Need to give your link-building campaign more oomph? There are many things you can do to spruce up your existing website content to make it more "linkable" and create new types of content that attracts links. Linkability is an important concept in search engine optimization.

A website that has a lot of outbound links is considered an authority by the search engines and as a result, search engines reward those sites with higher rankings. In the past, search engine optimization professionals who wanted to build outbound links to their site would purchase them or submit their sites to link directories. Nowadays, the focus is on creating interesting, compelling content because that is what attracts the most valuable links. Search engines don’t place much value on links that have been bought or listed in meaningless directories. That’s why it’s more important now than ever before to create great content and market it.

Attracting Links with How To Content

Writing and promoting "how to" content is an effective way to encourage people to link to your site. You can view different blogs in your niche to get an idea of what kind of questions people have and then address those questions in how-to posts. You can create step-by-step tutorials for your blog that are complete with pictures to attract links and traffic. You can also write how to articles for article directories, and at the end of your articles, include a link or two to your website. Some directories have dofollow links, while others have nofollow links. Either way, the links will enable you to direct targeted traffic to your site at the very least. You can also create how to videos and how to slide shows and place them on various directories that cater to those types of media.

How to Make the Content on Your Site More Linkable

Perhaps you don’t have the time or resources to create awesome content that has the potential to attract many links to your small business’ website. If that’s the case, consider sprucing up the content that’s already featured on your site. For example, if you have an e-commerce site, you can make your product pages more linkable by focusing on just one or two products on each page and then promoting those pages by contacting people in your niche who might be interested in your products.

Surprisingly, it’s also possible to optimize your company’s about page. Most people could care less about linking to company about pages, unless they include enticing content, such as interesting, relevant news stories or contests. About pages can also serve as a place for you to share the story of your business with your customers. If the story of how you started your company is an interesting one, share it. People love stories, and stories attract links. But don’t fret if your company’s story is not particularly interesting because there are several other types of web pages you can include on your company’s site that will have the potential to attract links.

Another company page that tends to attract many links is the careers page. There are tons of people looking for work right now, so careers pages are popular and attract links. On the careers page, you can include a comprehensive list of resources to assist job seekers in finding work and descriptions of job openings at your company or with relevant organizations.

Creating a well-researched and thought out page of links on your company site is another great way to attract traffic and links to your site. If you provide users with a relevant and solid collection of relevant resources and do a little work promoting it, the linking will likely take off on its own. So, if you currently have a links page with links in no particular order, consider sprucing it up and making it a valuable resource for your site visitors. Anything that’s valuable and useful to people will attract links.

Another area of your site that needs nurturing in order to attract links is your blog. If your blog posts are nothing but sales pitches that go on and on about how great your company is, consider taking them off your site. Nobody wants to link to articles full of fluff. Make sure that all of the articles on your website are entertaining and informative. Having great content, however, is only half the battle. You also have to promote that content to ensure that plenty of people see it and link to it.

In order to make your website’s content stand out from the content put out by others in your niche, read various blogs and websites in your niche and see if you can create a new angle or analogy. After you come up with content that has a fresh perspective, you have to start promoting it. Content marketing is a very time-consuming endeavor that requires a lot of work on your part, but if you can manage to pull it off, the rewards are immense.