Creating linkable content assets is one of the toughest tasks for an SEO professional. The reason is that generating these kinds of assets requires a huge amount of time and energy to make sure that they would appeal and be worthy of read/shares for their target audience.

Content is appreciated if it provides value to the community. Whatever form, either text or graphic, it should have a perceived value that can push people to share it and link to it from their websites.

One linkable asset that I found very useful is a glossary page. Every new person in the industry wants to know and understand the different industry terms and their definitions. This will help them learn the basic concepts commonly used in the industry.

In this post, I’d like to share some tips on how you can create a linkable glossary page that is useful to your audience and will naturally attract high quality backlinks and shares for your brand.

Decide to update the glossary page regularly

Don’t create a glossary if you only want a one-time content resource for your site. Most glossaries failed to passively bring traffic to the site because content creators didn’t manage to update the page on a regular basis.

All industries change. There are new industry terms that are coined by industry influencers monthly or yearly to improve the processes and systems in the sector. So it’s important that you always update yourself with the latest industry news so you could add niche-related terms to your glossary.

Use this point to add credibility to the page given that visitors would be interested to return to the page regularly if they knew that you’ll keep updating it.

unicode-terms

Add quick links to the page

Quick links gives a positive search experience to its users. They don’t need to scroll down to the bottom of the page to see terms that start with the letter “Z”. Quick links will do the work for them.

For better user experience, you can categorize your terms in two ways:

#1. Browse by Alphabet

This is the most common search filter in glossaries. You can either add quick links (letters) in the sidebar or at the top of the page.

browse-by-alphabet#2. Browse by Volume / Topic

Digging into the categories or sub-groups of your niche is a good way to help your visitors learn the different subjects in your industry.

browse-by-topic

Add useful sections to your glossary page.

When you create your glossary, there are things that you should consider to increase the time spent by your visitors on your page.

Here are a few things to add to your glossary:

#1. Mobile app

People are now on mobile. If you can create a mobile app for your glossary, then people would love to use your tool and/or visit your site even if they’re on the go. You can link to your mobile app on iTunes or create a certain page for people to download your app (example below).

glossary-mobile-app

#2. Translations

It will give an opportunity for your foreign visitors to consume your content piece.

glossary-translations

#3. Most popular terms

When you have this section in your glossary, you’ll be able to help your visitors memorize the most common industry terms.

You can determine the top industry terms by grabbing your list of terms in Google Keyword Planner. The top 10 phrases with the highest number of searches may be your most popular terms. You can also use Google Trends to find trending terms in your niche.

most-popular-terms

When you’re done creating your glossary page, you can now promote it using a blogger outreach strategy. Here are some resources to help you learn about blogger outreach:

Final thoughts

Identify the needs of your target community and use that as your inspiration for your content assets. A content asset will become useful if it can cater the needs of its targeted users.