How to write content that gets links | Insights | Varn

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20 July 2021

How to write content that gets links

Link Building as an industry has developed into its own subset of SEO that really has the power to build your brand and earn you good rankings within the search engines. This is why many websites allocate a large part of their budget to outreach campaigns focusing on target keywords, and link types. 

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Whilst outreach and digital PR is an important part of the pie, having some organic links which are generated passively through your website certainly makes up an equally tasty slice. 

Client case study: HSE Network 

Organic links are hard to earn in a sense, you need to build up the authority and earn the trust of web users before they link to you; but if you are providing value, your content should generate links. 

Publishing and media companies may have an edge here. We found that with our health and safety publishing client HSE Network, we were able to generate links organically, and from some pretty high-profile sources. 

Our client can now count links from the likes of Jacobs, Columbia Southern University, and Lancaster University.

Whilst these links may not necessarily be targeted towards keywords that are going to drive revenue, they are all going to help. After some work our client did with the industry standards BSI Group, their article on ISO 45003 (A new best practice standard for psychological safety) now ranks 3rd for its name term in Google, which in turn has generated some more links from industry publications. 

These organic links have supported the targeted link building which now means the HSE Network health and safety jobs page ranks on the first page for the search term ‘health and safety jobs’ driving a tonne of relevant traffic to the site.

This is part of the ‘rich get richer’ element of SEO, but if you are writing good content and remaining consistent with your publication, you can start to climb and benefit from the snowball effect that many content websites get when they grow and develop over time. 

How can I start with my content strategy?

In one of our previous articles, we offered guidance on where to start when it comes to developing a content strategy that matches your search marketing goals. If you are looking for a good place to get started with content, then take a look at Google. Try some simple searches around the types of keywords and content you want to rank for. If like our client, you are looking to rank for COSHH (which are important regulations in health and safety) try looking at the ‘people also searched for results’. 

These are other searches that users are running in Google and form a great place to start when it comes to writing useful content whilst targeting popular longer tail keywords. 

Tools for content ideation

Other tools such as Answer the Public’ and Google Trends are good for synthesising content topics and titles and will help you incorporate useful content within your overall strategy. 

Building links organically takes time, and a fair amount of upfront investment if you want to do it consistently over the long term. If you want to build links over the short term to build good SEO over the long term, then this is where outreach often comes in. To find out more about proactive link building and content outreach, get in touch with the experts at Varn. 

Article by: David, SEO Account Manager More articles by David

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