…and you can browse through stats that they’ve compiled about that topic.
Why?
In fact, I relied heavily on Google News for my Clubhouse stats page. I literally searched for “Clubhouse” in Google News every single day for WEEKS.
Now I’d like to hear from you.
And if you’re in a competitive niche, you NEED to do link building at scale.
And they cite me as a source in their articles:
Inc:
Let’s say I wanted to close my link gap with Yoast using email outreach.
Visuals help your stat pages get more backlinks for two reasons:
Specifically, each of that post’s subheadings covers a key subtopic about the search engine:
Specifically, trending topics that don’t have a lot of easy-to-find data sources.
It’s a keyword that journalists use when researching or writing an article.
For example, you can see that this page from Backlinko has a lot of backlinks.
Now it’s time to organize and optimize your stats page.
If you get stuck, just search for a different keyword (it can take a few to get going).
For example, this page about Tesla is quickly becoming one of Backlinko’s most linked-to pages.
This is a stat that ANYONE can understand in 3 seconds. And is easy to cite in an article.
But once it does, you sort of get into a link tornado situation:
But you want to include as many crunchy stats as you can (especially towards the top of the page).
Step #5: Get Backlinks
Have you tried getting passive links before?
For example, this page from Backlinko is optimized around the journalist keyword “social media usage”.
Note: Interest in trending topics (like Clubhouse) can fall off the map. But the upside still makes the approach worth it. Even though Clubhouse is no longer relevant, that single page (which took about 2 hours to write) still brought in 1.6K total backlinks!
Just to see if it’s starting to rank for long-tail keywords. If so, that’s a GREAT sign.
Next, look for a page on a competitor’s site with a lot of links.
Target Trending Topics
How about another example?
What would a journalist writing about Tesla want to know about?
Tesla’s revenue
How many Teslas are sold each year
What models are most popular
Charging locations
Vehicle sales by country
You can use tables to show growth or decline over time:
By sharing that data on a stats page, you’re preserving compelling data that would be otherwise hard for journalists to find.
Step #4: Optimize Your Stats Page
Because each stat has an opportunity to show as a Featured Snippet.
A Journalist Keyword is just like it sounds:
Well, when Clubhouse was poised to become “The Next Big Thing”, everyone and their mom was writing articles about it.
For example, here’s a crunchy stat from my TikTok stats page:
(In fact, that single page has 11.5K total backlinks. 95%+ of which came from Reverse Outreach.)
Which helps it rank higher in Google for its existing keyword. And rank for completely new terms.
But in general, here are some great places to find data for stats pages:
Statista
Here’s how it works:
How “Reverse Outreach” Flips The Script on Traditional Link Building
And started to rank for dozens of other keywords too.
Now:
(When done right.)
There was only one problem:
This means most traditional keyword research tools are out.
My stats post about DuckDuckGo covers pretty much everything a journalist would want to know.
Business Insider:
And if you look at the keywords that the page ranks for, you’ll find LOTS of journalist keywords.
But yeah, it can take 3-4 months for your page to start to rank and get passive links.
For example, take my post about Tesla.
I’m currently about 20K referring domains “behind” Yoast.
It was a huge pain to find useful data about Clubhouse!
For example, a New York Times piece was the first to report that the app had been downloaded 600k times:
Your first step is to find a “Journalist Keyword”.
Depending on your content, the keywords you targeted, and your Domain Rank it can take some time for your stats page to pick up some traction.
In fact, this approach has helped my stat pages show up in dozens of Featured Snippets, like this:
Like Yoast (67.2K referring domains):
But you can use your stats page to make the data easier to find and consume (and earn a ton of links along the way).
Google News
I built 5,660 backlinks last month.
That means I’d have to send 400K outreach emails just to catch up to Yoast.
(Plus, this assumes that Yoast isn’t going to get any more backlinks during that time. Which isn’t going to happen.)
In fact, most of the links that I get to my stat pages are people citing crunchy stats.
And dozens of other authority news sites and blogs.
Step #3: Collect Your Data
Rinse and repeat for every stat on your page that you can.
Include Visuals and Charts
Outreach-based strategies like The Skyscraper Technique still work GREAT.
You can definitely target Journalist Keywords in your niche (or in related niches, as I did with my Clubhouse post).
Second, according to the Victoria University of Wellington, visuals make your content more credible.
It’s called “Reverse Outreach”.
With that, let’s jump into the step-by-step process.
Step #1: Find “Journalist Keywords”
Then, provide a short and sweet answer to that question right below that subheading.
And let’s assume that 5% of the outreach emails that I send result in a backlink.
This post was designed specifically to get backlinks from journalists.
That page now has editorial backlinks from Bloomberg:
Here’s how:
Snippet Bait
A blogger or journalist writing about how popular social media is!
Reverse Outreach completely flips the script on outreach-based link building.
For example, take a look at Backlinko.
And this case study I’m going to show you exactly how I did it, step-by-step.
The Big Problem With Link Building: Scale
First, they give bloggers a visual they can use in their content.
So when I did the math, I realized that I needed a different approach to link building.
(And they’ll usually link back to you as the image source.)
A few months ago I published this post on my site:
Examples of crunchy stats include:
Industry size
Company revenue
The number of people doing a thing (eating keto, mediating, etc.)
Time spent doing X
% growth over time
And the more crunchy stats you include, the more links you’ll get.
These are usually questions that bloggers and journalists want answers to.
You get links. Those links push your rankings higher. So you get more links. And the cycle continues.
But that’s not really the point. The people searching for these terms aren’t really my target audience.
Let’s look at a real-life example.
One that could scale. Big time.
And this strategy is PERFECT for Reverse Outreach.
I also made sure to optimize that post around keywords that bloggers and journalists search for.
And that’s exactly what happened.
That way, YOU can be the go-to source for data on this emerging topic.
But there’s one big problem with most link building strategies:
Either way, when you can use a table, you should use a table.
Include “Crunchy” Stats
This is obviously HUGE if you want big-name publications to use your stats.
Add Lots of Tables
When they do, my page gets in front of them with the data they need.
The goal with this content was simple: get backlinks from authority sites.
But don’t be afraid to go outside of your niche a little bit.
I’ve talked about Snippet Bait before.
Specifically, you target keywords that bloggers and journalists search for. And create content that they WANT to link to.
…and look for People Also Ask questions that are looking for data.
According to Semrush, I have 47.3K referring domains.
My secret?
If so, how did it go?
Instead of reaching out to bloggers and journalists, you have them come to you.
Statista is a curated database of stats on pretty much any industry under the sun.
Tables can help you rank as a table Featured Snippet.
Sure enough, that post eventually ranked #2 for “TikTok users”.
Just search for a topic…
I also like to review and update these pages AT LEAST once per quarter.
I like to check the page’s organic rankings periodically:
Or other huge brands in the marketing space, like HubSpot (341K referring domains):
But those problems are an opportunity for you.
But they also are just a great way of making a lot of data easy to understand at a glance.
Sure enough, I found plenty of stories with data I could use.
Or expand the People Also Ask boxes to reveal more commonly-asked questions.
Reverse Engineering
US public companies have to share key business metrics with shareholders each quarter.
So I found every Clubhouse-related stat that I could. And whipped together this collection of Clubhouse stats.
All you need to do is format your stats page with a subheading optimized around a Journalist Keyword.
If you’re writing about a brand, check out their job listings.
Yes, this brought in some traffic.
So yeah, that’s Reverse Outreach: my go-to link building strategy right now.
Search Engine Journal (214K referring domains):
Instead, you need to think of the types of data someone would need when writing an article on that topic.
Google News is a goldmine of industry data in the form of:
Press releases
Milestone news stories (“15% of Americans now consider themselves vegan”)
Data from industry publications
Quotes from experts
They don’t scale.
For example, this page continues to rack up new links each and every month.
Just search for a topic in your niche…
The problem with Google News is that stories like this disappear from the platform after a few days. Plus, a lot of those stories are behind a paywall.
Crunchy stats are bite site stats that are easy to understand at a glance.
Then, find the Journalist Keywords that the page ranks for.
A new strategy called Reverse Outreach.
That page quickly picked up passive links from The Guardian, Cosmopolitan Magazine and more.
“Work for Us” Pages
(More on that later.)
(Like “TikTok monthly users”, “How much time people spend on TikTok” and “TikTok downloads by country.)
That sounds great. Until you look at some of my competitors.
Your next step is to outline your article.
(Without sending a single outreach email.)
Specifically, you want to answer the most interesting questions that journalists have around the topic.
Who searches for that keyword?
Next, it’s time to gather all of the data that you’re going to include in your stats page.
Obviously, Tesla isn’t super relevant to my niche (digital marketing). But Tesla is in tech (which IS somewhat relevant to Backlinko). So it’s not like I’m creating a stats page about the keto diet.
Step #2: Outline Your Content
Companies love to entice potential hires by bragging about user numbers, revenue growth and more.
For example, remember Clubhouse?
Or for rankings:
After months of testing, I think I finally found it.
Pro Tip: Check out the “Related searches” for even more ideas.
That’s not to say 100% of your stats need to be crunchy stats. For example, here’s a relatively complex stat from one of my pages:
Where you find your data depends on your topic.
That way, all of your data is up to date. And you keep getting that temporary freshness boost that comes from a legit content update.
Conclusion
The question is: how do you find Journalist Keywords?
People Also Ask Boxes
Again, this data is usually sort of buried in a PDF.
In fact, you’ll sometimes ONLY find this info in job listings. Which makes it the exact type of juicy data that journalists want (but is currently hard to find).
