One of the ranking factors in Google’s algorithm is backlinking. By having your URL mentioned by another website, Google sees it as voting for your content. On top of that, the higher ranking of the linking website, the better for you. SEO specialists do everything they can to have as many backlinks as possible. One of the ways to get them that does not require you to reach out to other people is to use data-driven content.

Data Driven Content & Content Marketing Strategy

Data driven content is a method to create content. Thanks to analytical tools, which gather data, it is possible to analyze users’ behaviors and preferences on the web. The information influences the content creation process, and it is used often in content marketing strategy. That is a method of approaching potential clients with relevant and valuable content. To do that the actions must be consistent and attractive. The goal is to familiarize the audience to make them buy the product.

Data driven content can also result in many backlinks. To explain how to do it, let’s look at the example of 32 Statistics on Women in Sports (2020).

How to use data driven content to get links? 3 tips

• Analyze trends!
  When starting creating content you most likely already know who the audience is. Whether you already have a topic or you don’t it is a good idea to analyze current trends. Many analytical tools could help you and you should check them out (start with Google Trends). If you are still in doubt, perhaps consider conducting a survey in your target group. 

In the article, we can see that the author uses keywords that are very popular such as “female”, sports” and “statistics”. Statistics content actually tends to have a lot of links naturally. If you wish to learn more about that you check a Link building Case study prepared by Ahrefs.

• Create sources or get creative!
  Using a strong and valid source is great, but creating one yourself is even better! People want to share something exciting that nobody has seen before. Creating something unique and valuable will generate many links. If you do not know where to start, try to look for standard demographics. It could be information such as gender, age or sex. Try also to look at data that does not seem very interesting. Connecting it with other information could make the bigger pictue look exciting! Think about how you could look at it from a different angle and what would make it appealing. That’s exactly what happened in the article. The article consists of many categories, for example, Olympic representation, female coaches and info about women’s media coverage. All these together make an interesting article that you want to share.

  
  

• Create visual content!
  Own or creative source is not the only thing you can do to boost your linking. People love to have visual content wrapped up in an infographic or a chart. Plain text may be boring even for the most interested reader. Being able to see the visual data can be a game-changer. As an example let’s look at the women’s participation in the Olympics from the article. It shows the historical data and it is interactive. Moving the cursor on the pie chart highlights the category you are looking at. This is a job well-done. If you don’t know how to make these, you can check out the websites that help you create these. Wrapping up your content visually is always a good idea!

Final Thoughts

To sum up, data driven content can boost your marketing strategy and result in many backlinks. The article used as an example, showed us there are three main tips to do that. Analyzing trends will always let you know which topics to emphasize on. Being creative with sources will result in many people eager to share your content. Take it up a notch with an infographic or a chart, and you got a basic recipe to get links.