Link attraction is usually a matter of good content, but content doesn’t just leap off people’s pages. It might seem that successful bloggers or information sites just happen to have their content promoted everywhere, but this is no accident. Smart site owners find ways of promoting their content to attract links.
The internet is a vast sea of content, and your little pages are only a small part of it. This is true whether you’re operating a 100-page site, or a 10,000-page site. Each page really stands alone, and your content is not likely to attract links unless you find a way to promote it.
Getting your content to the point where it attracts links on its own takes a little bit of work. You can talk to us at SEO Consult Australia about the kind of content that attracts links. Here’s a step by step guide to honing your content’s presentation and enhancing its availability to increase its chances of enhancing links.
- Prep the content itself. The content that is going to fly off your pages has certain qualities such as timeliness and a certain style in its formatting. There is a fair amount of advice out there on the qualities of magnetic content, and a little research should provide you with some good ideas. For content to travel, however, it requires a slightly different appearance. Pictures are certainly an aid in catching the reader’s eye, as is clear text and a concise message in the title. Look at the popular articles on sites like Digg for formatting tips.
- Pave the way. Think about the number of times you’ve bothered to forward an interesting article or flag a good video. Chances are, you haven’t had to go to much trouble to do so. If readers have to highlight text to forward it, they probably won’t bother. Embed ‘email this’ and other handy links.
- Advertise. This doesn’t mean taking out a search advertisement to promote just one page of your site. Rather, it means doing what all successful bloggers do, namely commenting in forums and on other blogs and linking back to relevant posts on their own blog. The advantage of this is that you establish yourself more firmly as a helpful participant in your industry, seed links, and promote your content all in one simple step.
- Push. It’s sometimes good to be pushy, and such is certainly the case when it comes to attracting inbound links through content. Make it clear to your site’s users that you would appreciate links back to your pieces. Sometimes all you have to do is ask.
- Make the most out of it. If you do succeed in enticing your users to share content, you should make the most out of the situation. Supplying linking sites with tags and hyperlinks means that you retain control over how your link is presented, an enormous advantage when it comes to your search engine optimisation. Very few site owners will go to the trouble of rewriting your tags if you’ve supplied them.
