How many emails did you put in the trash last week? 10? 20? 100?
There’s a good chance that some of these emails actually contained valuable sales pitches that could have helped you. But do we blame you for trashing them? Absolutely not!
But when you’re the one sending the emails, you don’t want to be that guy whose valuable information gets buried in the spam folder, simply because you didn’t know how to do outreach the right way.
And yes, outreach is necessary. Sadly, backlinks don’t just “happen” unless you are the BIGGEST player in your industry. And even then, they take some work.
So, like it or not, you’ll have to start sending emails and reaching out in other ways as well. This article will show you how to not get buried in the spam folder.
Link building outreach is all the strategies you use to connect with sites you want backlinks from. It’s not the backlinking itself, but how you connect with the backlinking site. It’s the process of reaching out to website owners and requesting that they link to your site.
We’ll get into the link building campaign methods themselves and the strategies for reaching out and securing those links.
But the main thing to keep in mind as you read through these is this:
You have to focus on the target site’s needs, not yours. They don’t care about your content unless it helps them—which means it must help their readers.
Think about it. Imagine you got a random email from someone who wanted you to link to their website. Would you do it just to be nice? As a very wise man named Dwight Schrute once said, you’re running “a business, not a charity.” You’d only do it if it made sense for your site and your readers.
So when you’re the one reaching out, you have to remember that the page you want your recipient to link to—regardless of link building method—must be something their readers want. It has to help them before it helps you.
Before you try to go and get backlinks, you have to know what kinds there are. That way, you know which to pursue and which strategies to follow to get them.
Guest posting involves writing a blog post on someone else’s site, and then linking back to yours within the post. The goal here is to write something showing off your expertise that also gives the referring site’s readers tons of value.
To find good guest posting opportunities, hunt for authoritative sites and blogs in your niche. Find potential gaps in their content or places where your experience and knowledge could help their audience. Pitch these ideas to them.
If they like it, you write the article (according to their guidelines) and place backlinks where they make sense.
Now, guest posting’s benefits don’t end at the backlink… or even the referral traffic stream you gain.
A guest post can be the start of a strong and lucrative business relationship. If the referring site is impressed by your content and it gains them more favor in the eyes of their readers, they’d be happy to collaborate more.
That could mean more posts on their blog. It could also lead to them passing your name to industry peers (more authority and backlinking opportunities). Perhaps even joint ventures on products or other business opportunities.
Niche edits are like guest posts, only without all the writing. It involves finding existing articles and posts, then sliding your backlinks in where they work well.
The upside is that you don’t have to come up with an idea or write an article. That said, you have less control over the surrounding content. So you have to ensure the article is doing well in Google and is not written poorly.
Finding these posts is the same as finding guest posting opportunities, only now you’ll also need to screen for the page’s content relevant and performance.
Then, you hit up the site owner and show them why your content would be a good addition in terms of how it helps their readers.
Resources pages, similar to link roundup pages, are web pages with a bunch of links to external pages the reader might find helpful.
For example, a website might have a page linking directly to 20 of the best link building tools. If you sell a link building tool, you could grab a spot on that resources page to generate sales and get some SEO.
It doesn’t have to just be products, though. Say you have a personal finance website and you wrote an in-depth guide to budgeting. A big personal finance blog’s readers might find that useful—this is a perfect opportunity to get a sport on their resources page.
Either way, you’ll simply need to show the site’s owner why your resource is helpful to their readers.
And users will trust these recommendations because the resources page exists explicitly to direct readers to, well, helpful resources. That’s good for business and SEO.
Broken link building involves hunting for links that don’t work anymore and getting the site owner to point that link to your content. Links can break for all sorts of reasons, like a site or page that no longer exists, a mistyped URL, or a simep;l tpyo. Simple typo. See what we mean?
Broken link building isn’t the sexiest strategy, but it’s also effective for that very reason. Getting these from the right sites is fairly easy since you’re offering a solution to a problem.
The site has an embarrassing gap in the form of a broken link, and you can fix it for them—in a very real sense, they’d be fools to turn you down.
HARO, or Help A Reporter Out, is a website service that helps journalists get feedback from the public and find experts on subjects they’re writing about.
Here’s how it works: If you provide a journalist with your knowledge and expertise on a subject they’re writing about, then when it comes time to publish their article, they’ll link to your website and mention your brand. After all, you were a helpful source for them! Now just imagine what a few of those could do for your SEO traffic and your brand’s reputation.
This all means that HARO link building is indeed a viable strategy. And an efficient one at that, because you can get backlinks with a lot of authority.
The great thing about HARO link building is you have a “warm” audience of potential backlinkers. These journalists are explicitly looking for sources to cite, unlike many other sites, which may take a bit more follow-up and persuasion.
Now that we’ve covered the different types of backlinks you can build, let’s go over how to actually make it all happen. Thankfully, there are plenty of different ways to find and reach out to hot backlinking prospects.
Email
Email is a classic outreach method. Start by gathering your list of prospective sites (and, it’s worth mentioning here to continue updating and adding to this list as necessary).
Tools like Hunter.io can help you find email addresses for influencers or if you just want to reach a website owner if there’s no explicit guest posting page.
Then, it’s time to write the emails.
We’ll be honest here. The “shotgun” approach of highly templatized cold emails just doesn’t cut it any more. People can smell this approach from a mile away, and not only do they ignore these emails—they usually find them highly annoying as well.
Personalize the email as much as possible. Here are several things to keep in mind:
Recipient details: Use the recipient’s name and brand name. Research the prospect and mention something about them to show you aren’t just “shotgunning” pitches.
Subject line: Should be compelling and relevant while getting the point across. Make it about them.
Body copy: Again, keep it concise and about the recipient. Introduce yourself, explain what you’re pitching to them, show how it benefits them, and urge action (such as a reply). Add your contact info too, just in case.
Timing: Aim for the middle of the week in the morning. Tuesday or Wednesday morning is the sweet spot. People tend to be in their email inboxes more at that time, and usually high on their first cup of coffee. You can write up a batch of pitches beforehand, but schedule them to send mid-week.
Signature: Have a professional signature.
You can still use automations and templates, but you have to do it right. You can use the general framework of many of these templates, but add personalized details where it makes sense. Plus, cold link building email outreach tools can help you automate without losing personalization.
Just like we mentioned earlier, put yourself in the shoes of your recipient. Think about the kind of email that would get a response, vs. the kind that would get a fast-track to the spam folder—and send only the first kind.
Social media offers unparalleled access to the world’s movers and shakers. A simple post or tag can lead to big backlinking opportunities.
But you can’t “pitch slap” people. This is when you’re having a meaningful discussion with someone and then they hit you with a pitch out of nowhere.
Just connect with and interact with people in your niche. Start conversations and contribute valuable information from your own expertise and experience. Try to find relevant groups if possible and do all this.
Share your content online as you do these things. Just aim to be a valuable person to follow. Website owners who come across your content will then just go, “Wow, this is great,” and throw it in their next blog post.
You can DM any connections you make or followers you gain, too. Once again, no need to push the sale on them. Get the conversation going, and let it steer toward your site on its own. Then if it feels right, you can naturally slide in the pitch regarding, say, a guest post.
Optimize your profile too: professional information, website links, bio, photo, and all that good stuff.
There’s a small chance that your personal network might be smaller than, you know, your entire industry and all adjacent verticals.
But the upside of working your network is that any site owner you meet starts with more trust in you. And even if you meet someone through a mutual friend, trust will still be higher than if you connected through cold email.
You can only do HARO link building through, well, the HARO platform, which is why we’re listing it again here.
To do HARO outreach, you need to simply respond to journalist and reporter queries on the platform. You can sign up and subscribe to emails for free, then choose the topic categories that fit your niche.
You’ll get daily emails with curated lists of requests for subject matter experts. You’ll need to craft a professional, well-researched reply to any queries that pique your interest—after all, you’re supposed to be the expert here. Give a bit of background about you and your site to show why you’re an expert, and include your URL for the journalist to check out.
Try to build a relationship with each journalist. Like other backlinking methods, a long-term relationship can mean multiple backlinks with one journalist and potential referrals to others in their network.
You can find your target websites in a lot of different ways:
Knowing the big blogs and sites in your niche
Competitor backlink analysis
No need to do all of these at once, though. Pick a couple at first and focus your efforts on those.
Also make sure you’re tracking your prospects somewhere—not just who they are, but what stage of the process they’re in. For example, differentiate between prospects you’re waiting for a response from, vs. prospects you already submitted content to for a backlink, vs. prospects whom you haven’t reached out to yet.
When you’re engaging in link building outreach, you’re kind of doing sales. Which means there are a few important things you need to keep in mind.
We live in a busy world. If someone owns a big website, their world is even busier. The bigger they are, the more pitches they probably receive. Yours might get lost in those and other non-pitch emails. So if you don’t get a reply right away, that’s not necessarily a no.
Follow up politely after giving it a reasonable amount of time. After a few follow-ups, space out your next follow-ups more. For example, you might try once a month or less if the first few didn’t work.
There are tons of great websites to get backlinks from. It’s all about return on investment. Don’t waste a ton of time going after one site when you could look into other equally authoritative sites and get faster responses.
We did just say to follow up with your prospects. But that’s only for non-responses.
If they reject your proposal, don’t keep badgering them. Thank them and move on. Don’t keep emailing them, and surely don’t try to go after them through other channels.
They could always come around later—you don’t want to burn that bridge before crossing it.
All that said…
If you wait much longer to follow up after a rejection, like six months, they might actually appreciate the follow-up. This is especially true if you have published new content since then that they can link to, or if you have a new and creative guest post idea.
A good salesperson doesn’t blab about themselves. They discuss the customer’s pains and challenges… then they talk about goals and desired outcomes… then they show why their product delivers those.
So when you’re trying to get backlinks, demonstrate how your proposed content or web page helps your prospect solve a problem and/or move toward a goal.
Broken link building always comes to mind. A broken link will really annoy the linking domain’s readers, but that site is far too busy to find and fix it with a good link. So you can swoop in to save the day with your awesome content, showing how their readers will be happier with a link to your site.
They say selling to a past customer is cheaper than getting a new one. That’s because the existing customer knows and trusts you.
It’s the same in link building. Build strong relationships with every site you get links from—it’ll make getting more links from them easier in the future.
And it can bring a few other benefits as well:
Backlink maintenance: Easier to ensure your backlinks stay when you build a relationship with the linker.
Referrals: They might refer you to peers who run websites… and you could link from those sites, too.
Joint ventures: Relationships can lead to product collaborations.
New audiences: Maybe your backlinker invites you to give a training or workshop to their audience. That’s valuable.
There are two types of metrics to measure when it comes to link building outreach:
The outreach metrics themselves
The link building metrics
Outreach metrics include:
Conversion rate (% of prospects who end up as backlinkers)
Social media engagement metrics (impressions, shares, replies, etc.)
Use tools and extensions that track email opens. This will help you measure the effectiveness of subject lines and help you time your follow-ups.
Link building metrics include:
Link building tools and SEO software can help you track those metrics.
The link building outreach process is no longer a mystery. At least we hope so!
One last problem though: Although backlinking is key to building SEO and looking like an authority… outreach adds yet another time-sucking task to your plate.
That is, unless you hand it all off to a team of experts, like the ones at Profit Engine. Our AI link protocol picks out the top links to pursue in just minutes… and then we do all the outreach and link acquisition for you.
So basically, you’ll get everything covered in this article, with no work.
Interested? Book a free strategy meeting—let’s see how we can help you dominate backlinking, worry-free.
An industry-leading AI link building strategy.
After years of experience growing brands just like yours, we know what gets results and what doesn’t. We’ll stop you from spending too much time, resources and money on backlinks that don’t help. We’ll stop you from building links on harmful or useless websites. We’ll use our AI Link Strategy to analyze your competition and give you a personalized action plan.
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