How to Create Digital Assets Worth Linking to
Even if you’re new to the digital marketing game, you’ve probably heard that one of the most important aspects of the industry is linking. With stellar link building, the sky is the limit for your website. But that’s easier said than done. Though link building might seem like a relatively simple concept, putting it into action can be an entirely different task.
Even before you start the link building process, you’ll want to focus on crafting digital assets that other sites will want to link to. After all, you can’t just ask for links without having anything to link to — that’d be like asking someone for an investment without even having a business idea. So before you dip your toe into the link building game, it will be helpful to explore the world of linkable assets and how they can put you on a path toward success.
What Are Digital Assets?
Digital assets are anything in the digital space owned by a person or company. This can vary widely and covers anything from blog posts to podcasts. Recently, the world of digital assets has expanded significantly to include items like NFTs and cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. For digital marketing purposes, however, these types of assets aren’t as important. We’re more interested in organic content that offers informational value to searchers on the internet.
What Are the Different Types of Digital Assets?
There are many different types of digital assets that are worth linking to. You probably go through a variety of digital assets each day without even realizing it. Here are some different types of digital assets.
Blog Posts
The old standby — blog posts. These are some of easiest and most effective digital assets to craft. Many of them are short — between 600 and 900 words — and cover anything from “The 10 Best Restaurants in NYC” to “What to Do When Your Garage Door Won’t Open.” Although a lot of digital marketers claim that 2,000+ word articles are what Google loves, blog posts are short and sweet, offering a quick and easy read for searchers to skim over to find the answers they need.
Infographics
Another type of digital asset that recently exploded in popularity has been infographics. These types of assets are like compacted versions of blog posts that feature pictures and words that sum up a particular topic in an elegant design. They’re easy on the eyes and easy to process — something that is like digital gold in the linking world.
Whitepapers
Whitepapers are informational documents that describe a particular product, service or even theory. They’re usually extremely detailed, well-researched and based on unbiased, factual research. This makes them an extremely valuable linkable asset. Many whitepapers are business-to-business informational guides that offer ways to help others in a similar industry. If you’re able to craft a document that provides real aid to a business, then your whitepaper could become even more popular in the linking world.
Case Studies
Raw data and research can be a very effective tool for crafting great linkable assets. Case studies offer swaths of information, studies and work that has been compacted down into a neat document that anyone can read. These types of linkable asset are in high demand due to their factual nature and reliability.
Photos
Digital assets dont’t have to involve only written content, of course — sometimes they can just be images. If you’re able to capture something beautiful or engaging, then you may have just caught something worth linking to.
Videos
Check out YouTube to see the billions of linkable assets waiting for you. Granted, most of those billions of videos don’t offer much in the way of linkable content. However, the video world is ripe for linkable asset creation — you can create anything from a lofi study beat to a documentary on anteaters that might just be the thing to take hold of the algorithm and skyrocket in links.
Podcasts
Yes, podcasts are digital assets. And you don’t have to be Joe Rogan to create podcasts worth linking to. Say you’re a small-business lawn care service. You could have a podcast and invite other lawn-care service owners or even small business owners to come on to chat about your industry. You might be surprised with how valuable some people may actually find your content. Sometimes a simple conversation can be just the thing people are looking to latch onto to extract information.
Longform Articles
The world of longform has continued to grow in recent years — even though it seems like out attention spans have continued to shrink. Although platforms like TikTok offer bite-sized information that we can ingest in seconds, there is still something to be said for the well-thought-out, well-written longform piece. With the right structure and focus, these types of linkable assets can offer a great opportunity for people to learn about a particular topic without having to dig into heaps of jumbled information.
Websites
Even websites themselves can be linkable assets. Various niche websites, for example, offer endless pieces of information on a focused topic. Instead of just linking to one piece of content, sites may link to your homepage because they trust your judgment or service.
How-To Guides
“Ultimate” guides or “how-to” guides (like the one you’re reading now) are exceptional ways to build digital assets. As a searcher, you probably don’t want to have to go to five different pieces of content to find the answers you’re looking for. If you’re able to provide the searcher with one place where all of their questions are answered, then you’ve created an awesome user experience and an asset that is definitely worth linking to. Ultimate guides and how-to guides also play into the “user intent” part of Google’s algorithm — something we’ll get into a bit later.
Online Tools
Online tools like conversion calculators are another type of linable asset. These tools fill a need and offer a definitive function, which is reason enough to become linkable.
The Role of Digital Assets in Digital Marketing
Some may find it hard to find the connection between digital assets and marketing. Your local ice cream shop, for example, might be skeptical of putting time and effort into crafting a blog post about how they make their ice cream. In truth, there are many different ways these simple assets can help your business. With a little bit of quality content and time focused on linkable assets, you can boost traffic, gain notoriety in your industry and grow your brand.
Boost Traffic
Digital assets help boost traffic to your website and in turn increase your number of conversions for your product or service. Think about it — the more linkable assets you have, the more links you’ll be able to get from other sites. These are like referrals sending potential customers your way. Once they’re on your site and reading your content, your sales funnel will lead them to what you’re selling.
Remember, however, that it’s more about quality over quantity. Though it’s great to have thousands of pages that you can lure customers to, you want to make sure they’re actually offering something in terms of quality and information.
Gain Notoriety
After a while of crafting quality digital assets, you might actually gain notoriety for providing great content to your customers. There are sites like Nerdwallet, for instance, whose sole purpose is to provide those great pieces of content that inform readers about financial education.
You could also be a business like Patagonia, which sells clothes and also provides a rich section of content that features travelers and their stories around the world.
Or check out Airbnb, which, aside from offering people options to stay, also provides how-to guides for hosts and city guides for travelers.
These sites are utilizing the benefits of content marketing, which uses digital assets to drive people to their business and build up their authority in the industry.
Grow Your Brand
Digital assets can also travel quickly across the internet. A few shares on social media can get eyes on your content and then on your business itself, allowing you to grow your brand.
Build Trust and Respect
Great content does more than just provide ways to get links — it also bridges that gap between business and customer. You can create digital assets — whether through videos, podcasts or longform posts — that tell your story, showcase your expertise or provide value to your customer. The more you’re able to do this, the better your customer will be able to trust you.
How to Create Great Digital Assets Worth Linking To
Even if you do know what digital assets are and all of their benefits, it stil may challenging figuring out how to actually craft them. Here are 8 ways you can make some stellar digital assets that are worth linking to.
1. Focus on Your Niche
Make sure you’re being specific to what you do when you’re creating a digital asset. You wouldn’t want to make a blog post about the history of trains, for example, if you’re running a website on dentistry. Choose a topic that is relevant to what you do and that you think would offer something to your audience.
2. Think About Your Audience
Making digital assets is all about focusing on your audience. What would they want to know? What would be beneficial for them to know about? If you’re running a lawn care service, maybe you could talk about your process and all the steps you take to ensure that you’ve satisfied the customer. Or you could even provide a post about tips that other lawn care services could benefit from.
3. Be Informative, Entertaining and Engaging
While making these digital assets, you also want to make sure that what you’re crafting is informative, entertaining and engaging. There is a lot of content on the internet today, after all, so you want to make sure that you’re making something that can cut through all the junk.
To be informative, be sure to choose a topic that you think is worth knowing about. As for entertaining, just make sure that you aren’t using too much jargon (unless this is what your topic is calling for) and stay upbeat. And lastly, be sure to keep your content engaging and act as though you’re addressing one customer who needs your specific help.
4. Make It Easy to Access
Don’t bury your content under layers of different categories and subcategories so that it’s impossible to find. If you want, you can showcase it as a featured post on your homepage so that people can find your new content. Use social media to advertise to your customer base and find other ways to make it known that you’re publishing these pieces of content.
5. Fill a Content Gap
If you really want to make a splash with your content, consider filling a content gap. This involves looking at the existing content on your website and determining what is lacking. Are there any cracks where you may be losing customers on their journey from initial landing to the buying process? Finding ways to fill those gaps and creating bridging content is a great way to convert more customers and also craft great linkable assets for your site.
6. Use the Skyscraper Technique
The skyscraper technique is one of the most well-known phrases in digital marketing. It involves looking at other pieces of content in your industry that you may want to write about and then building off of it to create something a little bit better. So, for a post titled “10 Best Restaurants in NYC”, you might do some research, pool your resources and build a post titled “20 Best Restaurants in NYC.”
This provides more value to the searcher, as the main keyword — “best restaurants in NYC” — will likely favor those posts with more options. The skyscraper technique is a sure way to build great content and linkable assets.
7. Consider User Intent
While typical SEO strategies are still effective, Google has now become much smarter at figuring out what certain searches mean and the intent behind them. This means that stuffing headlines and paragraphs with your target keyword won’t be as helpful. Instead, you’ll have to really look at the intent behind your article and what searchers may be looking for while typing in a particular query.
Take the article you’re reading right now, for instance. Even though the title of the article is “How to Create Digital Assets Worth Linking To,” I’ve also included subheadings like “What Are Digital Assets?” and “What Are the Different Types of Digital Assets?”. I’ve included these because I’ve taken the user intent into account — people might want a brush-up on what digital assets actually are and how they differ before they jump into how to create them. Even if they already have this information, they can simply skim down to the section that will be most beneficial to them.
You can also search a particular query yourself to see which types of content people will expect to see. “How to Put Together a Desk” for example, will show you a series of videos as the top result. But search “What Is the Best Color for a Work Desk?” and you’ll be met with articles instead. Do a little research yourself to gauge the intent of a search.
8. Use Keyword Research
Building linkable assets doesn’t have to be a guessing game. Keyword research allows you to actually see what searches are bringing in a lot of volume per month. If you can find some that have low difficulty for ranking, then you could work to craft some great content around that and start driving traffic to your site.
Reach Out For More Help On Building Linkable Assets
Even with all of this information, building great digital assets is still a lot of work. Reaching out for some help can be just the thing to get your on the right track. As a freelance writer, I can help craft great pieces of content that will help attract links, build trust between you and your audience and drive traffic to yoru site. Contact me today!
