Yesterday, in my post on the Secret to Ranking at the Search Engines, I promised to unveil what exactly the "Linkerati" want from a website's content. Today, I'll do my best to explain, but first, I need to explain the motivation of the Linkerati and explore their level of influence.

Seeing as the word "Linkerati" is completely new and invented by yours truly, I feel that I have the right to expand its definition. Hence forth, Linkerati does not only refer to the tech-savvy, Digg-using, social media addicts of the web. It encompasses virtually anyone whose goal is to find external content and link to it, or whose own content creation on the web naturally means that they will create and/or share links. Thus, the following all fit the definition:

• A legal researcher tasked with writing articles on Findlaw.com that reference articles or blog posts about conflicting legal opinions
• The editor for the Harvard Crimson newspaper who needs a photo of a car being egged by 5-year olds (don't ask why) and will give link credit to the photographer's site
• A new blogger for Cranium seeking websites to add to her blogroll (Hi! Mystery Guest)
• Forlorn interns at the Washington Post tasked with gathering information about popular bedding styles (they may not link to it directly, but they're bringing that data back to a reporter who might write about it, which could produce a lot of links)
• Creators of a new directory on pet supplies and accessories who are looking to list the most interesting and innovative companies in the space as a start

The list above makes a much broader point than what many interpreted my last post to be about - it's not that every site needs to attract the Diggers or the guys at Lifehacker or Boing Boing in order to be successful (though with the latter two, there's always a subject you can come up no matter what your industry). However, your content and your website must appeal to whoever in your sector DOES provide natural links - they could be researchers, professors, journalists, bloggers, forum commenters, passionate hobbyists, directory builders, research interns or middle management.

Now that we've got the Linkerati straight, we can explore just what it is that makes them link. Let's start with some examples in some very unsexy sectors:

Cleaning Supplies:

• A list of the worst stains possible with information on how to clean each of them, photos and a sexy chart displaying degree of difficulty (i.e. red wine is twice as bad as balsamic vinegar). Scientific explanations (ala Alton Brown) would go a long way, too. Boing Boing would probably love this one, as would tons of stay-at-home parents and OCD neat-freaks :)

Used Books:

• Demographic trends of book ownership - what income groups, geographies, racial, gender and age brackets are most likely to own particular books in the US (actually, I'd love to read this article right now; I bet it would go straight to the top of Reddit, too).

Nanny Services:

• A list of rare but effective techniques to help with potty training, learning to read, putting kids to sleep, getting them to enjoy vegetables, etc. (there are a lot of parenting blogs out there who'd eat this stuff up).

Paper & Packaging Products:

• How the packaging guys used their expertise to design devices that would protect an egg from a 100MPH impact - forget those science classes off the first story roof! You could pick up some serious link love from every high school physics teacher in the country with a website.

What do each of these pieces of content have in common? They're all unique, interesting and tell us something we don't know. They're also easy to digest and consume, easy to share around a dinner table or a water cooler and make for good first-date material - "hey, did you ever do the egg-drop thing in high school? No? I saw this crazy article about it today..."

It's very hard to create a strict list of rules for content meant to attract links and I'd hate to limit anyone's thinking by doing so. I can, however, give you an easy litmus test for determining value.

1. Find someone in your industry who won't steal your idea (a colleague, a coworker, a boss or even a web-unsavvy competitor)
2. Tell them that you read or saw the article somewhere and describe it, including the reasons it's so interesting
3. If they ask you to email them the link (independent of you offering), you've got a winner on your hands

Armed with the knowledge of your Linkerati's motivation and ideas about how to create and test content, you're ready to start generating the material that will earn natural links and give you a huge advantage of your competitors. Tomorrow, I'll try to cover the ways to make earning those links an easier task and strategies to make your site, independent of content, more generally link-friendly.