How to use Interactive Content to get backlinks

There is no escaping: no matter how consolidated and efficient your Digital Marketing strategy may be, you must always keep your eyes open for new trends.

After all, this type of approach only brings results if you know how to attract the public’s attention and establish your digital presence.

As you know, to reach a solid strategy, with organic traffic, you must apply SEO techniques — such as link building, an approach that aims to make other internet pages direct their visitors to your website.

The question is: how to convince other portals to structure these backlinks?

The newest idea in this sense is the production of authentic materials that stimulate visitor’s interaction, generating more value to their experience.

Want to know more about how to use interactive content to get backlinks? In this text, you will find out:

What is interactive content?

Interactive content is that one in which the audience can actively participate, whether answering to a quiz or clicking on a button to reveal information in an infographic.

It is a much more attractive model than the traditional one, as it constantly encourages audience engagement.

In the traditional format, called passive, the consumer does not have the option to interact with the content, which makes consumption much less engaging.

It is like a monologue, in which your brand transmits information without letting the audience take part in the conversation.

Thus, interactive content is an efficient way of establishing a dialogue with your consumer, contributing in many ways to your marketing strategy. We will talk more about that in the following topic. 

What is its relevance in a marketing strategy?

Think about a Content Marketing strategy. 

It needs to attract the buyer persona, convince them of your brand’s authority, and educate them to make the conversion possible, right?

The use of interactive elements on your materials is a practice that can bring out benefits to the conclusion of all those steps.

To begin with, interactive content has a much higher attraction potential than passive content, as it encourages the persona’s engagement and differs from most of the materials on the Internet.

These statements can be supported by several studies, such as the CMI Report, which interviewed about 20,000 people.

According to the survey, 87% of marketers believe interactive content is more efficient than static content when attracting the Internet user’s attention.

That happens because, as you know, consumer 4.0 demands increasingly unique and qualified experiences, which can be achieved through interaction.

So, if you have already gotten the buyer persona’s attention, you need to educate them, right? 

Another study made it clear that, in the experts’ understanding, this process is also facilitated by interactivity.

The survey indicates that 93% of respondents agree that interactive materials make the nurturing and education of leads easier.

The most interesting is that it is not only the customer that receives information but also your company. 

Interactive content, as a two-way street, can provide valuable data to optimize your approach.

Want an example? Imagine that, to make your landing page more attractive, you add an interactive quiz about the subject.

In addition to the engagement that it will generate in visitors, who will seek to test their knowledge, you will have access to the answers.

In this way, observing errors and successes, it will be possible to define with greater precision what stage of the funnel they are in and what type of material can be beneficial for their education.

There is also the possibility of making interactive content a differential for your brand.

As you know, companies’ experience, especially in the digital environment, is one of the items considered most important by the consumer when making their purchase decisions.

Therefore, if you produce a material that encourages interaction and improves user experience, you can use that to your advantage and generate greater authority to the brand.

According to CMI’s study, already mentioned in this post, 88% of professionals agree that the production of this type of content creates a competitive advantage. 

What is the importance of backlinks in an SEO strategy?

Now that you know exactly what interactive content is and how it can be relevant to your marketing strategy let’s zoom in on the subject and focus on the importance of backlinks.

The first step is to understand the concept of backlinks and their role in a good SEO strategy.

We are dealing with links strategically placed in a post to direct the reader to another page. The intention is to offer more information to the person, to generate quality traffic to the website.

This strategy may connect articles within the blog itself to increase the time spent by visitors. 

However, the magic is in getting external links, making other pages direct their visitors to your content.

It works as some sort of relevance thermometer, generating authority to your domain. As you know, the higher the authority, the better your position in the SERPs.

Here, it is important to point out that the Google algorithm does not leave space for practices considered inappropriate.

There is no point in getting a large number of backlinks if they are not obtained organically.

Likewise, they must be contextual and relevant, coming from sites with something to do with your content.

If you run a travel agency and your site is mentioned by a blog that is a reference on the subject, the benefits can be summed up in two fronts.

First, you will get a much more relevant number of hits. Second, your website will rank better on the results pages. 

How to get backlinks from the production of interactive content?

As you have already seen, the best way to get backlinks is by producing materials that catch the attention of other content producers.

This way, they can indicate your blog or website to their consumers, generating reach and authority to you.

The question is that this will not magically or by pure good will happen. It is necessary to create value.

If your interactive content is neither authentic nor enriches the reader’s experience, no one will have motives to quote it. 

Therefore, act strategically and create elements that captivate the audience and make their dissemination easier.

Below, we will show you some things you can explore. Keep up!

1. Tools

Creating interactive tools, such as calculators, is one of the most efficient ways to get backlinks on a greater scale. 

That is because, being precise and straightforward, they simplify the reader’s education.

That way, various situations can lead a content producer to create a backlink that takes to an interactive calculator.

Want an example? Cengage created a calculator in which students input which course they will take at the university and which classes they will participate in. 

On the outcome, they get to see how much they can save on books using Cengage Unlimited materials.

Another interactive platform that reached great success was Adobe Color that allows the user to create a personalized color palette, as shown in the image below.

2. Quizzes and games

Throughout the text, we have already mentioned how interactive quizzes are incredibly useful tools to soften user experience and, at the same time, get important insights about them.

Other than that, these questionnaires can also adopt more playful aspects, such as the famous BuzzFeed quizzes.

If the questionnaire is engaging enough, you can be sure that it will generate backlinks in other pages. To reach another level, you can bet on games.

Although interactive games’ creation requires much more time and investment, gamification elements can bring incredible results.

It is the case of a British application JustPark, aimed at drivers to find vacancies more quickly. 

The company created an interactive game that calculates the user’s age based on their reaction time.

The page got more than 2,000 backlinks, according to Ahrefs tool.

3. Infographics

The infographics use is already a well-established practice in the world of Content Marketing. 

However, if you do not adapt it to the new tendencies, it may become less interesting to users.

On the other hand, adding interactive elements makes it much more attractive.

There are many ways to make an infographic interactive. You can insert questions throughout the content, reveal information according to visitor’s clicks, and let the reader navigate freely through data.

The important is to use creativity without putting aside its primarily informative character.

An interesting example is Tide, the British digital bank focused on businesses. The company created an infographic untangling the academic lives of women who founded successful companies.

You can navigate different options on the page, filtering the type of information you want to get.

4. Maps

Maps are content that is generally difficult to navigate unless it has interactive elements that allow actions like zooms and rotations.

With that, they can generate engaging and authentic user experiences, regardless of the subject being addressed.

Travel Supermarket, a website that specializes in purchasing airline tickets, created an interactive map based on data extracted from Google. The idea is to show the most researched destination in each of the countries.

Another example comes from GoCompare, that works, among other things, comparing fees of energy supply agencies.

The company created a map that details the main sources of the different types of energy we consume.

Wrap Up

Investing in interactive content for backlinks is a practice that can result in good outcomes for your Digital Marketing.

Besides engaging your consumers and improving their experience, you will potentialize your website reach and increase your digital authority, which results in a much more positive ranking.

Interactivity, as you could see, is a tendency that can enhance your strategy on several fronts. 

If you’re thinking about implementing it at your company, download our free guide on Interactive Content and see how you can take your strategy to the next level!