Mastering The Linkable Asset: 24 SEO
Pros Share What Works Best

As you may already know, I have become pretty obsessed with building the perfect backlink profile.

This is why SEOJet exists.

One of the biggest struggles in the SEO world is coming up with linkable assets.

In other words, some form of content, an infographic, maybe a tool that is so useful people will link to it, naturally.

Coming up with the right linkable asset is something almost all SEOs and marketers struggle with, but if you do it right, it can create an influx of natural backlinks that can do wonders to build your backlink profile.

There are many pros that will tell you what you need to do, but to me this isn’t as helpful as seeing what others have done that has been successful.

In this post, we asked 20+ SEO professionals to share with us what link assets have really worked well for their own businesses or for one of their client’s sites.

1. Stephen Seifert – Day Translations

Linkable Asset Type: Long Form Content

To get the best value for our link building efforts, while maintaining white hat tactics, we aim to pair trending media with highly authoritative content. For instance, we paired the Minions movie release with language translation. What language do the Minions speak?

Well, our translators worked diligently to find out. The result was a very informative and engaging blog post that earned us hundreds of links, social visibility, and media opportunities. In fact, the blog still remains at the top of page one in Google SERP after two years. Quotable content that shouts value off the page is truly the best way to build any link portfolio.

Here is the link to the blog post: https://www.daytranslations.com/blog/the-minions-language/

2. Brian Jensen – Congruent Digital

Linkable Asset Type: Online Tool

When Google regained access to Twitter’s Firehose in Feb. 2015, we noticed a sharp uptick in the amount of tweets that were getting indexed in Google Search. I decided to build a tool that queries Google and returns the percentage of indexed tweets, the Moz Page Authority, and number of other websites linking to a user’s Twitter account. Our strategy to acquire links to the page consisted of the following:

– Linking to the tool in my author bio when I contributed to other websites – Paid social promotions – Achieved page one visibility by optimizing the page for less competitive terms that were relevant to the tool – Outreach to blogs and websites that published Twitter tool lists for inclusion – Influencer outreach – anyone with a notable following who had tweeted or shared information on tweet indexation in Google Search

The tool was unique, so I believed we had a fair shot at earning a few backlinks. According to Majestic.com we’ve been able to acquire 378 backlinks from a little under 10 referring domains. The links we’ve acquired were from a mix of the above mentioned strategies. Our strategy didn’t result in as many links as we were hoping for, however, we had fun building and promoting the tool.

Link to the tool: https://congruentdigital.com/tweet-indexation-rate-results/

3. Zachary Parker – ProSource Media

Linkable Asset Type: Infographic

I’ve been working with a large and established real estate tech company handling their SEO for over 80 local real estate portals in the Boston area. I was able to increase their yearly traffic by over 60% over the first six months of 2017 with an infographic we launched back in January. We’re still riding the waves of some killer backlinks we scored from launching this infographic. It’s no secret nobody likes to read anymore.

Infographics are pretty, colorful, and get’s your point across in 20 seconds or less, just what today’s fast paced and immediately gratified user craves. We did an infographic on average rent prices per T Stop in Boston, and it was a home run. Here’s a link to the infographic:

Here is a link to the asset: https://bostonpads.com/average-boston-rent-prices-t-stop/

4. Ryan O’Connor – One Tribe Apparel

Linkable Asset Type: Long Form Content

We recently launched the 1st International Crowdsourced Lookbook where instead of a traditional photo shoot we featured members of our Instagram community wearing our clothes in beautiful locations across 6 continents & 16 countries while also sharing what the location means to them.

This has worked well for us because we’ve been able to get coverage from not just fashion blogs but yoga, travel, lifestyle, and sites focused on social media who like how we engaged with our Instagram community.

It’s also gotten us in the door at places like Forbes and other big sites as a jump off point for general coverage of our business where we’ve received homepage links.

Just as importantly it’s a fun and engaging piece of content that visitors to our site love and have complimented us on and therefore it’s also helped us increase sales and social media followers.

5. Mike Scanlin – Born To Sell

Linkable Asset Type: Infographic

We are in a very dry niche. We needed something humorous that would appeal to our audience of covered call investors and traders.

So we came up with this infographic, which was very well received: https://www.borntosell.com/covered-call-blog/money-making-guide

It got mentioned on several relevant blogs and forum postings and generated links and traffic for us we wouldn’t have otherwise had. I think it worked because it was unexpected in our niche.

6. Brandon Doyle – Wallaroo Media

Linkable Asset Type: Long Form Content

Our most linkable asset is our Facebook Newsfeed Algorithm History.

We created this asset a few years ago when Facebook’s Newsfeed started making changes on a consistent basis. We update it every time a significant change is announced. We have never done outreach for it, but it has performed pretty well!

Link to asset: https://wallaroomedia.com/facebook-newsfeed-algorithm-change-history/

7. Ryan Farley – LawnStarter

Linkable Asset Type: Long Form Content

One of our best linkable assets has been our lawn care guide. By making it several thousand words and including all sorts of information about lawn care – from the history of the lawn, to basic mowing techniques, to information on specialty services and even an industry survey, we’ve been able to garner links from all sorts of publications.

An unexpected link source is people writing about our guide as a great example of content. For example, we were featured in a Copy Blogger post on evergreen content.

The best part is, that we’ve done almost no outreach on this post; people find it and link to it. We rank on page 1 for ‘lawn care guide’ and get tons of traffic from mid-funnel prospects looking to learn about lawn care.

8. Joe Kelley – Workshop Digital

Linkable Asset Type: Tool

The WTF is Happening to My Organic Traffic Dashboard was posted on our site in June 2016. The purpose of this SEO analysis tool was to help SEO analysts quickly identify where they should further investigate drops in traffic.

The dashboard is one of our company’s top visited pages, has received links from other analytics platforms, and generally was well-received in the SEO community.

9. Taylor Kerby – Cave Social

Linkable Asset Type: Long Form Content

We’ve got a highly active YouTube Channel, columns that we write for on large publications, and an ever growing email subscriber’s list. But the one piece of content that’s generated more traffic for us was an article called Double Your Speed Reading In 5 Minutes.

We decided to test out a strategy going after business professionals looking for productivity tips, so we combined our collective knowledge on speed reading and wrote this piece. Long story short, it took off.. Since it was written, it has hit over 30,000 views and has hundreds of links from external sources. It also continues to bring in hundreds of readers every single month.

Unfortunately, not everyone wants to read about marketing/business all the time, so finding a new category like productivity that has tons of business cross-over really moved our content game to the next level.

10. Nora Leary – Launchway Media

Linkable Asset Type: Long Form Content

We created a listicle of Argentine startups that really stand out (our company works with startups in Latin America).

When we posted it on social, we linked to all of the companies in a series of posts, and we emailed them all individually to let them know about it and ask them to share. It worked really well and quickly became our most popular blog. Making the personal approach helped a lot, but also tagging on social media really drove clicks up.

Here is the asset: https://www.launchwaymedia.com/blog/2017/5/3/10-argentine-startups-you-need-to-know

11. James Pollard – The Advisor Coach

Linkable Asset Type: Long Form Content

My most linkable asset to date has been an in-depth listicle I made called “27 Financial Advisor Marketing Ideas and Strategies That Work!” It’s worked so well because it’s very closely tied to what I do (marketing for financial advisors) and it’s pretty in-depth. It’s over 5,500 words and it’s filled with actionable content that financial advisors can use to get more clients.

This particular piece has been popular among others in the financial services space, sharing it with those who are looking for financial marketing ideas.

Here is a link to the post: https://www.theadvisorcoach.com/27-financial-advisor-marketing-ideas–strategies-that-work.html

12. Max Schleicher – ReviewTrackers

Linkable Asset Type: Long Form Content

When it comes to link building, I love to start with a piece of data. One of ReviewTracker’s top pieces of content is a survey we did about online reviews and local search (https://www.reviewtrackers.com/online-reviews-survey/). Why did this work so well? Well, for starters it’s actually good data. We surveyed a few hundred people, asked them a bunch of questions about how local SEO and online reviews affect their purchasing habits, and we found all kinds of interesting things.

Having your own data is crucial for link building. It allows you start a new conversation, rather than adding to someone else’s. That’s how you get links.

13. Natasha Gayle – Qualbe Marketing Group

Linkable Asset Type: Long Form Content

For our brand 1Dental, our greatest link-building success has been with our Mom’s Guide to Caring for Little Teeth. It was a helpful resource we put together for moms about dental care: https://www.1dental.com/moms-guide/. They can find great information about how to care for their little ones’ teeth, from newborns to teenagers.

We created the resource, reached out to mom bloggers, promoted it (and continue promoting it) on social media and link to it from our website. Creating a resource like this has reached a real audience’s need for this information and has helped us build up a great backlink profile with it.

The key to this resource was finding out what our personas really needed/wanted and creating something that met that need. After it was created, the objective has been to get it in front of the right people who could really benefit from the information and would want to share it with their own friends and followers.

14. Ian Phillips – Inseev Interactive

Linkable Asset Type: Long Form Content

For our agency website our most linkable asset to date is an informational blog post titled “Even More Ways to Find Someone’s Email Address”. This post offers a detailed and insightful approach to email prospecting while capitalizing on all things “link-worthy”. Is the blog post unique? Check. Does the information answer readers’ questions or solve their problems? Yes. Creating a linkable asset is all about unique and quality content that is worthy of naturally occurring links.

For example, some blogs or publications share “unique” content that is simply a rewrite of mundane and overused topics or listicles. In our blog post, readers can find a reference to HubSpot’s ‘8 Hacks to Find Anyone’s Email Address’. Instead of rewriting these tips in our own language to create “unique” content, our own ideas were brainstormed and compiled into an insightful post that builds upon the HubSpot piece while offering additional tips and tricks for our readers.

15. Henry Butler – Can I Rank?

Linkable Asset Type: Long Form Content

Our most successful linkable asset was a research study we conducted last year before the presidential election. The study analyzed the political bias of Google search results for various left and right-leaning search queries. We were able piggyback on the pre-election news by offering research that generated controversy and sparked an important debate regarding the importance of online search to the democratic process.

The study helped us earn over 100 backlinks and gain coverage in The Wall Street Journal, Fox News and many other media sites. It took a lot of work to execute the study, analyze the statistical results and pitch journalists, but it was worth the effort and is something we would like to replicate in the future.

16. Eric Bowen – Broadband Search

Linkable Asset Type: Infographic

The most linkable content we have created was our Broadband “Nutrition Facts” Labels, which outlined fees that may not be obvious on your monthly service bill.

The reason this was able to generate more links than other infographic was because it gave a website information that is extremely pertinent to wide variety of people, considering how many people have cable and internet services.

Link to infographic: https://www.broadbandsearch.net/page/broadband-facts-labels

17. James McCarthy – Placement Labs

Linkable Asset Type: Long Form Content

The most popular piece of content that we have created for ourselves is a lengthy, informative blog post called “SEO Website Launch Checklist 2017”, which includes a detailed list of actions that a company should take when launching a new website to ensure that they are in line with SEO best practices and set up for ranking success. Included are tips and tricks for both on-page and off-page SEO, with a description of each tactic and why it is important.

We spent a good chunk of time planning the content that we wanted to add to this blog, as well as the keyword research, which even helped us land on “SEO-checklist” as our URL slug, as it is a keyword which generates over 1,100 searches per month! Despite only publishing this blog on April 5, 2017, it is already our site’s most popular blog post in terms of backlinks, with 22,315 backlinks, and has achieved a Domain Rating of 41.

You may view the SEO Website Launch Checklist 2017 here: https://placementlabs.com/SEO-checklist/

18. Jennifer Van Iderstyne – Overit

Linkable Asset Type: Long Form Content

Our most linkable asset was a blog post where a member of our team was among the first to announce breaking industry news. It was a bit of lightening in a bottle.

But what we learned, that is repeatable, is how important it is to be present and engaged at industry functions beyond the trade show floor. The ability to listen, discern important insight and be able to react quickly was what really made a difference. That is a strategy that can work in any industry.

Here is the post: https://overit.com/blog/google-announces-shift-toward-mobile-first-indexing

19. Wences Garcia – MarketGoo

Linkable Asset Type: Tool

We decided to go all out with a lead magnet that was evergreen and provided super high value to the user – for us, this didn’t turn out to be a white paper, webinar or ebook. It was a free tool! We engineered the Free SEO Report tool to give a super detailed SEO audit. We saw that while there were many free SEO audit tools available, they either truncated valuable information, limited the user to 1 free report, demanded upgrades, or did not allow you to save or share it.

We decided to include those very features to make it stand out as a report that was free, and offered an upgrade, but had the main aim of informing the user of the technical and SEO errors on their site without asking for anything in return. This has proven to be an incredible lead magnet, with over half a million unique reports generated!

Link Asset: https://www.marketgoo.com/free-website-report

20. Dustin Montgomery – Shippers Supplies

Linkable Asset Type: Infographic

We had great link building success when we created a useful infographic. We reached out to sites in our niche as well as sites that specialize in infographics. We always link to our About page which it is on. We obtained at least 20 backlinks from this method including several that were strong authority. The strategy for this is rather simple.

First, submit the infographic to any websites that specialize in curating infographics. Second outreach (manual, not automated) to any websites in your industry that have blogs and ask if they would mind posting or sharing your infographic.

It is important to remember that you really need an infographic that has quality both visually and in terms of content.

Link: https://www.movingblankets.com/about-our-products

21. Josh Parker – Badger SEO

Linkable Asset Type: Long Form Content

For me, I created a blog that included content, videos, lists, infographics, and more and I put my focus on creating high-quality content that people would engage with. This strategy worked well and helped me acquire a lot of natural links back to my website.

These links helped to power up my blog and give my site authority in the niche, which in turn helped my blog posts rank high in the search engines as soon as they indexed. Whatever your niche is, lead with value and sales, links, and lots of other good stuff will follow.

Here is an example of one of my high-performing pieces of content: https://badgerseo.com/how-to-rank-in-local-search-step-by-step-guide/

22. Steffen Ploeger – 9thCO

Linkable Asset Type: Long Form Content

Linkable assets require a lot of research and aren’t easy to make. Keep in mind the amount of hours of research, as well as the writing quality and potentially the required data to create infographics, shareable content.

Finding the right topics is challenging but with the right tools and patient not so difficult. Google trends, analytics, and competitor research will give a lot of data and information about what is trending, new in your niche market or simply overlooked.

Here is an example of a post we did about Instagram marketing strategies: https://www.9thco.com/instagram-strategies-market-your-company

Our social media guru did a lot of research including keyword research and then wrote this piece of content. I believe we took screen shots and then shared the article via all social media platforms. My part was to reach out to established websites/webmasters to make them aware of the content.

23. Damon Burton – SEO National

Linkable Asset Type: Infographic

We’ve found infographics to be a scalable, quality controllable form of link building. After we finish content writing for blogs we’ll often repurpose the content into an infographic. The infographics are then posted to our client’s site so they receive original authorship credit.

Afterwards, we distribute the infographic to social media, infographic repositories, and through manual outreach. The time spent is minimally more than manual backlink building efforts but the quality of link is usually better.

Here is an example of a high performing infographic as a linkable asset for one of our clients: https://www.bariatriceating.com/beeasy/

24. Nathan Oulman – Dailyhosting

Linkable Asset Type: Long Form Content

I have found creating content that is off beat helps create unique links. What i mean by this is by thinking outside of the box. I wrote a post on Geotargeting primer.

Afterward, we shared it with social media and have gotten a few quick links from international companies linking to it or sharing it socially.

Here is the blog post: https://www.dailyhosting.net/geotargeting-primer-needs-right/

25. Scott Nailon – Managed SEO

Linkable Asset Type – Explainer Video

Creating pages which host multiple content types is really a winner.

People are always looking for information on the basics of, so I created an explainer video and added it to a page of my site.

So I start with a script or layout. I get an idea of how to shape the video and what the message is that it should convey.

From there I record myself speaking the script in Garageband on my Apple MacBook Pro. I clean it up – taking away all the mistakes, pauses and other distractions. The result is a clean audio file.

I then have my video animator create a clean animation focused on the content of the video. Whilst that is being done the video is also transcribed into written content which I polish up and add to the article I want to get backlinks to.

The end result is as follows:

• 1 Video in Youtube (Backlink to Blog Article)
• 1 Video in Vimeo (Backlink to Blog Article)
• 1 Video Embedded on my website
• 1 Large Text article

I aim the article at a single search phrase and ensure it was well over 1000 words for the sake of authority. I also use Yoast to ensure the writing quality is there and the on page SEO is done right.

You can check out the explainer video on the Managed SEO homepage.

Takeaways

Let’s look at the numbers from these great examples of linkable assets.

Here is the breakdown: Infographics – 5 Tools – 3 Long Form Content – 16

Long form content posts were far and away the most common. Does this mean they are the best option for creating links naturally? I don’t think we can draw that conclusion just yet. I think a lot of it has to do with SEO’s being comfortable with creating long form content and how to promote it. Plus high content is a key ranking factor so it has more than one advantage.

In my experience, the thing that has driven the most links naturally for me has been an online tool.

How Do Linkable Assets Integrate With SEOJet

If you’re already an SEOJet user, you’re probably wondering how getting an influx of natural links will work with the link maps we have created for you.

If you’re getting links naturally this actually works perfectly with SEOJet. You just take the links you got naturally from your awesome linkable asset and put them into the appropriate sections of the link map.

For example, let’s say someone linked to your link asset using the full URL as the anchor text, then you just go find a full URL in the link map and place the link there.

After you have entered all of the links pointing to your asset this way, then whatever is left on the link map you can go out and get proactively.

If You Don’t Use SEOJet

SEOJet is a backlink management platform that literally takes all of the guesswork out of link building.

Using data from top-ranked websites across all industries, we’ll tell you which anchor text to use for every link you get to build out a #1 ranked backlink profile.

You never have to worry about wasting your time on links that won’t move the needle. Instead, SEOJet ensures all of your link maps are strategic and will get you ranking higher with fewer links. It’s all about working smarter, not harder.

Do you have an example of a linkable asset that has killed it for you? Let us know about it in the comments below.