Content Based Link Building (CBLB) is link building that leverages the value of the content being linked to as the primary motivation for the linker (person responsible for adding links at the website the link is coming from) adding the link. This process produces ‘Resource Links,’ as opposed to ‘Attribution Links.’
The linking audience motivations we’re typically tapping into are;
- Desire to establish a reputation for themselves as being a curator of good quality, entertaining and/or useful information
- Desire to improve the quality of their content by providing additional resources, reference material, supporting arguments, examples etc.
This list of resource is for the reference of anyone wanting to learn more about CBLB. It is a work in progress.
Resources
This is simply a list of resources. Scroll down for my commentary of each resource.
- Citation Labs Webinar and Q&A with Garrett French: Agency Hacks for the In-House Link Builder [Video]
- Link Earning Hangout with Dejan SEO [Video]
- Case Study: How I Created a Post That’s Generated 113,817 Visitors and 2,000+ New Email Subscribers – Brian Dean, Backlinko [Video]
- How to Approach Broken Link Building in 2015 – Garrett French, Citation Labs [Video]
- How To Write Content Strategically: The Guide To Getting Traffic, Subscribers & Sales With Your Articles – Tim Soulo, BloggerJet
- 601 Linkable Audiences for Content Creation – Megan Hannay, Citation Labs
- Link Earning Presentation Slides – Dan Petrovic, Dejan SEO [Slides Here]
- The Skyscraper funnel: How to get links, shares and free content in 1 single process – Gael Breton, Authority Hacker, for SEMRush [Video]
Resources with Commentary
Citation Labs Webinar and Q&A with Garrett French: Agency Hacks for the In-House Link Builder [Video]
I really like Garrett French’s approach to link building. Everything is processed and research, analysis and improvement is built in to make sure the processes are as effective and efficient as possible. I particularly liked his ‘areas of human concern’ that he opens with. The concepts from this video are also fleshed out further in this series of blog posts;
- The 1 Question To Ask Before Determining Content Strategy (I was glad to see the similarities between their content strategy and our SEO Content Strategy)
- Linkable Content Brainstorming: From SEO Keywords to Proven Content Topics
- part 3 coming soon
Link Earning Hangout with Dejan SEO [Video]
This presentation starts off fairly high level, talking about link earning vs link manipulation from a philosophical point of view, weighing the pros and cons and looking at some strategies then gets more into the tactical details towards the end. The following slide (at around 17:00) is particularly good for showing all the different types of content you could build (its far more than just textual articles) and the qualities that widely shared and linked content tend to have.
Case Study: How I Created a Post That’s Generated 113,817 Visitors and 2,000+ New Email Subscribers – Brian Dean, Backlinko [Video]
Brian Dean’s stuff at Backlinko is generally pretty good and this video case study is no exception. He describes the process he used to get the results he describes from one of his posts. Here’s the short version;
- Research content that has done well in the past but can be improved upon
- Create some content on the same topic in such a way that it taps into ‘share triggers’ which are scientifically backed aspects that make it more likely that people will share and link to the article
He goes through the process in detail and also includes a handy downloadable template for creating your content.
How to Approach Broken Link Building in 2015 – Garrett French, Citation Labs [Video]
Another great video from Citation Labs, this time addressing one of the most popular white hat, content based link building tactics (broken link building). There’s plenty of information out there about this tactic already, many of which are more comprehensive than this video, but its good to get some thoughts from the masters at Citation Labs that’s also current.
How To Write Content Strategically: The Guide To Getting Traffic, Subscribers & Sales With Your Articles – Tim Soulo from BloggerJet
This is an epic guide to writing content that gets more traffic, subscribers and sales. It doesn’t really talk about link building specifically but relates very well to the other resources on this page which talk about creating really good content to build links to. It also uses a similar approach where you start by looking at the types of content that have already proved successful in the market then make something better.
601 Linkable Audiences for Content Creation – Megan Hannay, Citation Labs
This article includes a huge list (with downloadable version) of linkable audiences for content creation. Its a bit hard to understand exactly how to utilise this article and list so I suggest you read Citation Labs’ other content and guides. Essentially, these audiences are those that are likely to be cared about by people who curate link lists. People who curate link lists want to link to resources which are useful to the audiences they care about. Therefore, you can use this list to identify an audience to write content for which you can then go out and promote to get links from those curators that care about that audience.
Link Earning Presentation Slides – Dan Petrovic, Dejan SEO [Slides Here]
Dan advocates the strategy that I call the ‘Publish, Promote & Pray‘ method for earning links which is pretty much as white-hat as you can get. He’s suggesting that you can do it in a smart way which will give you the best bang for your buck. This strategy can definitely work but its much more of a big brand strategy or a long term strategy for a small business.
He also goes into the different types of links and comes out with similar findings to our model of ‘attribution links’ and ‘resource links.’
The Skyscraper funnel: How to get links, shares and free content in 1 single process – Gael Breton, Authority Hacker, for SEMRush [Video]
Very interesting improvement/variation on Brian Dean’s ‘Skyscraper Technique’ by Gael Breton from Authority Hacker. Its a bit complicated for me to really go into it here but its essentially about thinking of your link building process similar to you how you would think about your email marketing process. He also discusses how his funnel is able to generate content and promotion on the back of the initial link building. Definitely worth a watch, see the screen shot below for a taste and watch the full webinar here.
