Hello and welcome back to the outsourcesem.com blog, and to the next chapter of Ultimate Guide to Link Building!
In our last session we had a chapter on Ultimate Guide to Fundamentals of Link Building, explaining different terms related to Link Building, what is exactly Link Building, why building links are important and a list of the best practices for link building.
List of Practices for Efficient Link Building:
4. Link Building through Off Page Optimization
• Dofollow Forum Participation
• Directory Submission
• Resource Page Backlinks
• Writing and Posting Testimonials
• Content Promotion
• Brand Monitoring - Link Claim
5. Link Building through Creating Different Types of Contents
• Ego Bait Content Creation
• Posting Infographics
• Newsjacking
• Free Product Creation
6. Link Building Through Different Link Profile Analysis
• Competitor’s Backlink Profile Analysis
• Brand’s Backlink Profile Analysis
7. Link Building Through Broken Links
Now that we have a set of strategies for Link Building, let’s get into their details.
And, today, we are going to talk about the first topic in that list, ‘Creating Great Content’.
Chapter 2
Ultimate Guide to Creating Great Content
How many times have you come across something unique and beneficial that everyone is talking about? I am sure, many a times. Do you realise what is happening there? Something is spreading its reach among people for being unique and useful.
Every good thing is appreciated and attracts a crowd. This is a general rule applicable to any aspect of life. Similarly, a good content would be appreciated and would attract a lot of online visitors. The best and the most efficient strategy to earn backlinks is by creating outstanding, authentic, and link-worthy content for your website. Creating impressive contents on your website leads to recommendations and good backlinks. It is a natural link building strategy. It will naturally pull online visitors and get you traffic, leading to appreciation, reference and shares via linking.
Creation of a great content is all dependent on you. How you choose to present your data to your audience is a game changing factor. You have to decide what you want; people to land on your page, find it interesting and get tempted to go through your content, or people to find it unappealing and earn bounce backs for your website.
If you spend enough time, energy and resources to create an original master piece, then people would definitely share your content or link your content on their webpages as references. Also, Search Engines prefer original content and it help in getting higher Domain Authority.
Creating High Quality EAT (Expertise, Authority, Trustworthiness) - oriented content gets featured, getting back contextual links and some referral traffic, mostly targeted traffic. And, those traffic of online visitors have the potential to turn into leads or customers for the website.
Also, always remember, the saying “something is better than nothing” does not apply here. When it comes to content, if that ‘something’ is a bad piece, then, having ‘nothing’ is better. Because, that bad piece of ‘something’ is going to get you negative remarks. It will harm your business’s online reputation. So, always make good and original contents only.
Let’s discuss the following points to further explore and understand the Concept of Creating Great Contents:
a) What is a Great Content?
b) Benefits of Creating Great Content
c) How to Create Great contents?
d) “Don’ts” to consider while creating a content
a) What is a Great Content?
I am sure that you must have been hearing a lot about the value of creating great online content. None the less, how do you know what is a great content and how to create it?
It is important to understand while creating a content that, it needs to serve a purpose. When you know the answer to why are you creating a content and for whom, you’ll have a clear picture of how your content is going to be. When you create a content with this clarity, and maintain a quality standard, it is bound to be a master-piece. A master-piece is the one which is fresh, authentic, useful, informative, interesting, and creative.
• A great content constitutes of fresh and authentic data. The content has new and original ideas and approach towards the subject being discussed.
• It has detailed information about the subject being talked about. It is interesting enough to keep the online visitors engaged and connected.
• It has something useful for the intended audience. It serves the need and interest of the audience. It talks about valuable things that are going to be useful for the readers.
• A good content is well presented and communicates well with its readers. It has a great start talk and a smooth flow of reading. It explains everything about the topic and answers every question that the reader might come up with. It has a nicely summarised and round-up ending.
• It also has a lot of quality references and good links to high authority sites and relevant contents. Both internal and external linking is done aptly and are of good quality only.
• There is use of multimedia inputs in the content. A good amount of useful images, diagrams and infographics to make it more creative and more understandable for the readers.
• It is presented in a good structured format, which helps the readers to engage better. A well-structured content also helps search engine bots in indexing and crawling.
b) Benefits of Creating Great Content:
As earlier mentioned, having a great online content is the best way to grow your business. A link-worthy content speaks for itself. If you have all the ingredients set well in your content, it will bring good name to your business in no time. People will share your content with others leading to higher linking and increased referral traffic.
• A great content is a key to natural link building. Readers talk about your substantial website and refer your website to others via back-linking.
• Remarkable contents become a host of engagement for a lot of online visitors with their comments and discussions on the page.
• A great content is naturally going to attract a lot of traffic (mostly targeted traffic) and recommendations.
• It is going to further help in increasing your brand visibility and brand awareness.
• Great Contents helps in building better trust. Increased traffic along with earning your visitor’s trust has the potential to increase the conversion rates.
• Eventually, it will increase your Domain Authority and helps you in getting higher position on SERP.
c) How to Create Great contents?
There are many steps and ingredients involved in the creation of a link-worthy content. We are going to talk about each of them in detail so that you can implement them and make your content even better.
• Research
Be it presenting a content related to products, services, information or journals, researching comes in handy to make the content exceptional. I personally think, this is the first and foremost step towards prominence.
It will help you realise the leading issues or problems. The process will spark brilliant indigenous ideas to explore and exploit in a powerful way. Eventually, you’ll be able to narrow down to the focal point or the topic of content. The idea behind research it to create a big picture concept by connecting small little ideas, and then present them together to your readers.
Give time to it. Most of the times, many ideas just pop-up while you think you are wasting your time researching. No time spent researching, goes in vain. And, the time spent in research will always reflect in your content.
Points to note:
• Give it time.
• Research and explore well.
• Note down all the ideas, problems and talks that comes in your mind. Then, segregate and bundle the ideas, finally coming over to the most suitable idea of content.
• Keep the readers and usefulness of the content in focus while researching.
• Selection of a Useful Topic to create content
I am sure, after a lot of research and study, you’ll be able to find many authentic great ideas and topics. Now, the focus over here should be on selecting a topic which is going to help readers.
Internet if full of data and information. Creating a content which is going to serve the reader in a positive way, solve certain problems, answer important questions or bring out great ideas on the table for them should be in consideration for topic selection. The reader must get a feeling after going through your content that the time spent on your webpage was worth it.
Points to note:
• Select topic useful to the online visitors or readers.
• Focus on subjects that help the readers in solving problems or answering questions.
• Authenticity
Another important factor to keep in mind while creating a content is to ensure that you create original and fresh content. It attracts audience and is also preferred by search engines.
Imagine, you went to buy a mobile phone for yourself. There are two option available at the same price and are available in the same shop. The effort you are going to put in driving your care to that shop is same for both the phone. The only difference is that one phone is a fresh original piece with new features and better quality, and the other phone is a local copied used phone with old features. Which one would you buy? Without a second thought, the original and new phone. (As a matter of fact, you might not even want to buy the second phone at an offer price, as it has old features).
In the vast ocean of information available online, people are looking for authentic and new content. So, bring that authenticity on the plate for them.
There is no use of ‘smart copying’ and ‘scrapping’ data. They would never get you the results as a genuine work of content would do. It is definitely more challenging to create first hand content where so much data is already explored and presented. But, it is definitely more rewarding. You’ll also earn trust by the online visitors for original content. You’ll have a better Domain Authority and would be favoured by Search Engines.
Points to note:
• Pick up authentic and original ideas.
• Bring newness to the content, provide some new information or data.
• User Oriented Intent for the content
It is obvious that the intent behind the content creation is to generate more traffic. But, your content becomes a master piece when you don’t make this fact noticeable. And, that happens when you actually create a user-focused content, keeping the previously perceived ‘notion of self-benefit’ aside.
The rule is simple; your content would speak for itself. You create a content with the intent of ‘generating traffic for your website’, or ‘to benefit the readers’, both are easily visible to the audience (Human psychology plays a big part here). So, make clear user oriented intentions by offering value in your content; for their benefit, for their usefulness and for them. It will appeal to both Search Engines (you will be rewarded with higher position with time) and your online visitors.
Your content should be able to communicate to the readers what exactly you are trying to present to them, in the language that they understand the best. (Remember you are here to communicate). Go selfless while creating a content, consider this as the main ‘Mantra’. You’ll definitely be rewarded. Buy this fact from me right now and thank me later.
Points to note:
• Create the content with the user-benefit as the intent behind.
• Keep the content reader friendly.
• Speak their language, be good at communicating your points to readers.
• ‘User-intended’; embed this in your mind. And, remove the slightest imprint of self-benefit from the mind before you start working on a content.
• Self- Explanatory, One-Stop answer content
Think of going through a book on search engine optimization(SEO) written in a foreign language you don’t know. Would you understand anything just by reading it? You won’t be able to read it at the first place. You would have lot of question like what is written there, what does this word mean, what is it trying to say, etc.? You would want to go for a dictionary or a self-help book to understand what is being conveyed in that book.
Similar is the case when you create contents. The range of readers may vary from beginners to experts. And, mostly people who land on your page are people who are searching for answers or solutions. You need to ensure that while going through your page, they don’t have to go to other pages for further explanation to understand your content.
It is obvious that if there is some term or a point which you may not have explained in your content. Anyone can take help of online search, being so many information available just at a click or command these days. But, it is always advisable to explain thing well enough so that the reader may not feel the need to leave your page to search further. The readers may not move on to some other page if you keep your content self-explanatory.
Also, there is a very interesting psychological fact. Most people, when they realise that there is something they don’t know or understand, they tend to feel insecure and uncomfortable. Keeping the content simple, explanatory and something that answers all the questions of the readers actually helps in that case. What are people doing on your page? They are ‘searching’ for answers and ideas. So, cater to their needs, and serve them the answers. The online visitors should find what you present them to be useful and also know how to implement it. Show them that you are available to them. Be available to them! The readers would start feeling comfortable on your sites and it will help build trust. Never let your reader feel left more confused after reading your content.
Points to note:
• Talk in depth and detail. Keep simple words, explain all needed terms in the post itself.
• Don’t give an opportunity to the readers to wander to other sites for further explanation.
• Make the readers feel comfortable on your site.
P.S.
There are times when you need to link to other pages for better explanation. Understand the difference between ‘you guiding a reader to a different page via a link you provide’ and ‘the reader moving or wandering away to a different page for a search from your page’.
Here, the link you provide which takes the online visitor to a different page is also a ‘part of your content’. It creates a positive impact on the minds of readers. It makes them feel that you are helping and guiding them in finding an answer. Use links if you feel the need for the readers to know more on any term or data for their benefit. That is creating ‘good links’, and ‘good linking is always good for your website’!
• Engaging and Mind-Boggling content
“What you sow, is what you reap”; keep this in mind while you create a content. A mind-boggling content would get you mind-boggling results in term of backlinks, traffic and position.
Create content that is engaging for the readers. Make it interesting and informative. The data you provide in your content has the potential to keep the readers on your page till the end if it is interesting enough. Provide data that are good and useful to keep hold of the readers. You content should induce curiosity and answer them as well. Engage them by asking questions or very small thought provoking activities. These keep the curiosity running and the readers engaged. The content of your post should be able to keep the flow and focus of the readers.
To make it more engaging and thought-provoking, the work has to be further refined. Ensure that each and every detail is well put. The content has to be creative and inspiring. Your content must ‘Spark’ a “wow!”, or “Oh!”, or “is it?” kind of thoughts in the minds of the reader. You’ll make an online visitor for a long term then.
And for this, you need to have make an engaging presentation. Have an interesting headline and introduction to your subject. Ensure that there is a connection between the paragraphs leading to the next one. The reader should simply scroll down smoothly without any obstruction in the flow of reading. Give examples with which the readers can relate to for better engagement and understanding. Creative and engaging inputs have to be present. You may do so by asking them to fill in answers for some related questions. You may make them participate in some kind of survey or polls. Or, you may ask them to choose from multiple choice options and conclude what their responses represent. Just ensure all these engagement choices are relevant and are part of your content.
Points to note:
• Provide informative and creative content to encourage reader participation and to keep the readers engaged throughout.
• Induce curiosity of ‘what’s next” through your content.
• Spark ‘exclamatory’ feelings through your content for the readers.
• Keep a smooth flow of read from beginning to the end, without any hindrance.
• Give examples for better understanding with which the readers can connect to.
• Strong and Eye-catching Headline:
Another important factor to consider while creating a great content is to have an apt and appealing headline for your content. It’s the face of the book you are presenting to the online visitors. And, people generally judge the book by its cover.
The trick here is to play with the mind of the online visitors. Most people (more than 70%) make a mental decision of whether they want to read your content at the very same moment when they read the headline of your content. Hence, it is important to make the headline sound interesting and exciting enough to generate curiosity. This will make the readers further explore your content in order to know what it is that you are serving them.
Also, the headline must not be misleading; else you’ll lose trust of the readers. Don’t show to offer them an apple, and serve them peanuts instead. It’s a big ‘NO! NO!’. It will harm your reputation in many ways.
Points to note:
• Headlines to be exciting and eye-catching.
• Headlines must trigger the readers to get engaged with your content.
• It must relate to the content, should not be misleading.
• Providing Correct and Accurate Facts and Figures
To build trust and a strong connection, it is crucial to be ‘right’. Whatever facts and figures you provide in your content, must be correct and accurate. If you are unsure of something, please do not post it. Nobody likes to gain some wrong knowledge after putting in efforts to search for an answer or information. Research properly before publishing a data. Publishing an incorrect data will cause a lot of damage to your brand. It takes years to build a reputation and one small mistake to lose it all in one go. So, be very careful and mindful about your posts.
Also, provide the source for your facts and figures, wherever possible, to back them up for authenticity. Try and back all the content and answers you provide with some supporting data. Also, make the data accurate. This will help the readers to build trust in you. People prefer to link to accurate information with supporting data.
Points to note:
• Always publish correct and accurate data. Never make the mistake of posting an incomplete or unsure information.
• Research enough before publishing a data.
• Back your content with supporting data.
• If ever there is a ‘need’ to provide some information which you are unsure of its authenticity or accuracy, always add a ‘polite disclaimer’.
• Long-term Relevancy Data
It is better to provide data which would be relevant for long term, it will help your page to stay active and keep getting continuous traffic. So, this needs to be considered at the ‘Topic Selection’ stage. Consider to write about a subject that is going to be useful for a long term.
Obviously, you also need to cover and create content about the fads that create a buzz. But, when you are putting so much effort to make a master piece, its more effective if it is useful for the readers for longer duration. It also keeps getting you traffic for a longer span of time.
Points to note:
• Create content that is relevant for longer span of time for the readers.
• Adding Infographics, Images and Videos
Infographics, images and other multimedia inputs not only make the content more appealing to the readers, it also provides better understanding. It’s like adding colours to the monotonous black and white world. These instantly ‘spark joy’ and inculcate interest. Adding charts, tables, images, or diagrams also help elaborate your context and help in better understanding for the readers. Overall, these make the content more attractive and engaging.
Points to note:
• Add multi-media files like infographic, images, etc. to make the content more engaging and interesting.
• They also help in better understanding for the readers.
• Adding Good Links and References
Linking your content to relevant pages is another very important step for a great content. It is equivalent to ‘Salt’. What salt does to taste of food, good links does to the authority of your site. It helps in enhancing other determining factors.
Links take your readers to pages which provide them with more information, and help them to gain more knowledge. Linking in the form of supporting data or additional data make your content better. Linking to high authority or trusted organisation or institutional sites are more thoughtful and advantageous even in term of your Domain Authority.
Points to note:
• Add good links to help readers to get better understanding.
• Add links as supporting data for your reporting.
• Good relevant links help you get higher authority.
• Don’t add too many links for the same subject (Too much salt destroys the taste). Have the balance.
• Logical Organisation and Presentation
A well organised presentation is always preferred. It takes some good time to do this. So, don’t be in a hurry to create a content. Give it enough time and organise it well in a logical way.
Do not start with the 3rd point or step of a topic, then move to its 7th step and then to the 1st. It is ideal and more acceptable to start from the beginning of a topic and eventually move and reach to the last point, step by step. You would also enjoy the process and the readers are definitely going to appreciate it. It will help them to find related contents on your webpage easily. It is also good for SEO ranking. Creating great content can attract high-quality traffic to increase the website's visibility on search engines. Offshoring SEO services from a reputed digital marketing company will help you understand the particles to improve website visibility. They will perform detox & penalty removal, SEO audit and backlink analysis to help you understand the hindrance that causes lower ranking of websites on search engine result pages(SERPs).
From Headline to the end of your content, keep it all logically organised. Have a strong headline, then a promising and exciting introduction, one that lures the readers to go further ahead. Talk about the topic in detail. Explain every related term, site references and examples. Create connection with the readers through your post. Summarize your whole content before you end the post well. Make the ‘sense of completeness’ falls upon the readers towards the end like a good story read.
Also, remember, people want things fast. They should be able to point-out the important data easily and quickly. Highlight the important points. Do keyword research and use keyword optimisation for better search ability of your content.
Organise your content in a structured format. Give proper spacing. Remember negative space is also one very important factor when it comes to presentations. Allow proper paragraphing. Use bullets or numbers for pointers. Skip words wherever possible. Skip extras wherever you can. Remove repetitions. (Know the difference between ‘repetitions’, ‘reminders’ and ‘restating’. Reminders and restating are important at times). Correct the spellings, grammar and errors. Keep the letters and fonts simple and readable.
Go through your content as though you are some random visitor of the page. Then, ask yourself the questions like; “Would you read it as a random visitor?”, “Is it engaging enough?”, “Does it answer all your questions?”, “Did you enjoy reading it?”, “Would you recommend it to others?”, “Did you find something that you could not appreciate?”, “Was it helpful or useless?”, etc. Make a few random people read it and ask them the same questions.
I would again state, your content should be able to communicate to the readers what exactly you are trying to present to them, in the language that they understand the best. Edit your content on the basis of the feedbacks and finally publish your masterpiece.
Points to note:
• Understand the importance of structure.
• Organize and present your content correctly.
• Check for errors and correct them.
• Scrutinise your content, read it yourself and make others read it. Check if it answers all your questions. Take feedbacks and implement required changes accordingly.
• Make it a masterpiece for the readers.
• Word Count and length of content - Crisp, relevant and informative enough
It is not necessary to just dump more and more words in your content. Understand, ‘The more, the better’ is not always true. Writing unnecessary things about a topic in your post might just add numbers, but is a total waste of time and resources.
Mostly, creating a short, crisp, relevant and to-the-point content is more helpful for the readers and thus appeal more to them.
Make the content useful, neither too short with insufficient data or too long with irrelevant or repetitive data. It is all about the art of balancing out the words against the chunk of information you are providing.
Points to note:
• Use just enough words to help elaborate and explain your content to the readers; neither less nor more than required.
• Keep the content to the point and non-repetitive.
• Regular Consistent Analysis and Update of your content
Regularly analyse your content. Keep them updated with the latest facts and figures or information. This will keep the chain of traffic alive. Also, the online visitors would tend to go back to you more as they would notice your updates.
Remember, ‘maintaining something is more important than creating it’, it requires more effort as well. You must have seen consumers considering the ‘after-sales-services’ for a product before buying them and how important role it plays. Regularly analysing and updating your content is kind of a similar concept.
Also, check for outbound broken links and replace them. Wherever required, remove outbound links which are no longer necessary or serve the purpose or are outdated. You may even add new outbound links if you find some relevant and necessary ones later on. With a use of analytic tools, you can even check for what posts or links are not getting you traffic and eating your online space to remove them. If your content is outdated or faded, no one will link to it. Overall, keep adding new posts, keep updating and keep the freshness alive.
Points to note:
• Consistently keep updating your posts and your website with latest information.
• Use analytic tools to check your content and makes changes on the according to the result.
• Add, remove, or replace data wherever necessary.
d) “Don’ts” to consider while creating a content
While creating the content you must be aware and understand the limitations and boundaries you need to stick to. There are certain rules you need to follow and certain things you need to avoid.
• Don’t ever copy content from other websites. Search engines have tools (like Copyescape) to check for copied content. It would cause you penalties and have adverse effects on your website.
• Don’t let spam or low-quality content be present on your webpage. This is against the set norms by search engines and impacts negatively. Google search engine uses Google Penguin algorithm to find low-quality content and penalise by degrading the SERP position of the website.
• Don’t create ‘thin’ contents that may get you clicks and traffic, but does not offer value to the online visitor of the search engine. This would tend to higher bounce rates and lower conversion rates. Also, the website runs into the risk of getting penalized by search engines.
• Don’t have any broken link in your content. Always keep checking and keep updating the links mentioned in your content. Broken links on your webpage increase bounce rate, which is not good for your website.
• Don’t forget to give due credits to other sites and influencers for mentions of contents from their web pages.
• Don’t over use linking, else it might appear as a spam to the search engines.
There are all pros about creating a good authentic content. Once you have understood the structure of contents and mastered the art of creating a great content, it comes with no cons. Definitely, investing more time and practicing more will help you get better and better with every post you create.
“SO GOOD THEY CAN’T IGNORE YOU” – this sums the chapter on ‘Ultimate Guide to Creating Great Content’ in one line. Your content need to be so good that the online visitors can’t ignore you and are bound to link back to your page.
I hope you found this whole chapter on ‘Creating Great Content for Link Building’ interesting and it helped you understand the concept better. I also hope you may implement few steps and learnings from here to make your content better.
See you soon in the next post where we are going to discuss yet another interesting strategy for building good links.
Until then, Good Bye and take good care!
Cheers!
Click here for Chapter 3: Ultimate Guide to Building Links through Guest Posting