Hello!! I’m Liz. I’m a senior content marketing executive at MacNaught Digital which is a small SEO agency based in a field in the middle of nowhere. We’re far enough out of Manchester that the biggest drama to have unfolded at the office in the time I’ve been there is when
a sheep escaped from the field behind our building and me and Christopher had to try and usher it back to its pen before it got itself into too much mischief
But yeah, when I’m not chasing sheep around the car park I am in the wonderful world of SEO working with clients in a really wide range of sectors. I’ve been doing this role for around 2 and a half years now since I finished uni and I absolutely love it. I focus mainly on producing passive link building pieces that continue to generate links over a long period of time but I also do the odd bigger PR piece and some expert comments and on site copy.
Today I’ll be talking you through what I enjoy the most which is producing these quieter, sneakier dark horses really when it comes content pieces that as the the title says, generate their own links! So let’s get started!! Not headlines, not winning awards, they’re just building links quietly whilst you crack on with the next thing.
They’re going to work in the background long after your outreach is finished. Or even before you’ve sent a single email.
So firstly I thought I’d share some examples to give you a feel for what these pieces are like and the kinds of results that can be achieved through using this strategy. Here are 3 examples, one 3 and a half years old, one that went live around a year and a half ago and another more recent piece that we published in March this year.
One older piece that we created 2 or 3 years ago now is this Stress Statistics piece that we created for a client who sells home blood testing kits for all sorts of different health markers. So the topic idea for this came from us thinking about the cortisol blood testing kit that they sell which is the hormone our bodies produce when we’re stressed. So once we’d come up with the idea we made a start on the research, conducting a study asking 2,000 UK adults how often they experience stress. This allowed us to create a pretty all encompassing piece explaining things like what causes us to feel stressed, how often people in the UK feel stressed and what age groups, genders, cities and regions are the most stressed.
So this piece took around X days to put together, the survey costed a couple of hundred pounds, and we initially worked with the lovely Hana from Shout Bravo on this who did some outreach for us back in 2018 when the piece first went live which helped generate the first 15 to 20 really solid links from some great sites. But then, after the outreach this piece continued to build links whilst we weren’t touching it. And now 3 years on, it’s built links from over 150 domains. And is still building links even though it hasn’t been updated and we’re not even working with this client anymore.
It was a PR piece but now it just does its own thing. This piece is still building links right now and we havent’ touched it since 2018. It hasn’t been updated or tweaked or pitches out since! Pattern of links building overtime is key.
Another example is this piece I wrote around a year and half ago for an internal project of ours Micro Biz Mag on the topic of Freelancers. This piece literally took a couple of hours to put together. (Don’t include dates in URLs lol)! Time live 1 year. Time taken to out together: half a day. Links generated: 112 Outreach emails sent: 0
Did some keyword research using the tool Keyword Finder to see which freelance skills were most sought-after, we also included some third party data and a couple of interviews with freelancers
As you can see, this piece literally built like no links in the first few weeks, and then after a few months it started getting picked up naturally and overtime it just organically built and built and built.
And the links were great quality as well! Again really relevant sites that I wouldn’t have even known how to pitch really such as Tide banking company, People per hour and then the likes of money magpie, the Independent etc
Another more recent example is a piece we created for the nutraceutical company Formulate Health 6 months ago. Their brand and website was only created last year and we came up with the idea of creating a piece centered around sleep, as one of their best selling supplements helps with things like relaxation and sleep. We had a look at what was out there already and couldn’t see many strong pieces of content that weren’t just roundups of other peoples statistics from previous years. So again we conducted a survey and asked 2,000 UK adults about their sleep habits and did some keyword research on the topic of insomnia and also had a look at some prescription data to find out which parts ofthe UK were being prescribed insomnia medication the most.
This piece ended up generating links from really great selection of sites like these with no outreach whatsoever. Once we secured the first link it helped the piece to rank for terms such as insomnia statistics and sleep statistics and we found that other publications just picked it up naturally. We don’t need to pitch it out and try and convince a journalist that it’s a good idea to cover. They’ve already decided they’re interested in the topic and want to create a piece on it, they’re just using your data as a resource to help them tell their story.
So first thing’s first, come up with your idea. I haven’t put a lightbulb on these slide because these types of content don’t require a lightbulb moment. It doesn’t have to be a groundbreaking idea that’s really creative and inventive and going to make the headlines. That’s not our goal here. And instead of staring at a blank canvas like this, hopefully the next few slides will help you find a go-to formula that’s right for you and that you can go back to and keep using time and time again.
People define relevance is different ways. Our definition is mainly Product servie and market, and we often go on to look at motivators and triggers for purchase
Go beyond whatyou do. Motivatersand triggers for purchase. People don’t buy supplements because they love supplementst hey buy them because they want to
Another tip is to have a think about the type of content you want to produce. So like I mentioned earlier, these passive link building pieces can take a variety of forms. So have a look online at things that could be relevant to your industry or sector. Look specifically for assets people look for when their search intent is to find a source to cite. Because when people are looking for assets to cite, they’re also very likely to be the people who will link.
Have a think about your industry or sector and have a think about relevant assets that could work for you. One example for an accountancy or finance company or maybe a business magazine or something along those lines could be an income tax calculator.
Take a look at what’s already out there and if there is something out there already, have a think about if and how you can make it more unique, more relevant, more up-to-date piece more suitable for journalists with a stronger methodology plus if there’s search volumes
Not only has it got links from over 500 domains, but the links just keep on coming! 40 of these links were generated naturally in the last 7 days. And this piece has been live and building links organically for more than 8 years.
So there you go. You’ve identified areas for potential. You’ve found one of the forms of passive link building pieces that could work for you and that are being linked to most. Now you might start looking at other areas of potential in this sphere.. Things like pension calculators or redundancy letter templates.
So we had a look to see what’s already out there and found that this piece was ranking in the number one spot for ‘beauty statistics’. We had a look and saw that the site wasn’t 100% relevant (sleep advice website), the piece was relatively well optimised and featured a lot of great global statistics. But all of the statistics were taken from third party sites and many of them were out of date. So really this piece wasn’t great, but it had the number one spot and had links from over 160 different domains! Just think what an up-to-date version, from a relevant site with loads of proprietary data could do. Have a look at what’s ranking and maybe even run it through a tool such as SEMRush to see what keywords the piece is ranking for (or isn’t ranking for that it could be) and create a better version!
Decide how you’re doing to do it - what do you need and how will you get it? If it’s a statistics piece look at ways of obtaining data - surveys, crime statistics from the government, FOI requests, prescription data, keyword data, instagram hashtag data etc. Plan out your research to ensure you have a sound methodology that journalists can rely on.
Keyword finder, Google trends which are great for finding out which countries, states or cities are most interested in a certain topic or most worried about a certain thing, the same goes with instgram and twitter hashtags you can see what kind of things are trending. And then some of my favourite ways to collect data are these huge databases such as ONS and Open Prescribing . net that allow you to have a look through tonnes of really interesting crime statistics or prescription data etc so you can find out which are the most most dangerous parts of the UK for cyclists for instance by looking at cyclist injuries and bike thefts or you could use Open Prescribing to discover which city is the most depressed perhaps, having a look at where the highest rates of certain drugs are prescribed.
These do often cost a couple of hundred quid but it depends on your sample size, the number of questions you ask, the criteria etc so obviously it depends on your budget as to whether or not you want to give these a go
Freedom of information requests are also great ways of gathering data. Go ahead and ask all of the councils in England how much they spent on cycling infrastructure for instance last year, or ask the NHS how many people were admitted to A&E because of heart attacks in 2019, ask your local police department how many burglaries took place in a certain period of time.
Include the option to request the raw data. Include an email address
Transparency, credibility, etc. Always include caveats, limitations etc. This is your opportunity to convince the reader that your study or data is credible.
Optimise it like you would one of the most important service or product pages on your website. So first, before you press publish, check it’s fully optimised, even for lower volume longer tail keywords, because collectively these can add up to a lot of traffic. The amount of times I’ve seen absolutely cracking pieces of content that have tonnes of potential and their titles and meta descriptions haven’t been optimised!!! So they haven’t ranked nearly as well as they otherwise would have and as a result, haven’t built the links they could have. It just makes me really sad. As well, optimising your headers and the copy throughout to really concisely answer questions and so on can be hugely beneficial for helping get your piece picked up. Do what you’re already doing! Optimise it with your catchy headline if you’re using it as an outreach piece and then you can go back and make it more well-optimised as a passive link building piece.
Formulate Health link from the Times came when the piece was only generating impressions from a really obscure keyword (sleep statistics uk 2021) so the link must have come from that. This is even more of a reason to make sure your methodology is sound because that’s probably one of the things that a good journalist will be looking for (and is willing to look far for).
Step 3. Establish Visibility. This is the bit where we ask ourselves okay, the piece is now live - How do we make sure it’s going to generate its own links?
Is the back link profile starting to grow organically? And you ranking for the queries you want to be ranking for? What queries could you be ranking for that you’re not already? What links could you be getting that you’re not already? At first you might want to measure this every few weeks but then once the balls rolling you can just check in on these pieces every month or so. Have a look in search console at what’s driving traffic to your site. Can you optiise it better? Do this now! Go and have a look on Monday at what content on your site is performing well and how you can make it perform even better.
Go back and look at mid-tier sites who are linking to competitor sites whose content is out of date or not as relevant. Contact them and suggest updates using your data! Very cheap! No commercial intent, just informational. You’re bidding at a considerably lower price than for competitive queries. Not very competitive. You’re looking for people whose intent is to find a resource, not someone who's looking to buy.
And once you’ve done all these steps, go and make a brew! Put your feet up and watch some cute dog videos on Youtube whilst all the links come rolling in. (hopefully)
Play the long game. Focus on building assets not links! Thinking you’ll generate loads of excellent links within a couple of weeks is not going to set you up for success in the long term.
There’s a lot of noise to break through when it comes to Digital PR and outreach. And as we know, soo many link building campaigns are unsuccessful. I know I’m a baby in this industry having only been doing this for 2 and a half years, but putting all your eggs in one basket and relying solely on one tactic for anything is to me, too risky. And can end up being really costly in the long term. Instead, find a way to build links by just existing and having these pieces on your site that rank naturally and require minimal time, effort and money. So go and do it now! This doesn’t require starting from scratch with these pieces either Go and have a look at some of your PR pieces now that you can update and reoptimise as stats pieces / passive link building pieces.
So see how you get on! I really hope that some of this has been useful and that you feel like you can go and give this a go! By the way, this is my little puppy Dougie who we’re going picking up tomorrow.. So this is my reward to myself for being brave and giving a talk at Brighton haha! Thank you so much for listening, not egging me or heckling me or booing me off the stage and if you have any questions or there’s anything I can help with just give me a shout on Twitter :) Thanks!
