4 Ways To Create Data Driven Content To Get Quality Backlinks

This article will review in depth how to create data driven content. Including the definition and why this is important.

Data driven content marketing is one way to build quality backlinks for website optimization. This technique is often used by a number of professional SEO experts. In addition, this also has the potential to increase online sales through your business website.

If explained, data driven content itself is content created based on certain data or research.

As a simple example, in recent time, there is a given data that shows that articles with titles containing numbers get higher pageviews and visits than articles with regular titles.

Based on this data, if you create more articles that contain more numbers, then your article can be referred to as data driven content, because the article was made based on previous data considerations.

In this article, we will discuss a little about how to create and utilize data driven content. The main goal is to generate quality links to your website. Curious? See the full review below.

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Why Data Driven Content Is Potential To Bring Backlinks?

In the initial discussion section, we will discuss a little about why data driven content has the potential to bring backlinks to your website. Creating data driven content can indeed be said to require a fairly long and complicated process compared to creating regular content.

But to quote one of the opinions of the founder of searchenginejournal.com, "Be The Source" is one way to get your audience connected to your website. By creating interesting and informative data driven content, your audience will be interested in connecting with your website pages.

One example that proves that data driven content is very effective in generating quality links to your website can be seen in the data driven content created by Echelon Insight.

In 2016, presidential election candidates became a hot topic in internet searches. Many internet users have shown interest in who will run from each party, namely the democratic party and the republican party.

Echelon Insight also took the angle of writing “republican primary voters” and started collecting data about it using Google Survey. From the Google Survey media, they also found that Donald Trump won 32% as a presidential candidate from the Democratic party.

The data is packaged into an article and posted on the Echelon Insight website. This article also managed to get many quality links from major websites such as The Washington Post, The Observer and many more.

How to Create Data Driven Content

Although there are currently quite a number of articles online that discuss data driven content marketing. However, almost no one clearly explains how to create this data driven content.

There are several steps that can be taken to create data driven content. Some of these steps are as follows:

• Determining the Topic

One of the steps you must take to create data driven content is to determine the topic of your content.

You can search for content topics that are relevant to your website using a number of tools such as Google Trends and BuzzSumo. These two online tools are designed to help explore and research trends in today's internet searches.

For example, your website has a main niche regarding content marketing. You can use this “content marketing” as a search keyword in Google Trends or BuzzSumo.

Both tools will present a number of recent posts related to the keywords you use. You can use a number of these posts as references to find topics that you will discuss in your content later.

• Collect Data

Once you find the right topic for you to add to your data driven content. The next thing you need to do is collect data related to your chosen topic.

Anna Crowe mentions that there are many methods you can use to collect data for your data driven content. Some of them are as follows:

• Doing a Survey

One method you can use to collect data is to conduct a survey. This survey can be said to be one of the most powerful ways to collect a lot of statistics and data around the topic you focus on.

When conducting this survey, think carefully about what questions you will ask your respondents. In addition, you also have to make sure that the questions you give will support the storyline or stories that you will convey in your data driven content later.

• Ask the Audience Community

The second method that is no less powerful to collect statistics and data is to ask your audience community or fans of your brand/website. If your website already has a number of loyal audiences, you can use them to get the data you need to create your content.

You can send a number of bulletins or survey questions to your website's audience. You can also use the polls feature available on a number of social media such as Facebook and Twitter to get data from your website's audience.

This method of collecting data from the audience community itself is widely practiced by a number of large platforms abroad, one of which is Moz.

• Using Google Analytics

Google Analytics can be one of the media you use to collect the data needed to create data driven content. This Google-owned online tool can see the demographics of your audience and potential audience based on region, age, gender, location and also what interests them.

In short, by using Google Analytics, you can analyze the performance of your website and also the latest trends related to your website. So you will get more data and also insight as material for creating data driven content. 

If you know what your audience wants, you can create data driven content according to their needs.

• Looking for an Interesting Storyline Angle

One of the important points that you must understand in creating data driven content is that good data does not equal to good content. This means that good data may not necessarily make your content automatically good.

In this case, look for a good angle story to present the data you collect into the homework you have to do. Look for a good storyline angle to package the data you have.

For example, if you have a content topic about 301 redirects and you have data on the use of 301 redirects that are unconventional but successful in bringing traffic to your website. Then you can use “use unconventional 301 redirects” as your storyline angle in creating data driven content.

To make it easier to make angle storylines. You can represent your data in the following formats:

• Topic: 301 Redirects
• Angle Storyline/idea : using unconventional 301 redirect
• Point of view (the side you are discussing): How to Get Traffic Using 301 Redirects.

• Visualize Your Data

In addition to data and storyline angles, the way you visualize the data you have is the key to the success of your data driven content in bringing in traffic and links. In this case, based on the opinion written by Anna Crowe. Data visualization is the solution to this problem.

Among Nigerian SEO (Search Engine Optimization) practitioners, the application of this data visualization must be admitted very little. However, many foreign SEO practitioners have proven the ability to present data using this method.

Data visualization itself is not an ordinary article content, where this type combines graphics and writing to present visuals that convey data better.

Because this data visualization relies on visuals in presenting its data, in its manufacture, it is recommended that you involve a graphic designer in making this data visualization.

But if you don't have enough budget to pay for a graphic designer, you can try making this data visualization using a number of data visualization tools such as Google Charts, Tableau, Grafana, Infogram, Data Wrapper and others.

Examples of Interesting Data Driven Content

To help you have a better understanding of data driven content, we also provide several examples of data driven articles that you can use as references in creating data driven articles for websites.

One example of interesting data driven content that you can use as a reference is the data visualization from the flowingdata.com site titled A Day in the Life of Americans. Another example that can also be your reference in creating data driven content is the data visualization from the podio.com site titled “Daily Routines of Famous Creative People.

You can directly check through the posts we mentioned.

Don't Have Time To Collect Data? No Problem!!

If you don't have enough time to collect data to create your own data driven content. Don't worry!, there is another solution that you can also use which is to combine or compare old data to create a new data set.

For example, you can take 2 old data sets with the same discussion and then compare them.

In addition to combining or comparing old data sets, you can also create new data sets by analyzing data created by others and then trying to find different angles of discussion that have not existed before.

To find some interesting data sets you can use to create your new Data Driven content, you can use the following websites as your sources:

• Wikipedia
• Google Scholar
• Pew Research Center
• Reddit's Data is Beautiful subreddit
• The Office for National Statistics

Not only using the sites above, you can also find interesting data sets to use in your data driven content using search engines.

All you need to do is open your Google search engine and then type in the keywords you want to find using the format “[keyword] market research” or [keyword] data sets.

For example, you want to find data related to the topic of fitness. Then you can type in a Google search “fitness market research” or fitness data sets. Furthermore, Google will present a number of data, statistics and reports related to the fitness.

Important Matters Regarding Data Driven Content

Taking information from another SEO expert named Neil Patel. In one of his posts, on neilpatel.com, titled "How to Write Data-Driven Content: A Step-by-Step Guide", he implicitly explains that, there are several important factors that must be considered in creating data driven content, which include:

• Doing a Lot of Research

Research can be said to be an important part of creating data driven content. The more research you do, the more content ideas you can use for your data driven content. Therefore, it is highly recommended for those of you who want to create informative data driven content so that they are not lazy in doing research.

If you have an interesting content idea that comes to mind, make sure you jot it down on your computer or smartphone. In addition, if you read an article that could be an idea or reference for data driven content, don't forget to bookmark the article, so you can open it again.

• Following Relevant Websites with High Domain Authority

Following a high domain authority website that has a niche relevant to your website is another important thing you should pay attention to when creating data driven content.

This high-authority website can be a source of information that you use in the creation of your data driven content.

For this part, Neil Patel himself recommends that you follow 5 to 15 other websites. Of course that is relevant to your website.

• Ensuring Your Sources And Data Are Credible

Google is indeed a very complete information database today. However, one important thing that you should know is that not all the information in a Google search is credible and true.

It will be a very big problem if you create data driven content based on such misinformation. Therefore, make sure that you use correct and credible information for the creation of your data driven content.

In this case, there are several online tools that can be used to find valid sources of information. Google Scholar and also ChicagoBooth.edu are some online tools that can help with information (research, studies and journals) from various fields.

For example, if you want to find sources of information about SEO Link Building, you only need to enter these keywords into the search for the two online tools we mentioned earlier.

• Do Activities That Can Support Your Data Driven Content

Once you create and publish data driven content, it doesn't mean the task is done. To make your data driven content more optimal in search engine searches and reach more audiences, it is recommended that you carry out a number of support activities related to your data driven content.

Based on information from the “Larry Kim” SEO feed, there are several support activities you can do to make your data driven content more optimal.

Some of the previously mentioned content are as follows:

• Work closely with the PR team and create manual outreach strategies to get quality links.
• Find a website with the same topic as your website or your data driven content and then do guest blogging on that website. If the related website provides a contributor program, you can directly write articles on the website and attach a link to your data driven content in the article created.
• Collaborate with other companies/brands/websites with the same niche as your website and then create seminars that discuss the data in your data driven content.
• Create a blog post series that provides more information about the data you create.
• Use or present data at conferences that involve you as a resource.
• Create data that you present in data driven content in the form of infographics, charts and graphs.

Discussion Summary

From the reviews we conveyed above, there are several important points in this review that you can take notes on in creating data driven content. Some of these points include:

Benefits of Having Data Driven Content 

• Bringing traffic to the website.
• Potential to bring in links (backlinks) relevant to your website.

Steps to create Data Driven Content

• Determining the Topic
• Collecting Data (Surve, Community/Audience/Follower, Own Data)
• Looking for an Interesting Storyline Angle
• Visualize Data Well

Tools that can be used to create Data Driven Content

• Google Trends
• BuzzSumo
• Google Consumer Survey
• Google Analytics

That's a little explanation from us on how to create data driven content and use it to generate quality links to websites. Hopefully this review can broaden your knowledge about link building techniques for SEO. Good luck.