How we built over 22,000 links. Part 1: Content is king
We’ve built 22,442 links (and counting) for our clients. That’s a hell of a lot of links.
We’ve worked on over 180 campaigns across a huge number of industry sectors, including travel, finance, automotive and fashion, with a clear mission in mind: to improve the backlink portfolio of our clients with high-quality, natural links that’ll improve organic search results for key terms.
Our approach is built on providing a scalable alternative to digital PR. And one that gets results. Campaigns are structured to expand a client’s portfolio of unique, high-quality referring domains – including protected domains such as .gov, .nhs, .edu and .ac.uk.
Over the years we’ve learned a lot. So, we thought it was time to step out of the shadows and share the processes that help our clients achieve brilliant results.
This is the first part of a series of articles we’ll publish, breaking down our link building approach – focusing our first article on how to create effective content that delivers what you need. Links.
Content strategy
To build high-quality links, you need to produce the highest quality, linkable content. This is the cornerstone of the majority of our campaigns. And after 10 years of crafting content, we know a thing or two about how to create resources that work.
Our tried, tested and enhanced framework delivers a well-rounded strategic approach to consistently creating an effective and engaging linkable asset that retains long-term value for our campaigns.
As a top-level overview, our approach:
Integrates key factors that we’ve seen work really well for link building, such as linkable topic clusters, elements, audiences, and formats into a unified strategy.
Emphasises high-quality content that's timely, diverse, and in alignment with client brand messaging and SEO goals. This ensures assets are authoritative, engaging, and easily digestible.
Incorporates E-E-A-T signals and editorial quality to further establish credibility and trustworthiness.
Takes a holistic view of factors such as PR impact and commercial alignment, to elevate reach and effectiveness.
Provides a significant advantage by ensuring each asset resonates with a wide audience, is shareable across multiple platforms, and is well-positioned to attract organic backlinks and coverage from authoritative sites – ultimately enhancing brand visibility and search engine rankings.
Anatomy of high-value content
Our content strategy is broken down into three core pillars:
Linkability factors – what key elements and strategic content choices can we make that will contribute to creating a unified and highly linkable asset?
Content execution – how do we create the highest-quality possible asset that generates strong editorial and PR interests, whilst ensuring it stays relevant for a long period of time?
Brand and SEO strategy – how do we ensure the asset is consistent and aligned with both the wider SEO strategy as well as the brand’s business objectives?
Here’s a top-level glossary of each term specified in the image above.
Linkability factors
Elements:
Data/analysis: in-depth research and analysis of relevant topics.
Reports/studies: detailed reports on specific trends or insights.
Graphs/visuals: visual aids that simplify complex information.
Facts and stats list: compilations of key facts and statistics – the more unique, the better.
Expert quotes: quotes from credible and knowledgeable industry experts.
Multimedia: videos, podcasts, and other rich media formats.
FAQ section: answers to commonly asked questions.
Engagement triggers: interactive features such as quizzes or polls.
Linkable format:
High engagement potential: content that encourages active participation.
Shareable: easily shareable on social platforms and across the web.
Easy to digest: content structured in a simple, concise manner.
Scannable: clear headings and bullet points for quick scanning.
Linkable audiences:
Wide appeal: broad topics that appeal to a diverse audience.
Audience diversity: reaching multiple demographic groups – e.g. parents & teachers.
Audience size: larger groups with a high interest in the subject matter.
Clear problem to address: solving a common pain point or challenge.
Linkable clusters:
Linkable topics: specific topics that are popular and relevant.
Linkable themes: broader themes encompassing related topics.
Linkable categories: focused categories within those themes/topics.
High-traffic keywords: keywords that attract significant search traffic.
Content execution
Timeliness:
Evergreen/seasonal: balance between timeless and seasonal content.
Freshness: keeping the content regularly updated.
PR impact:
Headline-worthy angles: the link asset is put together in a way that we are able to write captivating headlines for it in order to attract the attention of websites, journalists, and publications.
Compelling narrative: high-quality in-house content writing, creating an enjoyable, thought-provoking, or insightful journey for the reader to engage in.
Journalistic value: where necessary, and if targeting media publications – how much value will this create to a journalist receiving 100s of requests a day?
Effective delivery: storytelling that delivers the key message you’re attempting to put out there.
Editorial quality:
Structure: logical organisation such as providing summaries, bullet points, and clear headers/subheaders for easy reading, ensuring the content appeals to a broader audience and is easily linkable.
Content depth & originality: providing unique insights and comprehensive coverage.
Brand and SEO strategy
Brand relevance:
Core brand compatibility: alignment with core brand messaging.
Commercial alignment: supporting business goals and commercial objectives.
E-E-A-T signals (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness):
Credibility: establishing the trustworthiness of the content, including making our methodology and sources transparent.
Legal compliance: following legal standards and best practices.
YMYL factor: addressing “Your Money or Your Life” topics with extra care and attention.
SEO strategy alignment:
User experience: providing an intuitive and enjoyable navigation experience that helps reduce bounce rate and increases on-page sessions and overall engagement.
Internal linking strategy: linking to relevant internal pages to pass on link equity.
Wider SEO objectives: aligning content with the broader SEO goals of the client.
Understand what content works, and what doesn’t
With years of experience behind us, we know the topic types that are most likely to be a hit – and those that’ll flop. Combining two linkable subjects helps to create even more powerful, linkable content.
For example, we know that separately, ‘mental health’ and ‘young people’ are two highly linkable subjects. Together, the campaign will be even stronger – ie. How to create the right environment for teens to achieve good mental health in 2024.
Building this content out in a way that follows the structure outlined in the previous section, we can be confident in our future link opportunities.
Our best-performing campaigns are centred around ‘proven’ linkable topics and audiences, which include:
Sustainability/going green/environmental awareness
Mental health support/well-being
General safety and injury-prevention topics
Health condition awareness/support
Supporting small businesses/SMEs
Teen/child safety/child development topics
Students/young adults' guidance
Pets/animal welfare
Disability/mobility and accessibility awareness
Workplace safety and wellness
Internet/online safety/digital literacy
Seniors/elderly care and ageing topics
Vulnerable or underserved communities
Non-profit sector advocacy topics
Driving/road safety topics
Debt support/debt advice
Career planning/career development
Sleep health/sleep hygiene
This perfectly ties into what characteristics help to create a winning campaign, with the top five areas being:
A linkable topic (specified above)
A well-defined linkable audience (ie. parents, students, elderly, teens)
Evergreen topic (not reliant on, or affected by, fads and short-term trends)
Wide appeal (multiple audiences that would find the content useful)
A sizable pool of link placement opportunities (lots of relevant sites to target outreach)
On the flip side of this, our experience highlights certain audiences or themes that (historically) have been difficult to launch effective campaigns for. For clients in these sectors, we would identify opportunities to leverage our known linkable themes.
More challenging campaigns include:
Financial products, investments, trading (e.g. insurance, credit cards, loans)
Commercial travel pages
Gambling
Sports/esports
Fashion
Logistics and relocation services
Vouchers/coupon codes
Events planning/events organising
Outside of these topic areas, campaigns are typically less successful if they exhibit any of the following characteristics:
They’re too close to the client’s core product, so the content appears promotional or commercial in intent.
Very narrow geographical focus (which limits the pool of opportunities for links).
The topic is niche or has a very limited audience.
The industry expects monetary compensation in exchange for a link (e.g. promotional travel or gambling).
Whilst it’s not as clear-cut to suggest that a certain topic is guaranteed to achieve results or better performance, our historical trends and data help to align future campaigns and provide a great platform from which to build.
And content is just the start
Simply put, behind any successful campaign is brilliant content. The topic, audience, thematic relevance, seasonality (and so much more) will all impact both the quality and volume of links you’re able to build.
It’s really important to get this right.
Spend as much time as possible crafting the perfect content that strikes the right balance between everything outlined in this article and you’re on the right path.
And don’t forget, that content is only the first building block of securing high-quality links to your website. We’ll be sharing more information on the approach that’s helped us build over 22,000 links over the coming months – so make sure to keep following us for future updates.
About the author
Luke Kyte joined Reddico in 2014 as a content writer. One of Reddico’s first employees, he was responsible for building our content marketing department and establishing processes across the agency – helping Reddico to win its first campaign award back in 2017. In 2024, Luke took on the role of Operations Director and is now responsible for the day-to-day management of the agency – supporting and guiding our approach to SEO and link building operations.
Examples of content assets we’ve created for our clients:
Auto Trader: Electric charging points
Loveholidays: Keeping your kids safe on a family holiday
Treated: Understanding period pain
Atkinson’s Bullion & Coins: An interactive map: The world's largest gold reserves
If you'd like to discuss how Reddico can help you with link building contact us >
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