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How to Attract Organic Links and Mentions with Content

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What journalists, freelance writers, and more experienced bloggers need are current statistics, original graphics, and thought leader insights.

How to Attract Organic Links and Mentions with Content

So if you want sites — and especially the largest sites — to link to you, give them what they want.

Choose a Trending Topic

If you want your content to be evergreen, choose a trending topic that will be popular for years to come — not just right now.

Offer multiple different and highly interesting angles to give the writers ideas on why they will want to include you in their new content or add you to existing, ranking content they’re upgrading.

Current Statistics

There probably won’t be much volume on keyword phrases related to “your niche + statistics” but that doesn’t matter.

People searching for stats write for large publications that can get your brand seen and possibly provide you with a valuable incoming link.

Sources for statistics should be (but aren’t always) attributed and linked.

Date your content and cite your sources. If writers find statistics they would like to use but cannot easily find the source or tell whether they are current, they will leave and find another site to link to instead of yours!

Original Graphics with Permission to Republish

Take your industry statistics and create original, SEO-optimized infographics and you could land a lot of targeted incoming links. The more current and colorful the image, the better.

Dark backgrounds are typically better because most sites have light content areas. Create shorter versions as well as long infographics as some sites prefer those.

If you only want to make one image, have sections with clearly defined horizontal boundaries so they can screen capture and use individual sections.

Be sure to make it obvious the writer is welcome to republish your graphics. Do this by offering an embed code, or providing text at the bottom of the content giving express permission for re-use.

You can also include that type of information on a page on your site. Once writers identify a site that permits republication of their research and graphics, they will specifically search that site for material for future content.

Thought Leader Sound Bites for Quotes

Include short, insightful quotes in your content, especially from your founder and C-suite executives. If you’d like to garner more incoming links and mentions, regularly add sound bites on current topics to your content.

When a journalist needs to meet a deadline, they can’t always reach a thought leader in time. Put what they are likely to need where they can find it, ideally on your site (so it gets the link or mention).

Twitter can work, too, but your brand may or may not get mentioned or linked. According to Brandwatch, journalists are the largest, most active group of verified accounts on Twitter at 24.6%.

PR Daily reported that 83% of journalists use Twitter, but most still want email pitches.

Sites that are fed into Google News often choose to tie a new story into an existing trending story within 24 hours. Unless the topic is so hot that there will be multiple stories, they need it now. Be the brand that delivers it.

How to Attract Organic Links

Here’s an example of an infographic from NowSourcing that has all the factors I mentioned above:

  • Hot topic that will be trending for years to come
  • Offer interesting angles
  • An infographic with clearly defined horizontal sections
  • Current statistics
  • Colorful headers for each section
  • Quotable soundbites

This is going to be a popular topic now and for many years. As a writer who contributes on multiple sites, I could easily use all or part of this infographic in many different topics for several sites.

If I were doing a post about The History and Future of the Gig Economy, I could use just the top section of the infographic:

Gig Economy Infographic gigworker the history and future of the gig economy

I often use a section of an infographic for the featured image in content and then include the full infographic at the bottom. Or I might use just that one section and link it to the infographic as I’ve done here.

A writer could create subheadings about sections of the full infographic below and then put each section of the image with their own text to make it more interesting.

Another benefit of doing that is being able to push each image out to social media separately. So you can promote your content more heavily without annoying your followers.

Offer Ideation (Ideas for Writers to Use)

Scroll through the infographic below. Notice that each section would make a great post title:

  • Is Gig Work Really New?
  • Moving Work to the Web
  • There are Apps for GigWorkers
  • Gig Work Today: Who Chooses Gig Work
  • How Do Gig Workers Use Their Extra Income?
  • What Gig Work Means for the Economy
  • Economy of the Future: Gig Work
  • How Gig Work is Reshaping the Law
  • The Rights of Gig Workers: Contractor vs. Employee

Not much thought was required to turn their sections into new pieces of content with a ready-made image to fit in it. See how they did the work for the writer?

I could do an entire series just on that one infographic. A person could even launch an entire new site with these topics!

Ready to Go Attract Organic Links?

Hopefully, you can see how GigWorker and NowSourcing managed to hand writers everything they need to craft great content and include them in it.

Granted that Brian Wallace at NowSourcing has over a decade of experience in how to do the research and come up with the topics. So he has an advantage.

But you can do this, too. It just takes some thought and creativity.

 

Infographic The Future of the Gig Economy

Questions? Ideas? Ask them in the comments.

 

Top image credit: Pixabay + Canva

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Gail Gardner

Small Business Marketing Strategist at GrowMap
Gail Gardner is the founder of GrowMap.com. She is a Small Business Marketing Strategist who mentors small businesses, bloggers, and freelancers. After 23 years in the field with IBM and 5.5 years managing AdWords accounts, her focus shifted to small business marketing strategy. GrowMap.com is listed by Cision as a Top 100 Site for Marketers and has received three Small Business Influencer Awards from Small Business Trends. Named by D&B a Top 50 SMB Influencer on Twitter, you can follow Gail @GrowMap and on LinkedIn.
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Comments

  4. Very-helpful And informative content Thanks for Sharing with us. i read lots of Blog posts and i never heard of a topic like this. i love this topic you made about the bloggers bucket list.

    Reply

  7. Hi, thank You for very interesting post. I´ve been blogging for very short time now with just a little traffic and mostly paid on social media. I hope to implement Your tips and grow bigger. I see You have a plenty knowledge about SEO. Would be great to share some of Your knowledge here. Take care and kee posting
    Leoš would love you to read ..The best scenic viewpoints in BarcelonaMy Profile

    Reply

  11. Hello Gail,
    I want to genuinely thank you for this SEO guide.
    I was struggling to get a birds-eye view of what needs to be done and really helped me with that!
    This is by far the best guide that I found by a longshot!
    Thanks again and keep up the good work.

    Reply

  13. Gail,
    I recently created a couple of infographics and would like to ask your recommendation how to promote them, in addition, to having them on my blog. I posted them on Pinterest and submitted them for review to a couple of free infographics directories.
    Paid directories that I found looked semi-abandoned and not worthy of submission. Perhaps I didn’t manage to find the right ones…

    What else can be done?
    Thank you!
    Vera would love you to read ..How to draw a rose step-by-step guide for beginnersMy Profile

    Reply

    • Hi Vera,

      You could seek out sites in related niches and contact them to offer your infographic. But if you do that, please do them a favor and don’t message/email to ask for permission to send it.

      I don’t know whose bright idea that was, but I find it very annoying. Why take my time twice? Why not just send it the first time?
      Gail Gardner would love you to read ..CEO Shares Tips for Marketing Your Small BusinessMy Profile

      Reply

  15. This is such a useful article for bloggers. Personally, I do tend to try and produce mostly evergreen content. But occasionally, being on the pulse with a current affairs or trending story can really get your blog out there. People do click on things that are current.

    Going to look into the Exploding Topics that one of the comments above alluded to!
    Jo Boyne would love you to read ..Why I’ll Never Buy Another HotpointMy Profile

    Reply

  17. Excellent points, Gail! I’m starting to plan new strategies for my site’s SEO campaign this year and this post offered me broader ideas. I’ve seen a lot of blogs that contain infographics and indeed it’s a lot appealing. Plus, it makes it easier for readers to understand the idea of the topic. These tips are really helpful. Thanks!

    Reply

  18. Gail,

    Thanks for your heads-up! I have been following a set of bloggers regularly and I would love to link their articles whenever I publish new post on my blog. I strongly believe in their content value.
    That means, consistency in producing valuable content would get good readership (like me) as well as links and mentions. Hope I am right, Gail.
    Jessica Jones would love you to read ..WordPress Speed Optimization Hacks – Speed Up Your Site To Load Within A SecondMy Profile

    Reply

  20. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and experience, I appreciate that.
    The conclusion is predictable – content which is worth to share will gather mentions and backlinks.
    I’ll bear in mind some of the features you provided in the article and implement them to skyscraper technique.

    Greetings!

    Reply

  24. So true that the gig economy is not new, but is definitely on the rise due to a branding effort! We have also created a handy guide for those interested in creating engaging content in 2020, get those keywords going and answer all of your customers questions! Check it out and let us know what you think (and yeah we’re a team of giggers!) https://www.joltspace.com/post/if-content-is-king-who-s-queen-your-12-step-guide-to-content-marketing-success

    Reply

  32. Wow!
    This is very helpful idea for all blogger. I am starting blogging so it’s good way for me. Thanks for sharing this knowledge article.

    Reply

  35. I think “evergreen content” and “trending topics” are opposites. Trends come and go, whereas evergreen content is good for (potentially) forever.

    Neither is right or wrong – trending topics tend to have higher returns on investment, whereas evergreen content (as its name suggests) lasts.
    Joe would love you to read ..The 2019 Cincinnati Cybersecurity ConferenceMy Profile

    Reply

    • Hi Joe,

      Sometimes trends don’t last long, but other times they trend for years. Take mobile responsiveness, for example. If you write about a trend that is short-lived, you aren’t going to get nearly the benefit of writing for something that is ramping up and will continue.

      For example, smart homes aren’t going away anytime soon (although they should). A.I. is another topic that will be talked about for years as is crypto-currency.
      Gail Gardner would love you to read ..Additional SerpStat Discount for Their Ho-Ho-Holiday Limited Time SaleMy Profile

      Reply

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