Blogging is an opportunity to get creative with your content strategy while giving readers another touchpoint to get to know your business.

In addition to helping your website rank for long-tail keywords and inspiring readers to book with your business, blogging helps you earn backlinks. Having another site link to your content is great for visibility, and backlinks can also improve your search engine authority.

When it comes to creating content for your link building strategy, it’s all about writing quality blog posts or pages that are highly shareable and offer valuable information to your audience. Start with these three types of blog posts and informational pages that tend to earn the most backlinks.

1. Publish Guest or “Expert” Interview Posts

One of the hardest parts of content creation is generating new ideas to share. Connecting with an industry expert or thought leader is a great way to reinvigorate your blog with new ideas and points of view. 

Before you worry about not knowing any “internet famous” friends, think about your connections in your industry and how they could provide interesting content for your website. For example, if you run culinary tours in your city, try to connect with well-known chefs (like those who have won culinary awards or opened their own restaurants) and get their opinion on some current topics. Everyone from pro surfers and local artists to seasoned captains and zookeepers are great resources for your blog. 

If you’re having a hard time pinning down a thought leader in your area, consider creating a roundup of tips or ideas from well-known people in the industry. Look for their social media posts, quotes in other sources, or previous interviews and compile them in a blog post. You can also achieve this by asking a few people a brief question via email and publishing their quotes.

Sharing insights from a local expert prompts the person featured to share the post via their own email or social media accounts, and other locals in your industry are likely to link to it as well.

2. Tell Data-Driven Stories

Content backed by original data has an edge. People rely on data to make decisions and learn more about a given topic. But it’s not enough to just share a list of statistics like the most-visited attractions in your area or number of whale sightings during your recent whale watching season. It’s all about using your original data to tell a compelling story. 

In many cases, this means connecting data to a current trend or viral story. But even if your data doesn’t seem to relate to anything notable, you can still find ways to frame a story by telling readers why your data matters. For example, you could write a blog post about your busiest time of the year and share data such as how many people take your tours, where the majority of those people travel from, and which tour has the most bookings. Use the data to tell a story about why people travel to your area during this time of year and what appeals to local or out-of-state guests.

3. Create an “Ultimate Guide”

You’re an expert in your industry, and you’ve likely written extensively about a certain topic that pertains to your business. Use your knowledge and previously written content to create an ultimate guide. 

Ultimate guides are long-form posts that cover every detail of a topic. For example, an ultimate guide to kayaking in Puerto Rico would include information about the best time of year to go kayaking, a list of the best places to go, where to rent a kayak or go on a tour, what to bring, and tips everyone should know before their experience. If the website has already published content about kayaking in Puerto Rico, they would link to their other similar content from this guide. 

Ultimate guides take more work than your average blog post, and you can’t use the title “ultimate guide” for just any piece of content. When putting together an ultimate guide, imagine that you’re writing it for someone who has little to no information about the topic. Research other ultimate guides written by competitors to see what they exclude, and be sure to include it in yours. 

Whether you write one of these blogs or all three, be sure to follow these blogging do’s and don’ts to make your content highly shareable. After crafting excellent content, don’t forget to perform backlink outreach to widen your audience.