Best Ways to Use Interactive Content to Get Lifetime Backlinks

 
Inbound Marketing • October 5, 2023
 
Content marketing has been playing an increasingly important role in SEO in recent years. With the shift from keyword-stuffed texts to reader-centered content and Google updating its algorithms and guidelines to increase the quality of online content, businesses need to create documented content marketing strategies to succeed. Any well-designed content marketing strategy thus should meet a number of specific content requirements that define the quality of content as well as other critical aspects. While this may not sound like a super difficult thing to have to do – after all, requirements for online content change pretty often – but this time it’s a bit different. The main difference of the ongoing content revolution is that the value of content isn’t about its quantity, but much more about quality. The more helpful and interesting your content is to your target audience, the better chances it has to perform well. One way to create a high-quality content that meets all the latest requirements and ranks high is to make it interactive, e.g. requiring input or engagement from the user. In this article, let’s explore this content type in depth and see why it’s a great way to earn lifetime backlinks.

Interactive Content and Its SEO Value

Simply explained, interactive content is a type of content that requires active engagement or input from its users. This makes it an opposite of static content that has its consumers passively reading, listening, or watching. Interactive content is a relatively new idea in the SEO world but has a great potential to increase traffic by bringing lifetime backlinks. By engaging the user, it delivers on the promise to add value for them and keep them interested, which is something that lots of online content creators fail to accomplish. Digital marketers are becoming increasingly aware of the benefits of interactive content. For example, a recent survey by Go-Gulf found that:
  • 93 percent of marketers agree that interactive content is more effective in educating consumers
  • 88 percent of marketers say that interactive content is effective in differentiating their brand from others
  • 81 percent of marketers agree that interactive content attracts attention more effectively than static content
  • 79 percent of marketers agree that interactive content can have reusable value, resulting in multiple exposures and repeat visitors.
In addition to all these incredible benefits, creating interactive content is a great way to earn quality backlinks. The main reason for this, of course, is a high level of engagement. And this is exactly what Google requires to rank content high. Remember, usability to user experience (UX) are the two most important factors when it comes to search engine rankings right now. Since interactive content provides a measurable benefit to the popularity of a site, Google interprets it as a high-quality content that delivers value.

Ways to Use Interactive Content to Get Lifetime Backlinks

A Generator/Calculator

“One of the best ways to accomplish this task with interactive content is to create a generating tool that your target audience will find truly useful and interesting,” recommends Seth Caruso, a digital marketer from Flatfy. Let’s use an example. Hillary’s is a British manufacturer of curtains, window shutters, window blinds, and other products. The brand doesn’t only sell products that help to make sleeping more comfortable but also educates people on how much sleep they need to stay energetic and productive. The company accomplishes this task with Sleep Calculator, which does exactly what its name suggests: calculates the sleeping time based on the input provided by the user. A quick analysis of backlinks performed with MonitorBacklinks reveals that Sleep Calculator performs quite well, too. If you have data and can generate ideas on how to present a tool like Sleep Calculator as useful to your target audience, it can be an awesome way to land a lot of links. Another great example of an interactive calculator is BMI healthy weight calculator by NHS. This tool allows you to check your body mass index and figure out your healthy weight. You simply choose between a child or an adult, enter your height, weight, age, sex, ethnic group, and activity level. You can also switch between the imperial and metric systems for your convenience. After you enter this data, you get full information concerning your weight, some recommendations, and an extensive explanation, how to understand your BMI and what to do if you’re underweight or overweight. BMI weight calculator by NHS is a great example of what interactive content should look like: quick, informative and useful. After you complete the form, you also get the information on the next steps your GP may undertake to help you fix your weight. There are also some helpful links to other NHS pages that can provide you with further information. Another great example of a helpful and fun interactive content comes from Hello Fresh blog. In order to help their visitor to come up with new recipes for dinner, they’ve created a tool called Flavor Generator. It requires the user to select their favorite food (Italian, British, Indian, Mexican, Middle Eastern) and then choose a kind of dish among herby, spicy, tangy, sweet, and “I’ve never tried” option. Clicking on ‘Generate My Flavor” button prompts the tool to create a certain flavor profile. For example, a selection of “Italian Food” and “Herby” option led the Generator to come up with Basil and Oregano profile. As for the dishes, the Flavor Generator offered to prepare two options that fit the profile:
  • Turkey Milanese with Pesto Greens Beans and Creamy Potatoes
  • Courgette Parmigiana with Insalata Caprese.
Of course, the tool provided the recipes for each of the dishes. If the user didn’t like these options, they could spin again, select different flavor profile or cuisine, or simply scroll down on the results page above to see more recipes. Indeed, a truly useful tool for those who need inspiration and advice for cooking! Static infographics are still a good way to capture the attention of online audiences but interactive ones are a giant step forward. Just take a look at this The Seas of Plastic infographic. It provides a visual representation of plastic pollution in the global oceans. The infographic provides the user with controls; for example, you can rotate the globe to assess the accumulation of marine floating plastic debris in different areas of our planet’s ocean. The developers of the infographic did a really good job by allowing anyone to investigate evidence-supported plastic pollution on Earth. Of course, they also provided social media share buttons to enable users to help spread the information to their friends. Quizzes are great, and many people love to play them. Examples of engaging quizzes can be found everywhere on the web; for example, BuzzFeed has a special section full of them! Each of these quizzes is quite entertaining, so no wonder that they are among the most popular. Besides, they catch a viewer’s attention with two powerful things: their captivating title and an image that call out to them. The result of such effort is amazing: in January of 2014 alone, quizzes helped BuzzFeed to reach 169 million people; 200 million took them the following month. The best performing quiz on the site, “What City Should You Actually Live In?” was viewed more than 22 million times.

A Contest

The idea is pretty similar to that of a generator. Essentially, a company offers a customer to participate in a contest to win a prize in exchange for signing up for the company’s news or buying their product. When a user clicks on the wheel icon, he is offered to spin it and get a prize, whether it’s a 30% off SEO Course or a free Video strategy session. In exchange, they are required to enter their email and sign up for the company’s newsletter and promotional messages. Such an approach of offering to participate in a prize-driven interactive contest has proven to be very effective for getting backlinks: Single Grain has got over 992K of them. The chance of winning a prize is extremely attractive, as people are always eager to benefit more from cooperating with a brand. Creating an interactive contest is a great strategy to build backlinks. Consequently, it works well for increasing brand awareness and social engagement. There are many types of interactive contests, including giveaways, vote-to-wins, refer-a-friend contests and many more. Creating them from time to time is a great back-link building method you’ll definitely benefit from. By creating an eBook, you bring content to life. It’s well-known to everyone that regular books can be quite dull and dry in terms of representing information. And an interactive eBook is a solution to make reading more engaging. A company called Ceros in a collab with Workday has created an interactive eBook called Future-Proofing Finance Leaders describing the essentials of data-driven analysis and the impact of the AI on the field of finance. Once you click on “Get Started”, you can choose one of three courses that briefly describe the subject and also have highlights that contain backlinks. Once you click on the button, you get redirected to the blog of the website that has created the eBook (in this case – Workday blog). There, you can read more information on the topic that interests you. Creating interactive eBooks is a great way to get more backlinks. Essentially, you create a new source that has backlinks, which redirect visitors to your website. A great benefit of creating an interactive eBook is that it can be accessed from any device. You can stuff an eBook with interactive charts, infographics, videos, and other content, and it can be accessed either from a laptop, a smartphone or a tablet. It is also a convenient way to present extensive information briefly: by creating an interactive eBook you can shrink a 100-page book into a 20-page one. There are also many tools and apps that allow creating interactive eBooks, like Kotobee or Calibre. I highly recommend you to try creating an interactive eBook with links to your website (like in the example above). It’s a great way to turn more traffic to your website and ensure lifetime backlinks.

Wrapping Up

Interactive content could be a major part of your content marketing strategy because it’s informative, engaging, interesting, and of course, is a great way to get lifetime backlinks. Having reviewed the performance of interactive content and some of its best examples, it’s no surprise that it’s considered by many digital marketers as one of the most engaging content types that generate a lot of traffics years after being published. There are some rules to creating interactive content if you want to get lifetime backlinks: it should be first and foremost informative and engaging. The key to creating great interactive content is keeping it visual as much as possible. Use text only to support the imagery you provide and keep it brief and concise. If you stick to these key essentials when creating interactive content, you’ll be secured with lifetime backlinks. I sincerely hope that the examples that were described in this article will give you creative ideas on how to use interactive content to get backlinks and engage your audience. Just remember: every piece you create should be based on your target audience’s needs to be interesting to them. An Interactive InfographicA QuizAn Interactive eBook