You probably already know how essential link building is for boosting your site's visibility in search engine results pages. But, despite the importance of backlinks, 94% of all blog posts wind up without a single external link.

This begs the question: Why do so many content pieces fail to build links?

The answer lies in the quality and appeal of the content itself. The harsh reality is that many pieces of content simply lack elements worth linking back to.

Creating content that others naturally want to share involves building a comprehensive link-building strategy, researching your audience, and designing or developing a showstopping asset.

Unlike traditional link-building methods that often involve outreach, linkable assets attract links naturally due to their inherent value and shareability.

This not only makes the link acquisition process more sustainable, but also helps build your site's credibility more organically.

Beyond the link-building process, linkable assets can also boost social shares, enhance brand awareness, and offer potential monetization opportunities, among other benefits.

In this comprehensive article, we'll explore the types of content that excel as linkable assets and how to create effective linkable content on your own.

What Are Linkable Assets?

Linkable assets are high-quality pieces of content that naturally attract links and social shares.

They contain valuable elements that other websites find worth referencing, sharing, and linking back to, and are an essential part of link building.

Types of linkable assets may include:

• Infographics

• Online tools and calculators

• Studies and research

• List posts

• Resource pages

Despite the high volume of content published online, the majority of it fails to offer anything genuinely referable, shareable, or link-worthy. One study found that 96.55% of content online gets zero traffic from Google, and another found that over 65% of all web pages get no backlinks.

This is often due to content creators focusing on quantity over quality, producing mediocre work that lacks the substance to merit backlinks.

Developing linkable assets goes beyond conducting keyword research and crafting well-designed graphics. Creating content that earns links organically means making something truly exceptional—content so compelling that others naturally want to link to it.

Why Creating Linkable Assets Is So Important

While creating successful linkable content is an intensive process, it can help your website stand out among competitors, generate organic traffic, and become an authority in your niche.

Here are three major reasons that make linkable assets so important:

🚀 A linkable asset helps you earn links

Backlinks act as endorsements from one site to another.

Earning high-quality links from authoritative websites signals to search engines that your content is valuable, credible, and worthy of attention.

This is the essence of a link-building campaign—actively seeking opportunities to earn links to boost your site's visibility and credibility.

Linkable assets are highly effective for link building because they are designed to attract backlinks from multiple high-quality sources.

These funnel “link juice” to your site without having to reach out to website owners to request a backlink.

🚀 A linkable asset helps you create brand advocates

Beyond boosting your link-building efforts, linkable assets can turn casual visitors into leads and, eventually, brand advocates.

As your target audience engages with your content, they're more likely to share it within their networks, expanding your reach and potentially increasing your customer base.

🚀 A linkable asset helps build relationships in the same niche

Creating a linkable asset facilitates relationships within your industry.

These assets give others in your field a reason to engage with your site, whether through linking, sharing, or commenting.

This network of connections can enhance your reputation, leading to more collaboration and link-building opportunities, and a stronger industry standing.

5 Examples of Highly Effective Linkable Assets

Linkable content is anything that grabs attention, provides value, and compels other content creators to share it on their websites.

While linkable content can be anything that attracts external links, here are some of the most popular types of linkable assets:

🔹Infographics

Infographics combine data with design, presenting complex information in a visually engaging and easily digestible format.

They are highly shareable on social media, blogs, and websites, increasing the potential for backlinks.

But, because they are so popular, it can be incredibly difficult for an infographic to stand out online. Creating an infographic that attracts links requires intensive research and design expertise.

Example: Wine Folly

Wine Folly's infographic is an informative visual guide on pairing food and wine.

It's a practical tool that demonstrates the brand's authority in the wine industry, making it an excellent example of a linkable asset.

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Here’s why it works so well:

✔ Visual appeal: The infographic uses a vibrant color scheme and clear graphics to grab attention. Its design makes it likely to be shared across social platforms and websites, which leads to organic traffic and backlinks.

✔ Value: It provides practical and easily digestible information on pairing food with wines. This increases the chances of it being linked to as a reference in articles, blog posts, and forums.

✔ Simplicity: By simplifying a complex subject into an easy-to-understand format, the infographic becomes a go-to resource for quick decision-making.

✔ Comprehensive: The infographic covers a broad range of pairings, making it applicable to many scenarios. This information enhances its appeal as a linkable asset because it can cater to a wide audience.

✔ Educational: It serves an educational purpose by breaking down pairing concepts into basic, ingredient, multi-ingredient, and advanced pairings. Educational content is a key characteristic of linkable assets.

✔ Credibility: The infographic is presented as a methodical guide, which helps to establish the website’s credibility in food and wine.

🔹Online tools and calculators

Tools and calculators provide practical value to users by helping them solve problems or answer questions related to finance, health, or any other niche, making them highly shareable.

However, creating an accurate and user-friendly tool requires an up front investment in development and design. It may also require regular maintenance.

Errors or bugs can harm user trust and reduce the likelihood of links, so it’s essential that you have the capabilities to execute and maintain them to a high standard.

Example: Fast Print

Fast Print's Adobe Keyboard Shortcut Visualizer is an interactive tool designed for users of Adobe Creative Cloud applications, including Photoshop CC, Illustrator CC, and InDesign CC.

The tool serves as a guide to keyboard shortcuts that enhance efficiency for designers and creatives who use these software programs.

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Fast Print’s Adobe Keyboard Shortcut Visualizer is a good linkable asset for several reasons:

✔ Interactive: The tool offers an interactive visualization of keyboard shortcuts, which enhances user engagement compared to static content.

✔ Relevant: This tool is relevant to graphic designers, photographers, and creatives who regularly use Adobe programs. This makes it a prime linkable asset for educational resources, design blogs, and tutorial sites.

✔ Utility: By consolidating keyboard shortcuts into one easy-to-navigate tool, it becomes a valuable resource for improving workflow efficiency, which users are likely to bookmark and share.

✔ Educational: The visualizer serves as a learning aid, helping both beginners and experienced users discover shortcuts. Educational tools like these are often linked to as resources in learning environments and professional workflows.

🔹Studies and research

By providing new data or insights, your research offers unique value that cannot be found anywhere else. This encourages others to link to your findings as a primary source.

While original studies are effective linkable assets, they also require an intensive time commitment.

Designing the study, gathering data, conducting research, and presenting your findings in an easily digestible format requires substantial effort and expertise.

Example: CXL

CXL, a marketing training institute, conducted a study on which types of social proof work best.

This tackles a practical question relevant to marketers, e-commerce businesses, and content creators alike, and is aligned with the brand’s position as an educator and thought leader.

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Here’s why CXL’s study is so effective:

✔ Original research: Original content, especially data-backed research, is rare. By providing fresh insights and findings, CXL establishes itself as a primary source, which can increase organic traffic.

✔ Relevance: The study taps into a common concern among online marketers and businesses—the effectiveness of social proof. By addressing a relevant question, the content becomes a go-to resource, which enhances its potential for high-quality backlinks.

✔ Utility: The content doesn't just present data—it also translates findings into actionable insights. This dual utility makes it an asset that websites will want to link to as a resource for their readers.

✔ Visual data: Eye-tracking results and statistical data are presented in an accessible format. This makes complex information easy to digest and share, which are key characteristics of a linkable asset.

✔ Evidence-based conclusions: The study concludes with clear, evidence-backed takeaways, offering valuable content that writers and marketers can reference and link to with confidence.

✔ How-to section: By including a "How do I apply this research?" section, the tool serves as a practical guide, not just a report. This functionality increases its chances of being linked as a helpful resource.

🔹List posts

List posts (or "listicles”) take items, rankings, tips, tools, or ideas and compile an organized list, making complex information digestible and engaging.

Due to their popularity, some niches may be saturated with list posts. This makes it harder for a new listicle to stand out or offer unique insights.

Creating content that gets backlinks means delivering genuine value, maintaining high-quality content, and avoiding superficial analysis.

Example: Forbes

Unlike superficial listicles, Forbes did a deep dive into billionaires and their list is a prime example of a highly effective linkable asset.

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Here’s why it works:

✔ Exclusive content: The list is an annual feature that carries the weight of the Forbes brand behind it, which is known for its high-quality journalism. This authority makes the list a credible source that other content creators are likely to reference and link to.

✔ Data-rich: With data on the world's wealthiest individuals, including net worth, industries, and countries, this resource is a valuable asset for researchers, journalists, and the general public who might want to cite this information in their work.

✔ Visual appeal: The page is well-organized, with easy-to-navigate sections and visually appealing graphics that enhance the user experience, making it more likely for visitors to share and link to the content.

✔ In-depth profiles: Providing profiles and wealth histories of the billionaires adds depth to the content, increasing its value and linkability.

✔ Global appeal: The international scope of the list appeals to a worldwide audience, increasing the likelihood of global links and shares.

✔ Potential for ongoing discussion: The topic of wealth, especially when linked to well-known personalities, is often a starting point for discussions on economics, business, and society, which further encourages backlinks as part of broader conversations.

🔹Resource pages

Resource pages are repositories of information, tools, or links on a specific topic.

They are a one-stop shop for readers who want in-depth knowledge or related resources, making them valuable for attracting links.

Although they are effective, resource pages require frequent revisions and reviews to make sure all the linked content is updated and available.

This can be time-consuming and may require dedicated effort to update the content regularly.

Example: Morning Motivated Mom

Morning Motivated Mom’s resource page serves as an excellent example of how a well-curated resource page can become a link-building asset for a website focused on lifestyle, wellness, and personal productivity.

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The resource page on Morning Motivated Mom is an excellent example of linkable content for several reasons:

✔ Valuable: It provides free fitness resources that readers can use without a gym membership, which is useful for people looking for home workout options. This value increases the likelihood of it being linked to by other websites.

✔ Ease of use: The resources are neatly organized and easily accessible, enhancing the user experience. This convenience factor makes it more likely that readers will bookmark the page, share it, and other websites will link to it.

✔ Targeted audience: The resource directly addresses the needs of its target audience—people who want to integrate fitness into their lifestyles. It provides solutions that require minimal time and appeals to its audience's pain points.

✔ Relatable: By sharing personal goals and experiences, the blogger connects with readers on a personal level. Relatability can inspire users to share linkable assets within their own networks.

✔ Comprehensive: The page offers guides, workout videos, and challenges. This approach makes the asset extremely valuable, encouraging other content creators to link to it as a one-stop resource.

How to Create Linkable Assets

Creating linkable content isn't just about producing something that looks good or sounds interesting.

It's about crafting content that provides real value, answers questions, solves problems, or offers insights in a way that inspires others to share it.

From identifying the right topics and formats to optimizing for search intent and promoting your content, we'll guide you through the process of turning your ideas into powerful linkable assets.

1. Understand your audience

To create content that attracts links, you first need to understand who your target audience is and what resonates with them.

Helpful tools for audience research include:

Google Analytics

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Google Analytics is an essential tool for understanding your audience demographics and interests. Google Analytics offers a detailed breakdown of your audience’s:

• Age

• Gender

• Interests

• Behavior on your website

Moz

Keyword research helps you understand the topics and questions your audience is interested in.

This knowledge allows you to create content that meets their needs and interests, making it more shareable and link-worthy.

Moz Pro's Keyword Explorer tool is designed to help you find the best keywords for your link acquisition strategy. Here’s an example from Moz:

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In the example above, analyzing the phrase “cat costumes” shows that it’s a surprisingly competitive keyword:

Monthly volume: This estimates the number of searches for the keyword per month. A higher search volume indicates more potential traffic and can be a signal to target this keyword for link building.

Keyword difficulty: Represented on a scale from 0 to 100, this score estimates how difficult it would be to rank on the first page of SERPs for the keyword. A score of 40 suggests a moderate level of competition.

Organic CTR: This reflects the expected click-through rate for organic search results. A 64% CTR is relatively high, suggesting that if you rank well for this keyword, a good portion of searchers are likely to click through to your site.

Priority: This is Moz's composite metric that combines all other metrics to help prioritize keywords. A score of 74 out of 100 suggests that "cat costumes" is a high-priority keyword to target.

BuzzSumo's Content Analyzer

By analyzing billions of content pieces, BuzzSumo's Content Analyzer identifies what types of content are currently engaging your target audience.

This insight allows you to tailor your content to match audience preferences, increasing the likelihood of it being shared and attracting high-quality links.

Here’s an example of what this looks like:

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The search term used in the screenshot from BuzzSumo's Content Analyzer above is "content marketing." This is what the tool is able to tell us about this topic:

Impactful headlines: You can see which headlines generate the highest engagement score, which in turn allows you to understand the language, structure, and topics that capture attention. Then, you can use this information and apply it to your own content.

Content ideas: By inputting a general topic, you can explore the most popular articles within that niche, which helps to understand the subjects that are currently trending, and the gaps there might be.

Content performance: These graphs show the number of times a piece of content has been shared on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Reddit. In addition, we can see the number of likes and its engagement score. The sum of interactions across all platforms provides an overview of the content's overall performance.

2. Identify search intent

Understanding search intent—the why behind a search query—goes beyond knowing what your audience is interested in. It’s about understanding the purpose behind their searches.

Here are the different types of search intent:

Navigational intent

This intent signifies a user's aim to visit a specific website or page. They're likely familiar with the destination, but need a direct route there. For example, “Facebook login.”

Informational intent

Users with informational intent are looking for knowledge. Their searches are question-based or exploratory, and they want to solve a specific query. For example, “Paris travel guide.”

Content that satisfies informational intent includes detailed blog posts, how-to guides, FAQs, and instructional videos. These pieces should aim to educate and provide value to the searcher.

Commercial intent

Here, users are in the research phase, comparing products or services to make an informed decision. For example, "Best laptops for gaming 2024."

For commercial intent, comparative articles, buyer's guides, and product reviews can be effective.

They should offer clear, unbiased information that helps users make purchase decisions.

Transactional intent

Transactional searchers have their wallets ready. They're looking to make a purchase and are searching for the best options or deals available. For example, "Buy MacBook Air online."

3. Create and share your linkable asset

What transforms a piece of content into a great linkable asset?

It could be its depth of information, its unique insights, or its utility. Deciding what type of asset you create will depend on factors such as:

Your audience: Understand what kind of content your target audience consumes and shares. Are they looking for quick answers, in-depth analysis, or tools that help with their daily tasks?

Your team: Assess the strengths of your team. Do you have strong writers, designers, or developers who can create different types of content?

Your brand: Consider what type of content aligns with your brand's voice and values. What type of asset can you create that will reinforce your brand identity?

Information: The nature of the information you want to convey might be better suited to a particular format. Data-heavy topics might benefit from visual representation, while complex guides may require long-form content.

Once you’ve created your asset, target your link-building efforts around getting it placed on websites and platforms where your audience will see it.

Depending on your industry, this might include:

• Industry blogs and websites.

• Social media platforms.

• Forums and online communities.

• Email newsletters.

• Influencers and industry leaders.

• Press releases.

4. Monitor its effectiveness

When it comes to linkable assets, traditional KPIs like conversion rates may not fully capture the value of your content. Instead, consider metrics that reflect the content's reach and influence.

One method to assess the value of a content piece is its post value ratio (PVR), which evaluates the performance of content beyond conversions and focuses on factors such as:

• Engagement

• Reach

• Ability to attract backlinks

Level Up Your Link-Building Campaigns with Linkbuilder.io

Creating linkable assets gives you the unique opportunity to boost your link-building efforts, enhance brand visibility, and drive organic traffic to your site.

However, it demands a deep understanding of your target audience and a commitment to creating high-quality linkable content.

It's a time-consuming process that requires resources, expertise, and ongoing maintenance to ensure the content remains relevant and valuable over time.

Linkbuilder.io is here to help. Our team has the experience, creativity, and resources to develop linkable assets tailored to your brand and target audience.

From infographics and research studies to online tools and comprehensive guides, we can help you create content that not only ranks well but also helps you earn links organically.

Ready to start featuring assets that earn links? Get in touch with us today!