Quality Links: 10 Content Types to Generate Links

Quality link building is now developed around the idea of getting links with quality content. But there is much uncertainty about link building. Someone considers that quality linking is a great thing for SEO and website visibility, while others think that it can hurt website rankings in SERP.

Based on my SEO experience, high quality links always work well, especially if quality links comes from major media websites like SearchEngineWatch, MarketingLand, etc. I’ve spent much time working on the client’s project SE Ranking and figured out that quality content is a good investment. Why? Because you can get not only quality backlinks, but trout out your site’s authority and build up new relationships with SEO experts and bloggers.

Just writing a batch of articles including your target keywords isn’t what you should focus on. Try throwing in new types of content and you will immediately feel a difference: targeted users, high website rankings, fresh traffic and a good CTR.

In this blog post, I will share the 10 types of link-worthy content that I have used for my project and that helped me get more leads and high website rankings.

Infographics

To tell you the truth, I don’t really like infographics. 🙂

The reason is that it is quite labour-intensive and expensive. I think there are more easy ways to get links. But if you have time and resources, infographics will be a good way to receive more authority links.

Did you know that Human brains process images 60,000 times faster than text? That’s why visual content like infographics is a great way to capture the attention of your target audience and generate links. 

Infographics work well if you add more reliable data and create professional graphics. Moreover, they are shared and liked on social media up to three times more than another type of content. They have a viral potential.

You also have to try Canva a free graphic design software, easy to use and completely online (no need to download any program). It is possible to create beautiful designs and infographics which can be used in different channels ( Facebook posts, ads, e-book...).

Before creating infographics, keep in mind the following things:

• Good infographics are quite expensive;
• They are easy to go viral because of virtue of being an infographic;
• Show users useful and real data, statistics they didn’t already know;
• Gifographics are good animated infographic models that are picking up steam in these latter days.

If you have a limited budget, you can always try out affordable services (Piktochart is my favorite one) that help you easy to create this type of content. There are loads of websites only dedicated to infographics where you can promote them.

Video Content

No matter what type of videos you want to use, it is a good way to communicate with your target audience in a memorable way. Well-made videos can be extraordinarily persuasive. As soon as you make a video, put it on YouTube, Vimeo or Wistia. The last one is working well for me. These video sharing websites get a large number of social signals and help you improve results for video search.

If you have enough money, you can create your own videos and use this content as link bait. Make sure it is quite time-consuming and hard. I love how Zappos integrate video content for their 50 000 product videos.

A few things you should bear in mind:

• Creating a good video is quite expensive. Hiring a good video specialist or a camera crew can cost a pretty penny.
• There is not need to make long videos. I consider that two or three minutes is enough to attract user’s attention.

Reach out to influencers

You can be surprised, but roundup articles can give a good chance to get thousands of quality links and strategies from influencers in one blog post. All that you need is to find experts and authority websites to link to you. Implementing this way of getting links helps you not only improve your brand authority, but also start building good relationships with bloggers.

To tell the truth, I love creating roundup posts and trying to interview as many influencers as possible. One of my posts for Zac Johnson helped me get over 800 social shares. One-to-one interviews are a powerful way to get quality links, although it takes some time and patience.

If you meet some famous expert, jump at the chance, buy him a cup of coffee and ask him some questions. As soon as you get across to him, schedule a call or send questions by email. Make sure that interviewing powerful influencers will always work well if you are consistent at it.

Brand Partnership: Guest Blogging

This kind of content is really amazing. If you really want to get stroked, dip into in-depth research before presenting something useful. Make sure that all websites are different and have different guest blogging requirements. At times, you should spend much time to get any reply from bloggers.

Detailed research gives you a privilege among other guest bloggers. For example, being SEO newbie, it took me a few years to finally reach out Zac Johnson in order to cover guest posts. Now we have a good relationship and I contribute to his websites on a regular basis.

Co-branded content is a great way to get quality links, more leads and increase awareness with less work. Don’t limit yourself to blog posts but also consider webinars and podcasts as well. 

Recently, I was able to write a guest article for Content Marketing Institute that is titled “Out of Ideas? 13+ Tools to Spark Content Creation”. That post got over 2.6k social shares, generated thousands of visitors to my Twitter and gave me the chance to be invited to write for other bloggers like Robert Katai.

Why should you try out this type of content?

1. Build up your personal brand;
2. Get more quality links and new visitors to your website;
3. Build new bridges with other bloggers and experts;
4. Increase website rankings;
5. Get more comments on your articles;
6. Guest posts are naturally shared with other users.

Notice that awesome guest posts get stroked and earn good revenues from website owners. The main thing is to make your reward visible in public and be super transparent with your readers.

Evergreen Content

This kind of content is great because it’s written on a topic that stays relevant to the target audience for a long time. Therefore it does not expire. Evergreen content allows you to include quality links all around the blog posts. Also, you can have more opportunities to re-engage with your target audience.

Here are some timeless ideas for evergreen content:

• How-to Articles
• A Guide to Your Industry
• Best Practices Blog Posts
• A Content Round-up with Industry Experts   

You can also repurpose your evergreen content later on or update it if it stays outdated for current market trends and dynamics. 

List-posts

I’ll have you know that list-posts have endless appeal and get more links than another type of content. Users love this content format because it is so formulaic and easy to read. You will never go wrong with this content, and I should notice that even the most popular magazines still use list-posts to attract attention and sell their items.

If you do much link building, this kind of content is like money in your bank, especially for e-commerce websites. In order to figure out the best list-posts, you can use these search strings for in-depth analysis:

• “[keyword] blogs to follow”
• “best [keyword] posts 2023”
• “top [keyword] blogs to follow” + “2023”

A few things to keep in mind:

• Long and more detailed lists work well;
• Use any type of numbers (odd, round, etc) – they are all good;
• Writing your list-post, try to introduce the topic, count your crucial points and make a conclusion.

Checklists

Checklists are similar to list posts. But the difference is that they can be a guideline for your target audience to help them achieve a goal or something similar. This type of content can give more insights to your audience about what they should focus on primarily. 

Want to get an example of a checklist?

Click here to download our checklist

You should know that checklists are easy to create and easy to consume. Therefore, you don’t need to spend much time and effort. You can include quality links that direct to your website. Also, if you create useful and valuable checklists many industry experts can appreciate them as a resource as well.    

Product reviews

Like book reviews, creating a product review can be of great value for your clients and help gain authority in your industry. All that you need is to share your experience with a product or service and provide your recommendations.

Top tricks to write a review:

1. Present your product and manufacturer;
2. Describe the product;
3. Provide advantages and disadvantages of the product;
4. Share your experience and recommendations;
5. Show up the pricing policy;
6. Make a conclusion.

To trigger more users’ emotions, you can create a video content for review. Creating a video helps you take a businesslike approach to an interested product.

You can suggest bloggers to review the tool for free, and, instead of that, you can get a free review. Before sending an offer, make a list of bloggers, explore each one and offer them only unique suggestions.

Case Studies

A case study is a great way to tell users about your product and how it can help others. Basically, it tells people what you’ve done and what the results you’ve got.

Today there are different tools that can help with A/B testing. I’ve recently made the testing with Google Analytics in order to evaluate what signup page will be more effective. But you can try out KissMetrics or Optimizely for feature flag and A/B testing.

Things to bear in mind:

1. Create a case study in a succinct and informative way, avoid a pure marketing;
2. Make it sound like a story. People love inspiring and success stories, but not plain and boring text;
3. Explain the challenges and problems you’ve faced and provide the solution to your problems;
4. Show your successful results and provide a call to action.

Podcasts

Podcasts have gone from being basically unheard of to one of the fastest growing market channels available today. Similar to video content, podcasts are an excellent way of connecting and communicating with your target audience. As with videos, you can opt to record your own podcast, or appear on an already established podcast. The latter option means all you need to do is show up and speak, without needing to record your own content. 

This is not only a great way of building brand trust and reaching out to a wider audience, but it is also a useful link-building strategy. A range of hosts is always on the lookout for guest speakers to appear and share insights. The website hosting the podcast will usually include a link to their guest’s website, a creative yet simple way of acquiring a backlink. 

Conclusion

As you’ve seen from the list, there are many great content options. The more kinds of content you try out, the more powerful your content marketing efforts become.

I know that it is not easy to produce an awesome content. But you need to get the most out of these options, because online brands that don’t invest into content marketing are going to move in a backward direction. You just need to advance to the next level.

Do you know another type of content to generate quality links? Have you tried out the above mentioned options? Please, let us know what you bear in mind.