time and actively build links without it. 

Why linkable content underpins any good link building strategy

Link building has become much more difficult than it used to be. 

Gone are the days of buying a bunch of cheap links from link farms pointing directly to your most important commercial pages. 

Google has gotten too good at spotting and neutralizing this kind of manipulation with its core updates. What’s more, other websites a) aren’t going to link to your site if there is nothing to link to (goes without saying) and b) even if they are open to more transactional link building and link exchanges, aren’t willing to link to purely commercial content like service pages and other highly-monetized pages.

This means you need that informational and resource pages to make link building worthwhile for referring domains. 

Linking best practices

Generally speaking, link building works best (and is most appreciated by Google) when you approach it from the perspective of the user. What will a link add for the person reading a piece of content? 

That’s how good link builders and good webmasters who understand modern link building approach things. 

As an example, the below page is an article we have on our site’s blog: 

This is a resource page–something SEOs, link builders and businesses can use to help them build links and increase their domain authority. 

Now look at this page: 

This is our pricing page. This is ultimately where we want our target market to end up when they visit our site. 

The problem is, this is a purely commercial page. No one (or very few websites) are going to want to link their visitors to this page on our site because there really isn’t any reason to, other than, perhaps, because they like the web design or to use as an example of how to create a pricing page). 

That might happen organically, but from a link building perspective, you’ve got to offer a referring domain something that actually adds value for their user.

If we secured a link building opportunity, for instance, in a blog article on “How to Create a Digital Marketing Plan for Start-ups,” a link to our pricing page might work if placed somewhere in the article where the author was discussing hiring a link building agency, but even still…it is unlikely they would just do us the favour of sending leads our way for free.

Additionally, Google could interpret it as suspicious. 

Link building and SEO best practices dictate that you should always consider both the domain and page relevance of inbound and external backlinks. 

A much more SEO-friendly approach for the website publishing the hypothetical article above would be to link to our “How to Increase My Domain Authority” article. Within that article we have included an internal link to our “money page,” but the target page itself is a much more valuable resource page. 

That’s user-centric link building. It’s what Google ultimately wants to see and it’s how we build links for ourselves and our clients. 

Now that we’ve established the connection between linkable content and user-centric link building, let’s explore the concept of linkable content more in-depth, including what makes content “linkable.”

The three things that all good content has in common

Generally speaking, linkability comes down to a few key factors. They are: 

• Attention to detail when it comes to style, spelling and grammar. 
• It is compelling (i.e., people actually want to read about the topic or subject matter).
• The novelty of what you’re saying. 

Style, grammar and spelling

When it comes to writing for SEO and writing for link building purposes, you’re not trying to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, but if someone who takes their website, their audience and their editorial standards seriously would be embarrassed linking to it, you’re not doing a good enough job. 

When creating content, it is important to remember that your content is an extension of yourself and your website. Most people already know this to be true, even if they don’t necessarily think about it all the time. 

Consider this, though. You’re putting a lot of time and effort into a new article that you are really proud of. You want people to read it and be impressed by it. The easiest way to instantly discredit it is to have it be filled with spelling and grammatical errors. 

It just screams low effort and serious websites and site owners–the kind that can provide you with the high authority backlinks you need to improve your ranking and organic traffic–are not going to give it the time of day (even if you’re willing to pay). 

Compelling

This is, of course, subjective. Content creation, content formats, relevant content, and quality content are concepts that vary by niche, industry and purpose. 

An average Joe with very little interest in SEO or link building who is sitting beside the pool with a drink while on holiday, probably isn’t going to be reading a long-form article on linkable content. 

Someone trying to learn more about SEO and link building strategy because their livelihood depends on it will probably find it interesting, though. 

You need to create linkable content for your niche.

Compelling generally means a few things. 

It means writing for the web (generally speaking)–keeping your sentences readable and paragraphs short and sweet (a few sentences max). Kind of like this: 

And it means making good use of multimedia (images, infographics, videos, VR, AR, etc.). Generally speaking, people don’t want to read walls of text. We’ll go into these sorts of “content hooks” more a bit later on. 

Novelty and usefulness

When it comes to content and ranking, search engines (Google, in particular) are all about usefulness. Google urges content creators to focus on creating content that is “helpful, reliable and people first.” 

This means original writing (no plagiarism or duplicate content) and creating content that adds to and improves upon existing information. 

Rehashing the same 10 articles on the first page of the SERP is not going to cut it. If you want those coveted resource page links, then you need to create content that people haven’t seen before. 

If you can do all three of the above, you will be well on your way to creating linkable content that people want to share with their readers. 

The grammar, style and spelling in a piece of content really just comes down to the creator. They either spend the time making sure everything looks clean and professional or they don’t. 

The more important question is. what are some of the elements that go into making content novel, compelling and useful? 

Below we will detail some of the ways that great content stands out from the rest to attract and build better backlinks. 

Original images

The web is awash in stock photos. It is ridiculously easy to find free stock images to use in your article, but the truth of the matter is, you’re going to get more traction (from both users, and the search engine) if you use original images. 

Google is particularly interested in original images when it comes to product reviews. Search engines like Google are far more likely to show your content to people if you can demonstrate that you have actual first-hand experience and showcasing original images is one of the best ways to do that.

Because Google views original images as a source of trust and authority, by using them, you are improving the page authority of your content, which means other websites are going to be more likely to want to link to it as part of their external linking policy. 

This is good for both content marketing and building links, as well as attracting them organically. The more links a piece of content gets, the higher its page authority, the more linkable it becomes. 

Good internal linking

Another way to make a page more linkable, and improve it search engine optimization, is to utilize good internal linking. 

Internal links are those within your own site that direct users to other pages you want them to visit. It might be a service or product page where you are hoping to land a conversion, or it could be another piece of relevant, useful content that you use to buttress your original content. 

Google likes internal links because it makes a website easier to navigate for both algorithms and users, and other websites like good internal linking because it allows them to confidently link back to you without worrying that they are sending their users a) somewhere irrelevant or b) to a blatantly commercial page. 

Vidoes

Videos are quickly becoming an integral part of linkable content, especially as a way of showcasing expertise, experience, authority and trust. 

What’s more, video has become more important than ever for web users. 

More and more businesses are using video (either standalone or as part of their written content) in their content marketing strategies and on resource pages, including not only original images but original, complementary video. 

Websites that put this into practice are going to be poised to perform well in the SERP and, therefore, be more attractive link targets. 

Video is also just a good way to break up text-heavy long form content. You can say a lot with a little when using video, and it is much less taxing on a reader’s cognitive bandwidth. 

Statistics and data

Using statistics (both original and preexisting) to tell a story is one of the tried and true ways of attracting backlinks. 

It is one of the best ways to naturally attract links to your site as nothing makes a case or tells a story like numbers. 

If you have original data to draw upon and show people interesting figures and facts about a topic, niche or industry, you are bound to start attracting organic backlinks over time. 

Even better if you can incorporate that data into charts and graphics. 

Quotes

Incorporating quotes from reputable, authoritative sources is another great way to build linkable content. 

At the end of the day, people want to know that what you are claiming or saying is backed up by respected people in the industry. 

A good way to mine quotes for this type of content is to use HARO. If you’ve never used HARO before, we’ve put together a great guide on using it from the source’s perspective. 

You can also sign up to use HARO as a content writer. Let people know the topic of your article, ask for comment (usually in the form of specific questions) and then wait for the answers to roll in. 

Infographics

Infographics are one of the top ways modern content creators are creating quality content for the web. 

You can build so many links with a solid infographic. 

Places like Canva are great sources of infographic templates that you can easily use and repurpose for whatever you need. 

Infographic-based link building campaigns and content marketing are becoming increasingly popular, as a lot of sites are tired of linking back to the same-old SEO-optimized web content. 

Creating linkable content is all about putting yourself in the shoes of a reader

At the end of the day, the best way to build backlinks is to create content that satisfies the Google algorithm, and that ultimately means creating relevant content for your target audience and showing it to them in ways that make them want to keep reading.

If you can do that, you’ve created a piece of linkable content. Whether you then use that as a target page for guest posts or shop it around as a niche edit or link insertion, or you simply put it in front of influencers and authoritative voices in your industry is up to you. 

Once you’ve got that content in place, then you’ve got to start looking for those quality backlinks. 

If you are interested in working with an industry-leading link building service that has helped skyrocket ranking and traffic for a wide range of clients across a variety of industries, get in touch with dofollow and find out more about our contract-free, user-centric, performance-based pricing.