How To Create Content That Gets Backlinks While You Sleep

Helvis Smoteks

November 1, 2018

How To Create Content That Gets Backlinks While You Sleep

What is Linkbait? It's how you get more backlinks

What exactly is “linkbait”?

It’s essentially a link-magnet content. As the name suggests, it’s the kind of content that fetches you lots of backlinks kinda sorta by itself.

We all want our posts and videos to get us traffic, links, and money. But not all of us can, as we’re not all content-blessed.

So, here’s a guide explaining how we mortals, can get such success with our content. Specifically, success with getting many backlinks to our content.

The Basics of Linkbait Content

Obviously, to make your own linkbait content, you need to know what a linkbait content looks like.

Don’t you break a sweat!

We analyzed the top backlink-blessed pages across different industries. Our research helped to understand that there are certain aspects that help your content get backlinks while you sleep and here they and here are the takeaways:

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 is that the average amount of words in each article was 2,409. It’s a lot but not way-over-the-top-TOO much. So, amount of words and the number of links don’t necessarily go together.

So, the basic idea is to create content that appeals to a large set of audience that is likely to add links to your post.

Together with our research, we discovered that there are 3 steps to creating link-magnet content:

Choose the type of content you want to create,
Find the right topic,
Create the content,
Get the first backlinks.

This might seem like the way most content is created, but there are several differences that we will discuss further in this post.

Types of Linkbait Content

Believe it or not, all linkbait content can be divided into four groups. And here they are:

1. Controversial News or Entertainment

I think Justin Beiber getting engaged to Hailey Baldwin would be the perfect example here. I don’t really drool over him or his music.

And yet, this news popped up in my news feed.

You get my point now? Just by reporting on something or someone in a timely manner, you get so much in return in traffic and backlinks.

Trending news like this one will get shared widely and virally including social media. So keep a watch for things like this.

2. How-to Guides or Tutorials

This is almost evergreen content. It could be about anything in your niche.

A Google search for “how to install home theater” suggests a video from 2010 as the featured, top result. See what I mean by evergreen?

With content like this, you can sit on your throne for a long while. You only need to update this content as and when some innovation is introduced.

3. Qualitative or Quantitative Research

Doing a massive study or research is rather a tedious task. But if you’ve done one, then just wow, good job!

By massive research, I mean something like, “1 Million Search Result Analysis”.

It’s just an example; but, imagine how attractive that topic/content would be to SEO expert, and most of them happen to own a blog where they constantly link to another content.

As amazing as that is, be sure to include your sources and that those sources are credible (enough).

4. Free Stuff or Tools

Last but not least, free stuff. You, me, everybody loves ‘em!

In fact, most people chose free stuff/tools overpaid according to XYZ (common sense, huh?).

Let’s say you have created a Free backlink checker. That’s link-worthy, right? Actually, we did exactly that and it brought a lot of backlinks:

Something like that is just very helpful. If you don’t have the resources to make your own app or tool, go on a website such as Producthunt. Then try to partner up with them and embed that tool on your website.

Once you’ve decided what kind of content you want to create, you can move on to finding/choosing the right topic & keywords to make sure your page ranks on the first page on Google.

Choosing a Linkbait Content Topic

The easiest and best way to select a good linkbait content topic is to look at available linkbait content out there. You can either do a Google search for a bunch of topics you like or use a backlink research tool such as Linkody or Ahrefs to see what your competitors are up to.

Google search is a no-brainer. Search a few keywords/topics you have in mind and see what seems to rank well.

If you’re using a backlink research tool, then take a look at the top pages of your competitor(s) to look at their most successful content. This would definitely provide some inspiration with your topic ideas.

Note: The fact that you think this topic will get a lot of backlinks is not enough. To get people to read your post, create an article, and then add a link to your post – those are 3 steps that take a lot of time. So, your post must be really AWESOME.

And that’s exactly why have to look for these three things before you get started with creating your content. The tool we use to find link-magnet content is Linkody.

Compare your topic to your competitors’ similar content topics. See if they’ve already had success with their topic(s). If no one has content on that topic, then it’s a green light, Sir.
1. But, if they do have some content but aren’t quite successful, then you might wanna consider changing your topic
Once you’ve pulled up a handful of similar content from competitors, see if you can create content that’s about 3 times better than theirs.
1. It has to be that much better in every aspect, ‘cause remember that your goal is to provide value to your visitors.
The last but most important task is to do keyword research to see if a similar topic is already ranking high.
1. If your domain authority 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.
2. You would do that with a keyword research tool such as KWfinder.

Go through the last 3 steps a few times and repeat the process until you find the perfect topic.

Onto to the content creation we go!

Creating Million-Dollar Content

What if I told you that this was the easiest part? Believe me, because it’s true.

So here’s how you create a content that’s 3-10 times better; a content that can compete with other similar content.

Collect 4 similar content for this topic. Make it 10 if the competition is high.
Drink from those chalices of knowledge
Put together all the best parts of those content
Make a sort of Frankenstein’s monster-angel out of those collected parts
Include your own perspective and knowledge. It would be ideal if you have had previous experience in that field.
99.9% of the time the posts are missing something such as research data, descriptive images, a video interview, white-paper and so on. So add one or more of those to your linkbait content.
Get your favorite beverage (if you don’t have one, then just get some boring water) and music and sit down; sit down to write, program, sing, or whatever have you.

Pro tip: Building your content with Design and UX is mind gives impressive results. They are awesome addition to just any content.

Just one last step and it’s winner winner, linkbait dinner!

Getting the First Backlinks

Once you get here, you could hear the crowd cheering and celebrating your linkbait content already.

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. Not encouraging any sort of arson here, just sayin’.

So here’s how you can get your first backlinks easily, right off the bat. The idea is to see from where you competitors get backlinks, for similar articles, and approach those sources to get them to link to you as well.

Allow me to illustrate to you, how I did it with the Linkody tool.

Go to their analytics page on Linkody
Open their “Top Pages” page
Filter the results to find articles similar to yours
Click on the Links number
There you will see all the backlinks that page has from external sources
Prepare an email campaign to reach out to those backlink sources

Now that you got your awesome post and know where your competitor gets their links, you can assuredly ask them to link to you too.

And that’s how you make a linkbait content and that’s how you get the backlinks.

Wrappin’ It Up

Linkbait content is a link magnet that will drive massive traffic to your website/page. This increases your site’s authority with the search engines and your reputation with people for being invaluable and helpful.

Basically, there are just four types of linkbait content that will get you backlinks easily. They are as follows.

Controversial news or entertainment
How-to guides and tutorials
Researches and case studies
Free stuff & tools

Once you have selected your content, you have to research and find a topic & keywords for that content type with low difficulty and high search volume.

If you can’t land a topic right away, repeat the process a few times. Assuredly you will find one, the perfect one.

And the last step would be getting some sources pointing aka linking to your content. The simplest way to get started with that is by “stealing” competitors’ backlink sources.

Good luck folks, happy linkbaiting!

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You may also want to read: 6 Steps To Cleverly Get Natural Backlinks For Your Website

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