22 December 2020

5 ways you can improve your SEO outreach efforts

You may have read our previous article all about backlinks, and SEO outreach and why they are important for your website’s SEO, but you are not sure how you go about getting them.

Here we show you some of the best tips and tricks to implement to your link building strategy to earn backlinks from high-quality websites that will increase your ranking for the right keywords in Google. 

What is SEO outreach?

SEO Outreach is a key part of the search marketing mix and focuses on driving good quality links to your site through proactive outreach through various tactics ranging from guest posts to digital PR.

Whilst links are normally the key metric for outreach, other KPIs ranging from brand awareness to new business and leads can all come under the umbrella of outreach.

What backlink tactics are out there? 

SEO is a field that is changing all the time, with new Google updates moving the goalposts constantly for search marketers. Link directories, for example, use to be a perfectly credible way to build backlinks that would increase your website’s perceived authority. However, the landscape has changed and recent Google updates have rendered these ‘black-hat SEO’ tactics not only ineffective but detrimental to your rankings. 

There are a number of different backlink tactics out there (we have provided a full breakdown at the end of the article) and they are all great if you are looking to diversify your link portfolio. If you are looking to get started, the video from Moz below lists 3 great beginner tactics to get your first 50 backlinks.

Why outreach is important

If you want to get your site ranking in Google, links are a crucial piece of the puzzle. They will help signify that your site is trustworthy and increase your chances of getting found for your target keywords.

Here we have provided a beginners guide to outreach, in addition to 5 key tips to help improve the success rate of your link building efforts.

1. Start with a great product or piece of content 

When you are reaching out to bloggers and webmasters, you are often starting off on the back foot. If they are in charge of websites that have a high domain authority with good trust and citation flow, the likelihood is they are solicited with numerous SEO outreach requests every day.

If you are going to be successful, having a good product or piece of digital content will make your life a whole lot easier. 

Try to develop the content or product with the target market in mind. Remember, the purpose isn’t to directly sell anything, but instead get a good follow link back to your website. Think about a product that bloggers will love, and that matches well with their overall blog theme. Think fashion content and products for fashion bloggers etc. 

2. Use the relevant tools to start link prospecting 

The link prospecting phase may be daunting but it is one of the most important parts if you are trying to get relevant backlinks to your website through SEO outreach.

One of the best ways to start is through a simple Google search. Look for bloggers in your niche and try to get relevant data on them including domain authority, trust and citation flow, and any social metrics. Collating these into a spreadsheet will help you keep track of everything and avoid getting lost in the data. Beyond this, use the relevant outreach tools to scale your efforts.

3. Use your target’s name in the email subject line 

Next up we have a small tip that has been shown to increase the click-through rate of your email outreach. Try to get the name of the person in charge of the blog/website, and use it in the subject line. This makes the blogger feel more personally reached out to and this will increase the success rate of your SEO outreach. 

Remember, it can be easy to send out a load of SEO outreach emails and feel like you have had a productive day, and whilst this may be the case, if the conversion rate of those emails is low you are not going to hit your targets. Increasing the number of emails you send that convert into high-quality backlinks will improve not only the results of your campaign but also its efficiency too. 

4. Follow up non-responders with a tailored offer 

If you have reached out to your target and they have not replied try not to be too dissuade, sometimes changing the wording and tone of the follow-up email can work wonders. One method could be changing the subject line and asking if they have seen the previous email. Also, if you have the capacity, offering an affiliate link can be enough to get the link over the line and they can be set up in a few different ways. Either way, try to look at your email from the perspective of the receiver, would you reply to it saying yes to what you are offering? 

5. Build the relationship with bloggers for future collaborations 

The last tip on our last is to try and build long term relationships with bloggers over time. Always include a ‘looking forward to working with you again in the future’ section in your correspondence to show that you want to keep providing them with valuable PR/collaboration opportunities when they arise in the future. Additionally, there are often blogs and websites that can work well for different clients too! This makes your role of SEO outreach progressively easier as you go through it.

Get in touch to kick-start your SEO outreach

Outreach can be difficult especially in times of crisis when people may be focusing on other priorities. That being said bloggers are always looking for new forms of content and new stories to write about, so make sure you keep at it. High-quality links are still crucial to a long term SEO strategy and adopting some of these steps to improve your outreach efforts over time will help you increase the number of links you get for your company and clients.