Link building and outreach are a match made in heaven.
Okay, not to be dramatic, but really, you can’t effectively build links without proactive outreach.
In this article, we’ll dive into:
- What is outreach and how it helps with link building
- How to run a link building outreach campaign on your own
- Strategies for building links without outreach
Let’s get into it.
Link building cheat sheet
What is Outreach?
Outreach is the process of getting in touch with individuals or businesses for a specific purpose.
In a general sense, it involves finding relevant people or organizations and then reaching out to them (hence the name), typically via email or social media platforms like LinkedIn.
The core of email outreach outreach consists of three steps:
- Prospecting (finding websites/companies/individuals for your link placement and any associated contact information)
- Preparing your outreach sequence
- Personalization and managing conversations
How Do Link Building and Outreach Relate?
An outreach strategy is essential for link building because it provides a direct way to connect with website owners and content creators you don’t already know.
While some links might happen organically, manual link building is the best way to generate a consistent stream of high-quality links.
This proactive approach usually involves demonstrating the value of your content and offering a mutually beneficial arrangement, often an indirect link back (guest posts are great for this).
Link building outreach is also very much a numbers game – since the average reply rate for a cold email is only 10%.
Luckily, backlink outreach is fairly easy to automate with outreach tools like Respona.
Respona automates every aspect of link outreach and helps maintain high email deliverability.
Even if you’ve never done outreach before, you’ll be building your first links in just a few hours.
It also comes with over a dozen pre-designed link building campaign templates for the most popular link building strategies, no technical know-how required on your part.
Respona finds link opportunities for you, personalizes your email pitches with AI, and, of course, manages the actual process of sending your email emulating human behaviour with randomized delays between sent items.
It also keeps an eye on your outreach email domain health to make sure you’re not ending up in people’s spam folders.
More on that later.
Can You Build Links Without Blogger Outreach?
Yes, you can build links without directly reaching out to other website owners, but it’s important to understand that this is extremely slow.
Organic link acquisition relies on the inherent value of your content, meaning it must be so compelling that others naturally want to link to it.
Linkable Assets
A core strategy for this is creating linkable assets. These are pieces of content designed to be highly shareable and referenceable.
Examples include:
- In-depth guides that solve specific problems are valuable resources that others will often link to.
- Well-researched and informative lists on relevant topics can attract links from those seeking to cite valuable information.
- Publishing unique statistics or studies positions you as an authority and makes your content a valuable source for others.
Just look at this post by ahrefs – which currently has 9.7K backlinks from almost 3K referring domains.
Essentially, any content that provides real value and solves a problem for your target audience will naturally attract links.
Tier 2 & 3 Link Building
Another method is tier 2 and 3 link building.
This involves building links to websites that already link to you, rather than directly to your own site.
“What, link building has tiers now?” – you ask. Let’s break it down.
Tier 1 are links that point directly to your website. These are the most valuable links.
Tier 2 links point to your Tier 1 links. The purpose of Tier 2 links is to strengthen the authority and power of your Tier 1 links. Essentially, you’re boosting the pages that already link to you.
Tier 3 links point to your Tier 2 links. They are a further layer of support, adding to the overall strength of the link structure. Tier 3 links are often from sources like social media, forum comments, and other less authoritative platforms.
For instance, if a website links to your blog post, you can then link to that page from your social media profiles, forum posts, and other platforms.
This creates a chain of links, indirectly boosting the authority of your website.
While it doesn’t directly create backlinks to your site, it helps transfer PageRank and improve your website’s overall authority through a sequence of links.
Tier 1 links are the most powerful, but with a clever tier 2 and 3 structure you can squeeze a little more link juice out of them.
Free Tools Pages
Creating free tools pages is one of the most effective ways to attract links organically.
These tools provide tangible value to users, encouraging them to share and link to your website.
A prime example is our free email finder.
When you provide a useful tool that solves a specific problem, people are more likely to link to it as a valuable resource.
It’s offering direct value to the user, and therefore a very strong method of naturally earning backlinks.
How to Do Link Building Outreach
Now, let’s take a look at how you can run a link building outreach campaign of your own.
In this example, we’ll be using our own link building tool, Respona to run a guest blogging campaign.
It has a ready-to-use template for guest posting, so you don’t have to start from scratch.
Just tell Respona what topics you want to write about and give it an example of your writing style.
This helps Respona find the right websites and personalize your emails.
Step 1: Prepare your Sequence
Respona also provides a pre-written email sequence that you can easily customize.
You can make the emails sound like you, add unsubscribe links, check for spammy words, and decide when to send follow-up emails.
One of the coolest features is the AI-powered “Icebreaker.”
This tool helps you write unique opening lines for each email, making them more engaging than just using the person’s name. It can even suggest topics for your guest post!
Step 2: Finding Link Prospects
Finding websites that accept guest posts can be time-consuming.
Respona automates this by searching Google for websites that have phrases like “write for us” in their titles and are related to your keywords.
It also runs multiple searches at once and adds relevant results automatically.
You can even fine-tune the results using filters to find the perfect websites.
Respona also automatically finds the contact information for the right people at those websites, like content managers or SEO specialists.
You can even give Respona guidelines for how you want your emails to sound and look, so they’re extra personalized.
We recommend training the AI on examples of your previous manual personalizations to make it sound exactly like you.
To keep things up-to-date, you can set Respona to automatically search for new guest posting opportunities every few weeks.
Step 3: Review & Launch
Before you launch your campaign, Respona shows you all the emails it’s about to send.
You can review them, make any final changes, and even check out the LinkedIn profiles of the people you’re contacting.
Respona also does some final checks to make sure your emails are good to go, like making sure there are no empty placeholders or unsubscribe issues.
Once your campaign is running, you can easily manage your responses and start writing those guest posts!
Respona has a shared inbox that keeps all your emails in one place, so you don’t have to switch between different accounts.
And for the best results, Respona recommends using a few different email addresses and not sending too many emails per day (around 15-45 is a good number).
Link building cheat sheet
Now Over to You
So, link building and outreach have a very close relationship, and to consistently grow your backlink profile with high quality backlinks, you’ll need to engage in it.
Need help generating more links?
Don’t hesitate to start your 14-day free trial with Respona to see it in action.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
What is the best way to find contact information for outreach?
Tools like Respona can automate the process of finding email addresses.
You can also often find contact information on a website’s “Contact Us” page or by searching LinkedIn.
How many emails should I send per day for effective outreach?
It’s best to start with a lower volume, around 15-45 emails per day, to avoid being flagged as spam.
You can gradually increase this number as you build your sender reputation.
How do I personalize my outreach emails?
Mention something specific about the recipient’s website or content, show that you understand their audience, and explain why your content would be a good fit for them.
What if I don’t get a response to my outreach efforts?
Follow up! A friendly follow-up email a few days later can significantly increase your response rate.
What are some common SEO link building mistakes to avoid?
Avoid sending generic, mass emails, focusing solely on low-quality links, and being overly promotional in your outreach. Building genuine relationships is key to successful outreach link building.
What are the most effective link building strategies?
Some of the most effective link building strategies are guest posting, link insertion, skyscraper technique, broken link building, resource page link building and listicles.
