Do you want to rely more on content-based marketing? So does everybody else.

A recent study by backlinko.com and BuzzSumo shows that 94% of content gets no external links and only 2.2% draws external links from multiple sites. External links are critical to improving the content's search ranking and for enabling readers to organically locate the content. 

So, why is it so hard to get backlinks? There has been a dramatic rise in the amount content that is being created as content-based marketing continues to rise in popularity. As the amount of content has risen, it has become harder to get your content noticed. The good news is that despite the intense competition for readers and links if you can stand out from the crowd succeed it is possible to win big. For example, the study found that 1.3% of articles get 75% of the social shares.

So, what should you do about it? Before you dive in an assume that content market will be the solution to all your digital marketing woes it is critical to consider the baseline success rate. Given the low baseline rate, creating content without a distribution strategy is not likely to lead to the desired results. Additionally, should follow best practices to ensure that your content has the best chances of success. 

Other interesting findings:

• Favor long-form content: Long-form content gets on average 77.2% more links than short articles
• Write longer titles: 76.7% of the social shares came from headlines that are 14-17 words in length
• Adding a question mark to the headline had 23.3% more social shares than headlines without
• “Why” and “What” posts got 25.8% more links than “How to” posts