Tips to Create and Use Data Driven Content for Link Building

We all keep using the term “content is king”. This term has become quite popular in this era of digital marketing which is hugely dependent on the creation, consumption and marketing content. However, not many people talk about creating the link worthy content.

This is the major reason that people tend to call it a day when they are successful in writing a copy of content and getting it posted in the blog. However, the major goal in this scenario needs to be to get content found by SERPs. And for this purpose, the content needs to be structured well.

The link worthy content, which is quite capable of being found by SERPs, is usually data driven. So, it is worth discussing the ways you can create data driven content.

Be the source

While it is easy to say that creating your own data is beneficial, it is nothing less than a big headache. You may already know that data-driven content can be created after quite a research and survey; and it is certainly not a cakewalk.

However, people want to link back to the content which is data driven. To get started with the creation of data driven content, you are going to need to keep an eye on the stats. You can view stats according to your requirements by using tools like Google Trends and Google Consumer Survey. You will be able to search for the trending topics this way.

Pick your topic

Having good data doesn’t mean that you will be able to create good content. In this scenario, it gets important to figure out how you are going to tell the story with the data you have.

The first thing that you will have to see is the content which you are going to create. See what the content is going to be all about.

There are two ways you can write good content. Either you can look at the data you have in order to create the topic and then the content, or you can create a topic and do the research to gather the data about the topic.

Gathering data

In order to create data driven content, the first thing that you are going to have to do is to gather the data. One thing that you are going to have to keep in mind is that it is not about the quantity of content when you are working with your own proprietary data.

The main thing to be taken into consideration is that you need to conduct surveys to collect fresh data. For this purpose, you are going to need to ask people some questions which are able to help you get the answers you want.

You can also ask people from your own community. They may be your customers or fans. If you are a bigger brand and you have forums where people come and discuss things, you can put forward those questions in the forums to start discussions. The answers can provide you with valuable data which you may use to create content.

Another way to get data is to use your own data and reports. This is where you are going to need analytical tools. Google Analytics can be the best place to start. You can view data by using demographic filters such as age, gender, and location of the customers.

The data you get through the ways discussed above is in the raw form. You need to convert it into valuable content. For this purpose, you can collaborate with your PR team to create a content strategy. PR teams usually know about discovering the link opportunities. You can also conduct manual outreach to the industry blogs to get the backlinks. Partnering with the other companies on webinars to discuss data is also a great option.

If you do not have your own data but you want to write data driven content, you can still do that. There are independent data resources from where you can get authentic data with ease. Pew Research Center, Wikipedia, Google Scholar, The Office for National Statistics, and Reddit’s Data is Beautiful subreddit are a few examples of the resources from where you can get data to write your own unique content.

SEO Pirates Ahoy

So you have set up your website and are proud of the work done to make it look good. You followed all the rules set by the search engine companies to be ranked high. Usually, this is done through proper SEO or Search Engine Optimization, usage. But not too long down the road you noticed the website is just not getting the attention it used to. It starts dropping in search rankings. Something smells fishy, so you get a team of IT people to take a look at things. They do their investigation and come back with some bad news. And that would be the website is victim to negative SEO attacks.

Negative SEO, what in the World is that?

Negative SEO, in a nutshell, is when someone with malicious intent uses techniques to degrade a websites search engine rankings. It uses a technique called “Black Hat SEO”, which is a large field on its own, too big for the scope of this article. Therefore, let’s just stick with the Negative SEO part of Black Hat. Negative SEO is done with one specific goal in mind. To hurt a competitor’s rankings whenever a search is done online. A common way this is done is by attaching a large amount spam links to a website. When this is done to the website it will affect the link profile, which in turn affects rankings. In worst case scenarios, the website itself will be hacked to mess with the content, which will of course mess with rankings.

Fighting the Pirates

So, what can one do to counter negative SEO? Fortunately, there are ways to handle these problems. The following are a few examples.

Auditing is Not Only for the Taxman

Link audits are generally a good habit to get into, regardless what the reason is. But in the context of negative SEO, it can mean the difference between night and day. There are graphs that can be used to keep an eye on the link profile growth or fall. The great thing about graphs is that it gives you a visual reference, as opposed to just some random numbers, that makes it very clear on what’s happening. The way you can tell something is not right is when the graph shows a sudden rise or fall as it travels along the X-axis, especially when you haven’t done any tweaks or changes to the site. This is a sure sign that begs for close attention.

The Need for Speed

One of the early indicators that something is amiss is website speed. If you notice a change in speed that is, a slower speed, then it is time to look under the hood. In extreme cases, it will slow to a crawl and even crash before it takes off. When this happens its time to contact the hosting company.

Lifting and Scraping

Content marketing is the new go-to technique for digital marketing. Some will use a technique called “Scrapping” which is the practice of lifting content straight from another person's website and then putting on their own site. The best way to counter this is to check for plagiarism and then report it to Google.

Fake Reviews can be Devastating

After you have put up your website, business starts to pick up. After some time, you notice there is a lot of negative reviews. If it seems unusually large then you can tackle it by using google maps and flagging the reviews and reporting it to Google.