Here's a quick one - popular content discovery tool BuzzSumo has added backlink data from Majestic to all their content matches. Now, when you enter a search into BuzzSumo, you'll have access to a new element called 'Linking domans'.
Creating content that generates both links and shares is one of the key aims of online content marketing. Ideally, of course, you want content that leads to conversions, but that connection is often not direct, so gaining exposure through shares, and higher Google search rank through links, are two of the best ways to maximize your messaging.
With this new data source, content teams can now conduct improved research on the content that fuels both elements - for example, if I sold basketball shoes and I was looking to boost my SEO performance, I could look up my keywords in BuzzSumo.
As you can see, the new linking domains insight gives me more context as to how to approach this task - if I wanted to produce content that generates shares and exposure, I could focus on the more highly shared topics, but the linking domains info is more relevant for SEO purposes (and the two don't always correlate).
In launching the new feature, BuzzSumo has also published new research which examines what type of content has the highest potential to achieve both a high number of shares and a high number of domain links. Their research team was able to narrow it down to five key content types which achieve both:
- Authoritative content that answers popular questions, such as 'what is ..?'
- Strong opinion posts and political posts
- Content that provides original research and insights
- Content that leverages a trending topic but that also provides practical insights
- Authoritative news content on new products or developments
That's not to say it's necessarily any easy to create such content - not all brands will have the resources to stay on top of trending news or conduct their own research - but content that answers key questions around their business and niche is something all brands should be focused on providing, and expert opinion is a by-product of building a successful and sustainable business, so such insights should be present within any organization.
Using BuzzSumo's new data points, and maximizing your brand's own insights, you might just be able to come up with a whole new content plan, one that enables you to both maximize audience response and boost your search rankings.
You can read BuzzSumo's full research post and insights here.