Content marketing is a highly cost-efficient strategy for attracting, educating, and converting customers. Marketing professionals widely use it, along with paid ads and SEO. 

However, its role in building a strong backlink profile is vastly underestimated. This is where link building with content marketing intersects, promising immense synergistic potential in increasing authority, brand visibility, and driving targeted traffic.

Below, we present six ways for SEO professionals to leverage content marketing to build backlinks and improve search ranking. Explore these methods to turn your content into a lasting SEO asset!

1. Guest blogging

Writing blog posts doesn’t only happen on the blogger’s native website. Some bloggers come as guests to other resources to write and get rewarded. This is called guest blogging and it helps to increase brand visibility, build authority, and drive leads.

Guest blogging is also an effective way to build content backlinks, which, among other things, help achieve the above-mentioned goals of creating visibility and authority. This is due to the search engines ranking websites based on the link equity transported via backlinks.

How to use guest blogging for backlinks:

• Target authoritative websites with an audience relevant to your industry or sector.
• Focus on quality content with insights, practical tips, and useful data/stats.
• Include natural, contextual backlinks and anchor text.
• Aim to build long-term relationships with owners of the resources where you post.  

To earn valuable backlinks, you don’t need to write blog posts yourself. You can order and buy some from professional guest posting services, which will also ensure timely and relevant placement of the purchased guest posts on quality resources. 

Buy guest posts one by one, pointwise, or consider bulk purchase to quickly enhance your backlink profile and attract consistent article backlinks over time.

2. Data-driven content

Data in content marketing is like a hook in an academic essay — it captures attention and encourages others to link to your content. A plain text may be exponentially relevant, insightful, and with plenty of great ideas, but it will never hold as many opportunities to drive backlinks as a text with data.

Studies indicate that content featuring original research and statistics receives 39% more backlinks and generates 77.2% more engagement than content without data. By incorporating link building with content marketing into your data-driven strategies, you can create content that naturally attracts valuable backlinks. 

How can you leverage that power of data-driven content to your maximum benefit? Here are a few techniques that work:

• Conducting original research — the last few years with GPTs (generative pre-trained transformers) like famous ChatGPT showed the real value of original content. Visitors will want to connect with your content if it contains original research and presents novel ideas.
• Use data visualizations — visuals work for attention grabbing and link-building significantly better than a plain text. Conducting original research is not enough; what is missing is visualization of the collected data and discovered knowledge.
• Compile industry insights — novel data is cool, but novel data relevant to your target audience’s industry is better. By using industry-specific data and deducing astute insights, you can earn backlinks in numbers.

It’s not enough to just make linkable content with original data. Keeping it updated is no less important. Successful content marketers regularly refresh, repurpose, and republish their content to consistently generate backlinks and increase their content’s authority.

3. Infographics & visual assets in content marketing

A single infographic is oftentimes easier to digest than a long text with the same stats and numbers but spread out across several pages.

For this reason, infographics and pictures get shared on social media and in private communication hundreds of times more often than texts. Site owners also report increased dwell time and time on page metrics when introducing infographics.

Isn’t it another good way to build backlinks? Content that contains infographics and pictures is a natural way to attract links, engage the audience, and improve ranking.

This is how you can amplify the use of infographics and visuals for backlinks:

• Offer an embedded code — a simplified way to share your infographics or visuals. To do so, generate a proper HTML formatted code that you should display below your visuals or infographic in a dedicated section, usually called “Share this infographic/visual.” 
• Submit to infographic directories — your website may not have the highest as-is traffic, but you can always boost it by actively promoting your infographics on platforms like Infographic Journal, Pinterest, Visual.ly, Canva Community, and others.
• Reach out for shares by email — email marketing remains a powerful and cost-efficient way to build backlinks. You can reach out to influencers and popular bloggers in your niche with the proposition to share your content.

Infographics and visuals are concise and effective ways to share information, capture users’ attention, and drive backlinks. They may take time to create, but the effect is going to be long-lasting.

4. Collaborative content partnerships

Collaboration may be a buzzword in the business world with vague meaning and application, but it remains one of the core strategies for SEO and link-building.  

A well-executed content collaboration strategy often includes white label link building to ensure consistent, high-quality backlinks.  White-label link-building is when an agency or a freelancer gets hired to do content-driven link building on behalf of a customer: SEO firms, digital marketing agencies, or private businesses of any size and form. 

So, the combination of the words “white label” denotes a carte blanche or a white check — a fully legit technique when someone is given the right and freedom to use the work done by someone else. 

Among all collaborative content strategies, the following stand out as the most effective:

• Joint research reports & whitepapers — partner with other writers & researchers in your niche to co-create reports and whitepapers. Your joint authority and synergistic proportion efforts will result in a stronger linking potential.
• Guest co-authored articles — invite influential authors to create content (e.g., articles, blog posts, eBooks, tutorials, etc.) on your website. Their authority will naturally attract links.
• Expert interviews — define experts within your industry and invite them for interviews. Later, publish the transcribed interview texts to attract natural backlinks. Don’t forget to agree on/coordinate the final texts with your interviewees.
• Webinar & podcast partnerships — these two have lately become highly popular formats for sharing information and insights. Leveraging them for building a strong backlink profile is a smart strategic move.   

Building content partnerships opens the doors to mutually beneficial, long-term relationships. This contributes to brand awareness and helps to create the resilience necessary in our turbulent times.

5. Ego bait content

Ego bait content is another interesting content marketing technique often used in link-building. The idea, or the psychology behind it, is to manipulate someone’s ego to connect with the content you (or your contractor) create and where you mention that person/brand’s name.

For example — you create and publish a blog post mentioning an industry influencer’s name. If your content is good and gets cited and shared widely across social media, that person mentioned is likely to cite it as well. 

Why would the person do that? Because it appeals to one of their psychological triggers: recognition, reciprocity, and social validation. In simple terms, they want to become connected with your content as it showcases their authority and expertise. 

Let’s take a look at some ego-bait content strategies that work and earn backlinks:

• Top influencer lists — perhaps the easiest ego-bait content strategy. It only requires you to create a list of top influencers in your industry, where you can provide a short bio or similar attention-grabbing information about each person.
• Case studies featuring influencers or brands — a more business-oriented approach in ego-bait content marketing. Here, you will be required to provide the achievements of individuals and brands. It’s more difficult and time-consuming, requiring proper citations to avoid plagiarism.
• Quote highlights — another simple way to bait influencers to associate with your content. Just as with the case studies, accurate and properly formatted (MLA or Chicago styles) quoting here is the key.
• Awards & recognition — works excellently as associating oneself with a reward achieved is even more strong a psychological trigger. 

Don’t sit and wait till influencers and celebrities will know on your door. Make your content easily shareable (e.g., by embedding HTML codes) and reach out to influencers asking if they’d like to link back.

6. Content syndication

Content syndication is when you republish your existing content on third-party websites and platforms. This greatly saves your time, as you don’t need to create content from scratch, and allows you to reach a wider audience.

What about duplicate content and possible Google penalties? Well, to avoid search engine penalties, always use the correct canonical tag to highlight the original content and prevent penalties.

The following content syndication strategies will guarantee you a steady intake of backlinks:

• Prioritize high-authority publishers — start by targeting Forbes, Medium, LinkedIn, and other authoritative platforms, as this is where content backlinks will bring more equity.
• Include internal links — republish content with valid backlinks and contextually relevant anchor text that helps the readers and search engines understand the content behind backlinks.
• Engage with readers — modify content conclusions to include effective CTAs to leave feedback and interact with readers in the comments sections once they do.   

Earning backlinks doesn’t have to be the end goal of content syndication. In other words, backlinks are not the only merit it provides. Through backlinks, content syndication can also help to improve your domain authority, boost organic traffic, and enhance brand visibility, and content ROI.

FAQs

1. What is link building in content marketing?
Link building in content marketing involves creating valuable content that attracts backlinks from other websites, boosting SEO and authority.

2. Why are backlinks important for SEO?
Backlinks signal trust and relevance to search engines, helping your content rank higher and attract more organic traffic.

3. How does guest blogging help with backlinks?
Guest blogging lets you share insights on other sites and earn contextual backlinks, increasing visibility and domain authority.

4. What makes data-driven content effective for link building?
Original research and stats add credibility, making your content more shareable and link-worthy.