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How to make your content linkworthy
If you really want to rank well on search engines, you need to build inbound links from external, quality sites. Google looks at two sets of factors when assessing a web page – on the page factors, which is essentially what you write on your own site – and off the page factors which is essentially what other sites say about you.
Writing and publishing good articles is one of the most effective ways to build inbound links. This happens in two main ways:
• If you publish good quality articles on your own site, then bloggers, information sites, resource sites and industry experts may quote your article and link to it.
• If you submit your articles for publication on external websites that carry editorial, then you’ll get exposure to a new audience and you can publish a link to your site as a credit for writing.
You can be useful, topical or controversial – it doesn’t really matter – but to get these inbound links your content needs to be something special. You need to be passionate about your industry and show your passion with every word you write.
Your content needs to offer value in three ways:
(i) Direct benefit to the end user – it allows them to do something.
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(ii) Direct benefit to your own business – it must help you generate leads or sell stuff.
(iii) Benefit to the website that will link to you – by linking to you they provide something useful to their readers.
Here’s what you have to do:
1. Take part in the online community that exists around your product area. Identify news
and information sites, blogs, directories, social media sites and others that service your industry. Read them regularly and comment on articles and contribute - start to build an online reputation for yourself.
2. Write and publish keyword rich articles or blog posts on your own site. These articles should
be useful to your customers and members of your community. From the article you write, reference and link to articles that you’ve written previously.
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Section 1: Web content and your business | How to make your content linkworthy
3. When you’re reading or commenting on external websites, mention and link to articles you’ve published on your own site when you’re sure that they’re appropriate and add value to any discussion.
4. Mention your articles on social media sites and encourage other people to reference your articles by including icons at the bottom of your article.
5. Publish articles you’ve written as a newsletter and encourage people to sign up to a mailing list. Once you’ve established a list, you’ll find
that each edition of your newsletter will generate a number of links from people on your list linking to your articles.
6. Provide your content as an RSS feed. This is relatively simple to do and
will again bring your content to the attention people
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How to get sticky and go viral
Jared Fogle was an obese student who lost over 200 pounds in weight on a diet of Subway sandwiches, and his story was covered in USA Today, on ABC News and on Oprah (the public relations consultant’s holy grail). Jared’s simple and true tale helped to significantly increase Subway’s sales figures.
In the 1960s a rumor started that razor blades were being put in candy and fruit for trick or treaters on Halloween night. This simple and untrue story made 60% of US parents scared for their children and caused the states of California and New Jersey to enact new laws to deal with a problem that didn’t exist.
These are both examples of ‘sticky ’ stories that went viral and they are given in Chip and Dan Heath’s excellent book Made to Stick , the inspiration for this chapter.
Whether they are true or urban legends, sticky stories get remembered, have an impact and can go viral, spreading beyond the power of any promotion. Sticky content on websites gets visitors and quality inbound links from other websites, which can lead to yet more visits via search engines. Remember,
The ultimate goal for your website content is that it sticks and goes viral. Here’s how to make that happen…
Your checklist for getting sticky and viral
Made to Stick gives the following six principles of
stickiness. Use them as a checklist for making sticky viral content:
1. Simplicity – concentrate on a single core issue
2. Unexpectedness – to get attention, be interesting
and remembered
3. Concreteness – use real things and people
4. Crediblity – you must be believed
5. Emotions – to make people care
Made to Stick
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search engines love links.
6. Stories – people communicate with stories
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Let’s look in a little more detail at the separate parts of that acronym for Success.
Simplicity – concentrate on a single core issue
‘If you say three things, you don’t say anything’.
Your readers will respond better when given just one message to think about. Only one core point in your story can be remembered and passed on to other people. So you must make sure you find the heart of your story and lead with it in your headline and your first paragraph.
When you find that core, present it as simply as possible. For example, during Bill Clinton’s 1992 Presidential campaign, his message was focused and simple (and is still remembered):
“It’s the economy, stupid.”
Unexpectedness – get attention, be interesting and remembered
The familiar and the expected will not even be noticed.
If you want your content to be noticed, remembered and passed on then it must come with a headline that is unexpected, surprising, seemingly illogical and perhaps even shocking.
Oscar Wilde was a master of witticisms that grab the reader ’s attention by reversing a piece of generally accepted wisdom. A century later they still work:
“It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.”
“The only thing (in the world) worse than being talked about is not being talked about.”
Another favorite (not Oscar ’s) is: “Boy Eats Own Head”. That got your attention, didn’t it?
Concreteness – use real things and people
To be quickly understood and remembered, your content must be about real people, objects and events.
For example, proverbs last thousands of years, cross language barriers and the best use real (concrete) things to explain abstract ideas. “A leopard cannot change its spots” can be pictured, easily understood and remembered. “People’s innate nature
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Section 1: Web content and your business | How to get sticky and go viral
doesn’t change” requires the reader to understand what “innate” and “nature” mean and there is nothing to picture.
Abstract language is the enemy of clear communication. If a reader doesn’t already understand your abstract idea then it takes them time to follow explanations that are usually ambiguous. With the amount of effort required they would struggle to remember it and have difficulty explaining it to anyone else.
Credibility – be believed
A story has to be taken seriously and believed to be passed on with zeal.
Small touches of real-life detail can give the required credibility. This is why urban legends always happened to ‘a friend of mine’ and in a well known nearby location.
Emotions – make people care
People connect with emotional stories. So you need to know what makes people emotional. For example, if you want to raise money for hungry children in Africa you will get more response by telling the story of one living child than talking about a million dead. People are emotional about real children they can see and picture.
Almost universally emotional topics you can use include money, sex, success, humor, family, children, hometowns and mother countries.
However, your website will likely be targeting a niche audience with its own prejudices, tastes and emotional triggers. Define your audience and identify their tastes and prejudices. For quick help ask yourself what newspaper and websites your audience reads and then look at what is written about in those media.
Stories – people communicate with them
To go viral your content needs to be used in real conversations. And real people use stories to talk to each other so you must give them a story.
Picture yourself around the water cooler in an office. Will your fellow workers want to hear about your content using your headline and lead paragraph? Imagine you sell something dull like photocopiers…
If your photocopier story has a feature-led headline that says, for example, a machine can copy “up to 70 pages per minute” then who even knows if that is good or not? Nobody will talk about that.
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