Linkable Assets: Importance And Best Practices in Link Building

There is nothing wrong with being a little bit introverted, right? But it’s not about your content, which shouldn’t love being “quiet and out of the spotlight”.

Instead, you should ensure your content is “outgoing and popular,” and other websites want to link to it. So, you need to consider creating linkable assets to naturally attract backlinks from other websites and increase your SERP rankings and traffic.

Interesting research from HubSpot proves that long-form content gets an average of 77.2% more links than short articles. And having compelling and insightful content assets in your blog can have a huge positive impact on your link building efforts.

So, keep reading the article to discover the advantages and best practices of creating linkable content.

First, let’s properly understand what linkable assets are, anyway.

What are linkable assets?

Linkable assets are any type of valuable and useful content that naturally attracts links from other websites. Basically, it is a well-researched piece of content with a fresh perspective and deep insights that delivers value to readers and can increase your website’s visibility.

So, your link-worthy content should solve some problems your readers have and answer questions they are curious about.

Linkable content can even establish your page as an authority. And we all know that the importance of backlinks lies in how well your pages peform. On top of this, they can continue to attract backlinks for a long time. But let’s discuss the perks of building content assets in more detail.

Why you should care about linkable assets

You want to improve your website performance, right? Then, remember that creating strong and strategic linkable assets is key to attracting backlinks and ultimately reaching that goal.

Here is how this type of content can help you accomplish several goals:

✓ Improve SERP ranking
Having backlinks from reputable websites is a sign that your content is relevant and authoritative for search engines. So, having significant content assets can naturally attract links from those sites and boost your search engine rankings.

✓ Increase website traffic
What is great about linkable assets is that they can boost organic traffic because when other websites point to your valuable content, they guide their readers to visit your website.

✓ Establish your website as an authority
Content assets can not only boost your website’s visibility on search engines but also make your brand’s authority and credibility even stronger.

So, there is no doubt that creating linkable content is a powerful link building tactic. But the question is finding out the content types that have more linkability and then putting your efforts into creating those.

What are the main types of linkable assets?

We can all agree that great content creation is the power of your link building strategy, right?

Now, let’s discuss the main types of linkable content that you should invest effort into creating.

Guides and tutorials

Guides and tutorials are one of the most popular linkable assets. The reason is that they are typically long-form articles that fully cover the topic, giving all the necessary information readers may need.

But to make your guide or tutorial a linkable asset, follow these tactics:

✓ Ensure it is relevant and up-to-date
You need to keep your guide or tutorial up-to-date by updating it regularly. Relevant content has more chances to be linked to over time. Plus, search engines love updated content and make it more discoverable.

✓ Make it deep yet easy to understand
Your guide should be insightful and deep to attract backlinks. But it should be in simple, easy-to-understand language without heavy and technical jargon.

✓ Add your fresh and unique perceptive
When creating your guides and tutorials, you definitely reference expert opinions. But it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t add your unique and fresh perspective on that topic to make it even more link-worthy.

✓ Give practical and actionable tips
Your linkable asset should be helpful, so to increase the linkability of your content, you should include actionable steps, checklists, or templates that readers may need in your content.

By following these tips, you can create guides and tutorials that people will like and other websites will link to.

Case studies

It’s a fact that people love stories. So, case studies have become popular linkable assets because they tell a story about how certain products or services are used. Great case studies demonstrate how customers solve their pain points with the help of a product or service. They also show their value and give insights into their effectiveness.

Case studies should also have a clear structure to show a journey from problem to solution and actual results. Plus, your linkable case studies should be visually appealing and include images and graphs. If you want to boost your website’s traffic, looking at different examples of link building case studies can be a good way to learn about the effectiveness of other companies’ SEO strategies.

Great case studies shouldn’t just tell about product value but also prove it by showing real numbers like increased conversion or revenue. Without a doubt, those studies should include quotes and testimonials to make content more credible.

An Ahrefs’ article discusses how famous grammar checker and writing assistant Grammarly’s website gets significant organic traffic.

This great case study gives accurate numbers about what kind of content performs best and why updating their old blog posts impacts search traffic. These important insights will be helpful for others in building their SEO strategy.

Image source: https://ahrefs.com/blog/grammarly-seo/

Although creating case studies can be time-consuming, all your efforts will be worth it. The reason is that they are powerful content assets that naturally attract backlinks.

List posts or listicles

Other important linkable assets are list posts or listicles. They are engaging content with a simple structure and easy-to-follow format. Listicles break down a topic into a numbered list and concisely tell information.

Remember, creating listicles is not about giving readers a list of things. Instead, it should create real value for readers by sharing actionable tips on what steps to take.

First, you need to find blog content ideas that will be relevant to your audience and will interest them. Knowing that their audience is interested in digital marketing tools, HubSpot gives a list of the best digital marketing tools and talks about their benefits, features and also pricing.

Image source: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/digital-marketing-tools

Although listicles have titles such as “Top 10,” “10 Ways to,” or “The Best,” in the next step you need to compose blog titles that are catchy and descriptive.

Then, make sure to support your points with data or statistics and you will add credibility to your listicles. Don’t forget to add pictures, cool visuals, and charts to make them more engaging.

Lastly, optimize your listicles by including primary keywords and adding meta descriptions and titles to make it search engine-friendly.

Statistics

Original studies also have great potential to gain backlinks because they offer unique insights that readers can’t find in other articles. So, they are link-worthy content that other websites want to link to as an authoritative source.

To build original studies, you need to do research or surveys to collect fresh and important data about industry-related topics. In this case, other websites may link to them to complement their content and give their readers additional context.

Semrush’s article “Top 106 SEO Statistics” provides 106 of the most accurate and relevant SEO statistics and shares key takeaways that can improve readers’ SEO and content marketing efforts.

Image source: https://www.semrush.com/blog/seo-statistics/

Remember, to make your statistics a linkable asset, you need to ensure they are accurate and up-to-date. Valuable and well-presented statistics will help you naturally attract links.

Infographics

Infographics are another popular type of linkable asset that presents complex data easily in a more digestible format by breaking it down into chunks. Don’t take just our word, as the study done by HubSpot shows that when creating, 30% of marketers share infographics.

You need to make infographics more linkable by making them visually appealing. Lastly, you should add findings from your own original research or incorporate trustworthy data from studies that reputable companies did. This way, you will have content that other websites would like to link to.

In this example, Ahrefs included an infographic in their original study that discovered that 96.55% of content gets no traffic from Google. It shows in a simple yet visually appealing way the percentage of web pages getting different amounts of visits. For example, 13.6B pages get 0 visits, and only 50.3M gets 1001+ visits.

How to build linkable assets in 5 ways

After speaking about the great advantages of linkable assets and their main types, it’s finally time to discuss best practices for creating content that people want to link to.

Understand who your audience is

Your goal is to deliver value to your website visitors, right? So, your first step should be identifying your target audience and learning everything about them. You need to collect data about their interests and preferences. Then you should learn about their demographic group, location, and profession. After this, you can check what kind of content they engage in the most.

In the next step, conduct keyword research to find out what your audience is searching for. Then, naturally, that keyword in your content will increase the chances that people will find it. But let’s discuss keyword research in more detail in the next point.

Don’t forget about keyword research

With the help of keyword research, you can discover the current trends in your industry, and the pain points your audience may have. But you need to find keywords with a good balance of having high search volume and relevantly low keyword difficulty.

Let’s say you want to write outreach strategies for your blog that shares link building insights. You can use Ahrefs to find keywords with great metrics. All you need is to enter your Ahrefs account, and in the Keyword Explorer section, check terms that you consider as a target keyword.

However, if you’re not familiar with what is Ahrefs or how to use it, make sure to learn before you get started with the tool.

In this case, link building outreach is quite a good version as the Keyword Difficulty is medium (38) and the Global volume is high (1.1K).

In the next step, you should understand the search intent behind those keywords. Then, you need to create unique and valuable content that addresses your audience’s specific needs. Lastly, explore keyword clustering tips to further optimize your content.

Eventually, following these steps, you can create great keyword-rich content that can be a great linkable asset by providing clear and actionable answers to popular searches.

Prioritize evergreen content

You don’t want to create time-bound content, right?

Instead, you should dedicate effort to creating evergreen content that is valuable and relevant to readers for a long time. These types of articles will constantly bring organic traffic to your website and get you backlinks because they remain relevant for years.

To create evergreen content, first, you must choose topics that address fundamental and essential questions. Then, you need to make efforts to create compelling content around those topics.

To increase its credibility, add social proof, case studies, and important statistics that support your points. This helps increase your content’s usefulness and make it an outstanding linkable asset.

Lastly, don’t forget to update your evergreen content regularly. Although it is timeless, you need to periodically revise it anyway to add new statistics or important fresh information.

Conduct competitor analysis

In the next step, take the time to discover what linkable assets your competitors have, who is linking to them, and why.

Look at the content your competitors are producing. What topics do they cover? This can give you ideas for your own content and help you identify gaps in their coverage that you can fill.

So, let’s discuss how you define content gap via Ahrefs.
Step 1. Enter your Ahrefs account.
Step 2. Enter your company domain in the “Site Explorer” section.
Step 3. Click on the “Content Gap” section.
Step 4. Then “Show keywords that the below target rank for” section include competitors’ domain.
Step 5. In the “But the following target doesn’t rank for” section add your domain.
Step 6. Click “Show keywords” and see the keyword list.

Having this list on your hands, you can get the opportunity to find new content ideas. In this case “How to get viral on TikTok” and “How to get verified on TikTok” can be interesting article titles.

Later you can check the types and formats of content that your competitors are using as linkable assets. Find out what their content has that makes it valuable and people want to link to it.
By finding out content gaps and topics your website hasn’t covered, you get a chance to create your own unique and valuable linkable content.

Lastly, don’t hesitate to do competitor backlink analysis to get information about their SEO strategies, which can help you find new link-building opportunities.

Make your content link-worthy

Finally, let’s discuss how you can create content that people want to share in detail. Actually, it isn’t a piece of cake. But your hard work will pay off as you dedicate effort to creating linkable content, which will continually bring great results for a long time.

✓ Make sure your content is deep and informative
Engaging and visually appealing goes a long way, but you should ensure your content delivers real value to readers so people want to link to it. So, your content must be in-depth, well-researched, and include important insights.

✓ Provide unique insights or research
Your link-worthy articles should have something that readers can’t find anywhere else. So, add your unique perspective and, even better, take time to do original research about the topic.

✓ Use engaging visuals
Add infographics, charts, and images to make your content visually appealing. Try to experiment with unusual, but captivating formats such as a flipbook. This way, you maximize the chances that people will share and link to your content.

✓ Make your content interactive
Add interactive elements such as quizzes, games, and videos to encourage reader engagement. These elements make your content asset more memorable, making readers come back to your website. Consider partnering with trusted general marketing, as well as video marketing agencies, to strengthen your content strategy.

How to Promote Linkable Assets

So, you’ve created a great linkable asset. But do you need to promote it to ensure more and more people see it, right?

So, let’s discuss some simple ways you can reach that goal.

✓ Share on social media
First and foremost, why lose the amazing opportunity to share your linkable asset on social media platforms to reach a larger audience and increase your online visibility? It’s important to find social media channels where your audience hangs out and share your content there. You can also embed Instagram feed on website to showcase your latest posts and keep your audience engaged.

Utilizing social media scraping can help you better understand your audience’s preferences and tailor your content accordingly.

✓ Contact relevant websites
Reach out to websites that may have similar content and suggest backlink opportunities. Make your email personalized and emphasize how your linkable assets can benefit their audience. This is the way you increase your chances of getting backlinks.

On top of this, leveraging link building skills can play a pivotal role in maximizing the impact and reach of your linkable content.

✓ Promote via email
Send your content to your email subscribers, and this way, drive direct traffic to your website. Meanwhile, encourage email subscribers to share your outstanding content. Don’t forget to target your email marketing efforts towards relevant subscribers for better engagement.

By successfully promoting your content assets, you can ensure that their visibility and potential to get valuable backlinks are high.

To sum up

Remember that while it’s ok for people to be introverted, we can’t say the same for your website content. So, linkable assets should “shine energetically” on search engine result pages by delivering value to readers and helping them solve their questions.

Creating linkable content is easier said than done. But by putting time and effort into creating unique, deep, insightful, and keyword-rich content assets, you can expect to constantly get organic backlinks.

So don’t wait anymore and start to create content assets that can become powerful link building campaigns.

Stay with us for more fresh and insightful articles!

FAQ about linkable assets