How to Create Links and Influence People

In the old days of SEO, people used to write content and insert keywords to get rankings but that is old-hat today. With so many social media networks such as: Digg, Sphinn, Stumbleupon and many more, people can cast their vote on your content. That is why it is more important than ever before to create dazzling content that people will want to read and link to.

Copywriting is now one of the most important parts of on-page search engine optimisation;  of course it is still important to write tittles and add keywords, but that will just insure that you are at the same level as most other sites. To get those important extra links, that will raise your site above your competitors, you need to have good content that will make people act. But what counts for good content today?

Good content is that which taps into the users desires and answers their questions. For example if you are reading this, you will probably want to know:

how can I write content that will allow me to create links or help me sell the crap that I hawk to people on my website?

To do this you will need to anticipate what questions a prospective reader will want to know.

With an article or blog post the content should always make it clear from the title and introductory paragraph what the article is about and what is in it for the reader if they carry on reading.

• The title should capture people’s attention. I am sick of seeing ‘x ways to …’ titles now and even though I am tempted to read some of them, I sometimes I think that I should not bother.
• Stay focused – articles should be focused and each paragraph should contain a specific idea which builds your article into a coherent whole.
• Build credibility – by quoting reference sources, testimonials, logic  and statistics. Without credibility your offer or ideas are worth nothing.
• Make an offer -  if you are selling something or presenting an idea you need to say what is that you want the reader to do.
• Summarise – sum up the main points of your article, arguments, reasons why people should buy.

There you go. I have argued that content is important to build links because people have more opportunities to scrutinise your content on social media sites which can provide a source of links.

To get people to vote for your content it has to reward the reader by being interesting, insightful, funny or informative and  hopefully, all four. Good content gets good links and influences people. If you liked this post, you might, oh I don’t know, Sphinn it.