Have you ever noticed that some of your website’s pages (or your competitor’s) naturally attract links better than others?
In the SEO world, we call those pages – “Linkbait” content.
And you are probably wondering – how can I create more of those pages?
Because, well, that’s quite straight-forward – to rank, we need backlinks. And if you can create sections on your page that gets links while you sleep – that’s a no-brainer.
Every SEO-expert would like to create content that gets links, right?
So, here’s a guide on how to do that.
What exactly is “Linkbait”?
“Linkbait” is content that is formulated to attract links by itself. These links help them improve the site’s rankings in search engines.
It’s so popular and unique that it would be a shame not to link to content like that.
Links not only help boost the overall authority of your website— but also help the site attract more traffic from organic search—but most pieces of “linkbait” also rank very well for many related terms.
This drives a great amount of traffic to the actual “linkbait” itself.
We all want that our posts and videos to get us traffic, links, and most of all – money. But not all of us can, as we’re not content writing experts…
So, here’s a guide explaining how we mortals can achieve much success with our content – in other words, get lots of backlinks to our content.
Linkbait Content Basics
The first thing you need to understand is that in order to make your own linkbait content, first, you need to see what a linkbait content looks like.
Makes sense, right?
Don’t worry – you can see great examples of what linkbait content looks like here.
We did a little research ourselves and found that there are some aspects that help your content get backlinks while you sleep or spend your free time with family. And here they are:
- Ranking the post and getting the first backlinks doesn’t happen by accident – mad skills are required.
- We also realized that only certain types of content get links – and A LOT of links.
- And what’s more, the average word count in each article was 2,409. It’s a lot but not way-over-the-top, either. So, word count and the number of links don’t necessarily go together.
Well, the idea is to make the sort of content that appeals to a large audience who want to add links to your post.
So what you need to do now:
- Choose the type of content you want to create,
- Find the right topic,
- Create the content,
- Get the first backlinks.
This might seem the same way that most content is created but there are some differences. We will talk about that a bit later.
Linkbait Content Types
So all the linkbait content can be divided into 4 different groups. And those are:
1. Controversial News or Entertainment
The perfect example is this one – 10 biggest celebrity breakups.
You get my point now? Just by reporting on something or someone in a timely manner, you get so much return in traffic and backlinks.
Trending news like this one will get shared a lot, and usually go viral on social media. So keep an eye out for things like this.
2. How-to Guides or Tutorials
It can be about anything in your niche. It’s the most popular thing in linkbait.
A Google search for “how to make beef burgers” suggests a video from 2015 as the top result on page 1.
With content like this, you will be on the first page for years. You just need to keep updating it, because things change from time to time.
Edit it often, so that it meets the present day trends.
3. Qualitative or Quantitative Research
Well, this is a massive and time-consuming job, but if you have done it right – then, you have earned yourself a trophy and kudos for your patience!
What I mean by “massive” is something like “500 000 Search Result Analysis”.
That does not mean that you have to do that, it’s just an example, but imagine how attractive that topic/content would be to an SEO expert, and most of them happen to own a blog where they constantly link to another content.
4. Free Stuff or Tools
FREE STUFF!!
Everybody loves stuff that is FREE! I mean, if there’s anyone who doesn’t then I have serious doubts about his taste in..well, everything.
In fact – most people tend to choose free stuff over buying something – that’s just obvious, right?
For example, let’s say you have created a FREE backlink checker. That is something worth linking to because it is free and why wouldn’t people link to that?
Something like that is very helpful. If you don’t have the resources to make your own tool or app, then the next best thing is to go to a website like ProductHunt, find a product that is in your niche and try to partner up with them.
Then if you have decided what kind of content you want to create, all you need to do is a keyword research and MAKE the content that will rank #1 on Google.
Linkbait Content Topic – How to Choose One?
The easiest way to get a good linkbait topic is to look at existing ones.
You can do a Google research for some topics in your niche or you can use a backlink research tool like Linkody or Ahrefs to see your competitors top content.
If you use Google then just type in some keywords and see what ranks well on that keyword.
But if you choose to use a backlink tool then you need to take a look at the most popular pages your competitors have.
You will see pages that are visited the most.
Note: If you think that the topic will get a lot of backlinks then you are wrong – because that is not enough at all! The article must be AWESOME and very informative to get people to read your post, create their own article and add a backlink to your article – those are 3 steps that take a lot of time.
The tool we use to find link-magnet content is Linkody.
1.Compare- Your topic to your competitors topic. Check if they already have the content you want to create – if they don’t then great! Go make that article.
But if they do have that topic already and have a low success rate with that then you should probably change your topic to a different one.
2. When you have found a bunch of similar topics from your competitors then the next thing you should do is see if you can create 5 times better article than theirs.
Why? Because you need to provide value to your readers, that is why it has to be better and perfect in any aspect.
3. The 3rd task and the most important one – keyword research to see if similar topic rank high.
Couple keyword research tips:
- If domain authority to your website is less than 20 then go for topics with keyword difficulty under 30; but, if it’s more than 20 you can go for topics with difficulty around ~50.
- You can do keyword research with such a tool as KWFinder.
Go through these 3 steps a couple of times until you find the perfect topic to write about. If you are not keen to write the article yourself you can always find writers to do the job for you.
Create Multi-Million Content
Don’t worry – this is the easiest part. Yes, I know you don’t believe me, but you will- trust me.
Here are some steps that you should consider to make 5 times better content than your competitors.
- Get 4 similar content for this topic. Make it 10 if the competition is high.
- Learn from them
- Put the best things from those articles together in your article
- Include your own experience and knowledge. If would be great if you have experience on that
- Don’t forget about pictures, research data, interview or something like that – because most of the content does not have anything from it.
- START WRITING!
Time For The First Backlinks
Once you get to this point – you already have a big crowd behind you that are amazed by your linkbait content.
This might seem unnecessary at first as “linkbait content should generate backlinks automatically”. But, as I said before, you just have to ignite the flame.
So here is how you can get first backlinks to your article – look where your competitors get backlinks for similar articles and then contact the same sources by asking to link to your site as well.
Here is how we do it:
1. Go to your competitors’ analytics page at Linkody
2. Open up “Top Pages”
3. Filter the links by similarity to your article
4. Then click on the “Links” number
5. There you will see their backlinks from external sources
6. Then prepare an email campaign to reach out to them.
Sending one by one is very time consuming, I suggest that you use some tools like Ninjaoutreach or Hunter.
Or if you are using Gmail then you can use Gmass extension.
Wrap Up
Linkbait content is a magnet that will link massive traffic to your website/page/article and will bring you a lot of backlinks.
That will increase your site’s authority within the search engine and it will increase your worth in people’s eyes.
To sum up – there are only 4 types of content that will get you backlinks easily:
- Controversial news or entertainment
- How-to guides and tutorials
- Researches and case studies
- Free stuff & tools
Once you have found the content you want to write about the next step is finding the perfect topic and keywords with low difficulty and high search volume.
Remember – if you can’t find the right topic, repeat the process all over again. Trust me it works!
And the last step is – “stealing” competitors backlinks.
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