Getting on the first page of Google for a keyword can transform your business. Organic search is a powerful and lucrative marketing channel, but it is one that is becoming more difficult to earn and maintain due to increased competition and algorithm changes.
Despite the challenges, there are still several web businesses that continue to hold strong SEO positions due to the strength and structure of their web content, which earns their site visibility across hundreds or even thousands of keywords.
The SEO experts from Digital Next have worked across thousands of websites over the past 6 years. In this post, they’ve shared the types of content tactics that attract links and shares for their clients and their own web properties.
1. Case studies
Case studies are one of our favorites because they allow the website to publish unique content. This makes the content the single reference source for the information, which will incentivize web publishers to share the content on their platforms.
However, for this tactic to work; you need to do more than just slap the word ‘Case Study’ on the content and hope that it performs. Your case study must appeal to the wants or desires of the audience in your market.
Brian Dean is an SEO marketer that has executed this well over the past decade, with his most popular case study angle featuring his “Skyscraper Technique”.
His case studies typically focus on using a tactic in the SEO industry that will help transform his website’s visitors’ organic search traffic performance. In the case of the Skyscraper technique, his case study details his success from publishing content that’s already been proven to generate shares, links, and traffic.
2. Long-form guides
Detailed long-form guides are very effective when they are published for the right audience in the right niche. Google tends to reward long-form guides that are 2000 words or more. People’s natural reactions are to share these very detailed posts since they believe that the content is valuable due to the length of the content.
SEO marketers like Neil Patel have built their SEO following and authority simply by publishing guides for their audience.
Below is a screenshot of the top-performing content from Neil Patel’s website.
Publishing content that generates shares positively impacts the site’s SEO performance; which earns the site high volumes of SEO traffic.
3. Become a subject-matter expert in a microniche.
Publishing content that positions your business as an authority in a micro-niche topic will attract visitors and shares and will ensure that your site’s content becomes a ‘go-to’ resource on the web.
One of the web businesses that’s implemented this tactic really well is Criminally Prolific, which was developed by Dmitry Dragilev. The business, which is in the PR (Public Relations) niche published content around the DIY PR for startups.
The graph below from Ahrefs shows the increase in links from referring domains from 0 to over 1300 since 2014.
In Ahrefs, you can see a snippet of the top content that has helped generate shares of his content across the web.
4. Publish Income Reports
If your business is allowed to disclose its income publicly, a great way to gain shares and inbound links is by sharing income reports. The web publishers that share this content are usually looking for ways or inspiration to improve their revenue streams.
The data that is shared is primary data that is unique to the website.
A really good example of this is the income report series that was documented by Matt Woodward and that was a part of his “Zero link building” SEO experiment. Although he focused on doing no link building, the content has attracted 156 DoFollow links to the content from the likes of Niel Patel, and other prominent affiliate marketers.
Below is a snippet of his December 2017 income report, where he disclosed earning over $12,000 in a single month.
Below is a screenshot from Ahrefs, which shows how many link shares he has received over time as a result of consistently sharing income reports.
5. Build a tool for your industry.
Although it technically isn’t publishing traditional content, creating and publishing a web tool that helps solve a problem for your target audience will generate shares and traffic for your web business quickly. Web tools that have successfully scaled with this tactic in the SEO industry include Pitchbox, Ahrefs, Lemlist, Hunter.io, and many others.
Below is a screenshot from Ahrefs that shows the rapid growth of Lemlist in less than 18 months.
Pitchbox has been around longer, but have grown their backlinks consistently year after year.
6. USG content platforms
This is great if you want to build a sense of community around your web content. It does require a bit more management than other types of content. However, you can build a community that can populate content and facilitate engagement without having to invest heavily in content creation of your own.
Platforms such as Uber, Deliveroo, Facebook, and Airbnb have successfully leveraged their platforms for this and have contributed to their site’s large user base, and sharing.
The screenshot below shows Airbnb’s growth to beyond 40 million links to their platform.
Your business can implement all of these tactics and get superior results over 12 to 24 months. But even committing to just one of these tactics will compel web publishers in your industry to share your site’s content and earn links and traffic that will contribute to the site’s SEO performance growth. Make a plan to publish at least 12 pieces of content over the next 12 months using a mix of these tactics and watch the growth in the site’s SEO visibility and traffic grow exponentially.
Written By Nathan Elly:
Nathan Elly is the branch manager for Digital Next, a digital marketing agency based in Melbourne, Australia. When he isn’t busy optimizing web marketing campaigns, you can find him supporting his favourite football team or enjoying a friendly game of futsal.
