Outreach for backlinks

[Cfarcher]

What are some of the best ways to reach out for back links?  The goal is to get a link from their website to our root or an anchored text but what are some techniques  and options to consider to make it beneficial for both parties?

[mian183]

find a related site to your niche and contact them
send them an article 1000-1500 words with quality and ask them to publish on there site

[effectdigital]

Since you have such strong performance that must be a known site or brand. One thing you could do is, download all your historic backlinks and check for dead ones. Where the content has been taken down, or links have been removed from the content. You could contact editors and webmasters to try and get content and links restored, the WayBack machine may help to see what kind of content and links existed previously. If you can get an email address from your client based at their domain,  you usually get a slightly higher response rate

[EGOL]

Our website currently gets approximately 1 million page views per month with 200,000 unique visitors would there be a way to leverage this to (ask or obtain) back links from sources?

If you   A) have  that kind of traffic;  B) have fantastic content;  and,  C) promote your best content to your visitors,   then you should have the ability to get spontaneous links from your tribe.

When our sites were new, we built a few links.    Once we got traffic like yours we almost stopped.  Now, we might send a dozen link request emails per year.  These mostly go to webmasters who have a resource page and our resorce is 10x better than anything they are already linking to.

Another method....  Sometimes they have kickass content and we, while writing a great article on a parallel topic, include a couple of paragraphs about their work and cite them as a reference.   We write to let them know and we wind up with a link on their "In the Media" page.

[Cfarcher]

Right now something I am doing is finding a competitors website address. Then using the MOZ LINK RESEARCH tool to see what linking domains they have. I'm putting these links in a LINK LIST. This is helping me determine where a competitor has a link and if we have a link from the same linking domain or not.  I'd ultimately like to have links from the same places as them then surpass them over time with new sources.

I'm going to the URLs that we don't have a link from, finding a point of contact Phone & Email. My plan is to outreach to them to obtain a link from their site to ours. Either the ROOT DOMAIN or an ANCHORED TEXT. But now that I am at the outreach portion of this strategy i'm finding it hard to come up with a solid plan to outreach without being deleted or ignored.

I do actually want to build business relationships with these people for the years to come. I do want the relationship to be beneficial. An example would be this is website i want to obtain a link from: SEE THE LINK BELOW:

So should I call or should I email & what is the exchange so that he'd agree to link back.

http://northwoodwardhomes.com/

info@northwoodwardhomes.com

I understand I could create a good article & share it with him but that doesn't seem like it would work.  How would you try to obtain a link from a source like this?

[Cfarcher]

So the "pitch" that we can create a guest post, or write up an article for your audience most likely won't work is what I am getting from this. & that the best way to do it is to create a really good piece of content that is written well, graphics, all that good stuff then reach out with a genuine pitch of how it helps them.

Do we have any other strategies to outreach for backlinks other then creating content and emailing the owner? Do people do anything else or these SEO firms have other strategies to build relationships and get content shared?

Our website currently gets approximately 1 million page views per month with 200,000 unique visitors would there be a way to leverage this to (ask or obtain) back links from sources?

[EGOL]

If someone would write to us and say.....   "If we create this, will you link to it?"

My reply would be, create it and you will have a very small chance that we will link to it.

Why would that be the reply (actually, I would probably delete that type of message).

Because...

A) we might already have the best content on the web for that topic

B) what you think is good, might not be what we think is good

C) we might not be interested in linking out to a site about that topic

D) if you create something and show it to us, and we want to link out to a site about that topic, we will go straight to the SERPs and find the best piece of content about that topic that we can locate, and yours will unlikely measure up

We link out for a reason, not because someone suggests something.  When we link out, we know that our visitors are interested in something and we want the target of that link to be the best thing on the internet for that topic.  We don't want to send our visitors to the third best content or the fifth.  We want to link to something that makes our visitors to shout WOW!

When you see links on a website, those links were probably built  while an author was writing the article on that page... and they want to create an attribution link to an expert's website because they are using what she wrote as  a reference.

[effectdigital]

IMO it's the only approach that works, but you are right risk is involved and it doesn't always work. That's marketing, though

The way to not sound annoying is to approach someone with an original, insightful and beneficial (for the editor and their audience) pitch. If you approach them with questions, you've already lost - as someone else IS in their inbox pitching much more complete ideas which they don't have to think about so much

You have to start building your network. Some will include your citiational links, others won't - or they won't do it all of the time (or they will nullify the links some clever way). In the end, if you represent a client AND a digital agency, editors and webmasters know what you are after. If they refuse to give it (or give a fair amount often enough) then don't work with them any more

The main thing to keep in mind is that, you want to make it clear you are interested in editorial opportunities and not opportunities which are advertorial in nature. You aren't trying to pay for an ad, you're trying to promote a story or a winning piece of content. You don't want to be in a sponsored slot on their site, you don't want to be in an ad-bar, you don't want no-followed links and you don't want to directly pay for the link (as that would make your content an ad)

There may be other way you can interact with the editor like helping them with a fee to review your content. In the main though, the content should sell itself without money needing to change hands. Google only want to count editorial links towards PageRank, not advertorial or sponsored links - so in the end if you have to win, the 10x content / editorial angle is the only one you got

The question is if you can handle it or not

[Cfarcher]

That's sort of a catch 22. Creating WOW content that is superior isn't difficult but I'd like to get the A'okay from the site that if we do build it they will link or share it. So do you think going with that type of approach would work? A basic email saying we can create this if we did would you share it?

The question is how do you go about asking for this without sounding spammy or annoying.

Also, if you can't overdue the, give us a link will give you a link because you'll get penalized what are the other angels you can take that benefit the guy linking to you?

I'm at the spot where i have link lists that I want to get links from sites it's developing a good strategy to outreach.

Thanks for the reply

[effectdigital]

This usually involves some significant input from your client and it really separates the serious digital PR enthusiasts from the 'link builders'. To all intents and purposes, digital PR as a discipline is much broader and has essentially replaced 'SEO link building' which these days, ironically has very little value for SEO (where as digital PR done right, has massive value)

It's about creating an amazing piece of content, or telling an incredible story that everyone would want to hear - then getting it out there. The links occur naturally as a byproduct. For example an SEO link builder would contact a web master and say something like: "I will write gr8 articles 4 u we can put them on your blog I only make good content". Snore, delete. "Good unique content" is seldom good enough to rank competitively any more:

https://moz.com/blog/why-good-unique-content-needs-to-die-whiteboard-friday

Webmasters and editors are now wise to this shady SEO tactic. Writing content that barely qualifies as 'good' or 'unique', stuffed with links to the author's client. Being able to type stuff, isn't a high  barrier for entry into 'proper' link building. Google only want to count the really great stuff when evaluating content and links online

So if you have managed to get it out of your head that you can offer people, free 500 word articles of tenuous quality for links (none of the best sites will rank to you that way) - what do you need to offer instead?

10x content:

https://moz.com/blog/how-to-create-10x-content-whiteboard-friday

My personal strategy is to create some kind of 10x content (or issue the creation of such content, if I can't create it myself - which is highly probable as most 10x content is built by teams and NOT individuals). I try to ensure that the 10x content will tell a story which is 'PR-able' in some way. I try to find homes online for the 10x content, with citational links back to the original piece on the client's site (which is usually more in-depth and granular)

The trick is to get it out of your head that 'just text' qualifies as good content, it usually doesn't (unless it's an exceptional or newsworthy story. Hint: your client opening a new office is NOT newsworthy)

Think about the unique data which is at your client's disposal. Maybe the head of the company is an inspirational entrepreneur with a large social following, maybe interviews with them could be 'digital PR-worthy'. Maybe your client has a load of aggregated, anonymised customer data (or can construct such a data set) which shows a unique trend within their industry - something useful and informative for business readers

You can produce interactive experiences, calculators, interactive (HTML5 / CSS3) infographics, answer questions in ways that no one else has. Every keyword is a query - every query, is a request for information or a question. Address those questions

So how does all this help you with link building? It means that you can go to editors with an actual, genuine pitch. Instead of saying: hey Mr Man from the BBC, want a 500 word post (snore)? You are saying  - "Hey. I realise you edit this specific section of this online publication. My client has conducted some unique research which we have visualised. It would be of genuine interest to your audience for X reason and you would stand to see Y benefit"

Unless you can pitch someone a genuine idea, something which they can see will easily benefit them - don't even bother to attempt link building in 2019. Don't curate email lists of editors and hammer them with flimsy automated email templates. That may have worked in 2003 but it doesn't work now

[EGOL]

We link out to lots of websites and lots of people contact us wanting to get a link.

Fact is, we rarely link out to the people who contact us, mainly because the content that they suggest is crap.

The really good sites that link out, are not linking out just to link out.  Instead they are linking out to content that is much better than what they are able to produce for specific topics.

So, if you are looking for links on top quality websites make sure that the content that you recommend will make them say WOW!.   Otherwise, you are wasting your time.