Writing for backlinks sounds complex, but it isn’t. The best writers and bloggers do it naturally, by creating such standout, excellent content that people who come across it are automatically keen to share it with their network, and to link to it from their site. This helps to not only bring your website to the attention of a wider audience, but it strengthens your visibility to Google and improves your SEO.
The most challenging aspect of creating engaging content to attract backlinks is writing copy that’s smart, interesting and well-presented enough to grab human attention, AND optimised enough to attract Google’s attention too!
Here are some handy tricks of the trade…
- Breaking up your copy into a list (for e.g. a Top 5) or into different sub-topics (like Pros and Cons, Do’s and Don’ts) can help to avoid the piece looking too ‘blocky’. Here’s a great example.
- You’re aiming for a minimum of 300-350 words to keep search engines happy (which sounds short but can look looong) so think about ways your information can be visually interesting. Great photos, videos and infographics all work well – ensure they’re relevant, credited and optimised. Even alternating font can help!
- Be fun, but keep it clean. Many brands and webmasters won’t link to content which is controversial, political, ‘adult’ or with bad language. Bear this in mind, but avoid writing like a textbook – this is the opposite of what people are searching for to link to! Intelligent but interesting, on-topic but enjoyable – that’s the sweet spot we’re aiming for.
- When you’re writing for backlinks, always try to create content that doesn’t exist elsewhere. If there are many similar blogs, pages and articles out there in the world, your job is harder. You’re up against a lot of competition. Choose less popular topics or fresh ways of phrasing your topics (research your keywords first, always!) and you’ll stand out from the crowd.
Read more about backlinks here or for more comments from 101 SEO Experts, click HERE to read this expanded article.