Our Proven Link Building Outreach Strategy in Three Steps

In this next section, we’ll review the outreach strategy we use at LinkBuilder. These are the broad principles you can use for all kinds of link building outreach.

You will have to tweak them slightly depending on the type of link building you use.

For example, placing guest posts on authoritative sites requires a different approach to asking to replace broken links.

There are several strategies you can use to find good outreach targets.

Some of our Favorites Include:

Competitor Research

Competitor backlinks research is when you look at one of your competitor’s web pages to see which sites they have links from.

It’s an effective strategy because if a site links to your competitor, there is a chance that they will link to you too.

It’s easy to discover which websites link to your competitors; just put their URL into Ahrefs and then head to the “Backlinks” section.

Here you'll see all the backlinks a website has. Filtering the list by only showing links from the last 30 days will show the site’s most recent acquisitions.

Link Intersect

You can make competitor research even more effective by searching for websites that link to multiple competitors but not your own.

Linking to multiple competing sites is a sign that a website may be open to linking to yours.

Many SEO tools offer this feature. In Ahrefs, it is called link intersect, and you can find it in the “More” menu in the top bar.

Just add your competitors and your own website to the relevant sections.

Clicking “Show link opportunities” will provide a list of websites that link to your competitors but not your site. These are all potential outreach targets.

View Websites in a Niche

Another easy way to find outreach targets is to gather a list of websites in a niche.

You could do this by manually searching on Google and making a list of all the websites that publish content.

But an easier method is to use the competing domains feature on an SEO tool. This will highlight all the websites that rank for similar keywords to your target site.

How It Works in Practice

Imagine you run a golf website and have a great piece of content about the best golf workouts that you want to pitch to health and fitness sites.

All you have to do is search for health and fitness sites in Ahrefs and then click on “competing domains.”

Here you’ll see the main domains it shares keywords with.

The aim is to choose the person most likely to be in control of creating content.

Emailing the founder or head of marketing is okay at smaller websites and blogs where this person is likely to still work on content.

On more significant sites with a separate content team, messaging the content manager or head of content is more suitable.

If you’re struggling to find the right person with Pitchbox, head to LinkedIn and search for people at your chosen company with the relevant role.

You can then either contact them directly on LinkedIn or use Hunter.io to find their email address.

Here’s Our Templated Email Strategy

Templated emails are those sent out to multiple sites at once.

When done wrong, this type of outreach can appear spammy and is unlikely to work. But you can also do it in a semi-targeted way that is more likely to generate a positive response.

1) Create Email Segments

The first step is to be selective about who you email. This ensures that your message is as relevant as possible to the recipient.

If your outreach list consists of a large number of websites in various niches, you should break this down into segments to make the email as relevant as possible.

For example, a supplement company looking to generate backlinks may have a list of websites that includes both those focused on diet and nutrition and those focused on exercise.

Splitting this list into two segments would allow the company to be more specific with its emails.

The more you can segment the list, the more relevant the email is likely to be.

The company in the above example could further split the exercise segment into the type of exercise they focus on—for example, weight training, running, or CrossFit.

The key is to get a balance between targeting and time-saving.

2) Create Email Templates

Tools like Pitchbox allow you to create email templates with personalized elements like names or website URLs for each website. This helps you add a personal touch.

When writing emails, you need to be as specific as possible. This is hard when you message multiple websites at once, but there are some things you can do.

As you send out more and more emails, you’ll get a better idea of what works and what doesn’t.

Save your most effective templates so you can use them in future link building campaigns. At LinkBuilder, we have templates that work for almost any scenario.

3) Schedule the Email

The next step is to schedule the email. Pitchbox contains plenty of features that make this easy.

First, you need to choose a day and time. We typically send outreach emails on weekday mornings EDT, so businesses in the U.S. receive them at the start of the workday.

Adjust your schedule accordingly if you’re contracting websites in other time zones.

If you have an extensive outreach list, you can choose to spread your emails throughout the week. We typically send a maximum of 20 emails in a day.

Before you click “schedule,” always send a test email to yourself. This lets you confirm that the email is correctly formatted and that all personalized elements work. This is important because poorly formatted emails are a tell-tale sign of mass outreach.

You can finalize the email schedule if everything looks good in the preview.

Follow Submission Guidelines Where Available

Many high-domain authority websites have specific instructions about how to apply to write a guest post.

For example, HubSpot has four blogs, each with its requirements. If you fail to adhere to these guidelines, you have almost zero chance of your guest post application being accepted.

You can find out whether a website has specific guidelines by searching for the name of the site and then keywords like “Write for us,” “Article submission,” “Blogging guidelines,” or “Guest post.”

These instructions usually contain information about what to include in your pitch and to whom to send the message. Make sure you follow the steps as written.

Here are some strategies we use when contacting websites without specific guest posting guidelines:

1) Include an Interesting Guest Post Pitch

You must create a pitch for a blog post that fits their existing content and will likely interest their audience.

These types of websites are unlikely to accept generic listicles or rehashed content. Instead, think about articles that use your specific expertise. It needs to be something that no one else can write.

For example, one of our clients at LinkBuilder is a real estate CRM. We successfully generated high-quality guest posts by pitching article ideas that used the client’s real estate expertise. Check out our case study for further details.

2) Include Published Articles

You need to show that you can produce high-quality content. Do this by including links to other content that you have published.

Ideally, they will be published on other websites, as this will add an element of social proof to your request.

If you haven’t published on third-party websites, including links to your site’s best blog posts.

3) Make It Personal

Make sure to address the person you are emailing by name. Consider mentioning something about their website or businesses that you like.

By doing this, you highlight that the message is specifically for them and not part of a mass outreach campaign.

Following Up Is Key

If someone doesn’t reply to your email, it doesn't always mean they aren’t interested in your request. Sometimes they may have missed your email or forgotten to respond.

Because of this, following up with your outreach efforts can make a big difference in the success of your campaign.

It’s easy to schedule automated follow-ups within Pitchbox. These go out to all email addresses that didn’t respond to your original pitch.

We typically keep follow-ups simple and remind the prospect about the original email.

As with the initial email, you can personalize follow-ups with information such as the person’s name and website.

Step Three: Negotiating for the Link

The final step in the link-building outreach process is interacting with the prospect to finalize a deal for the link.

If someone responds, they are at least partly interested in your offer, even if the initial response seems negative.

You can often overcome objections by coming up with a creative response.

Now You Just Need to Wait for Links to Go Live

Once you finally agree with a website, you just need to wait for the links to go live. Sometimes this will happen soon after you finalize a deal. At other times it can take weeks.

Authoritative websites, for example, often have stringent publishing processes that can take time to get through.

But while link building outreach can be time-consuming—and you’ll likely get a lot of rejections—it is an essential part of a campaign.

And if you set up your campaign correctly, target the right websites, and create high-quality content, you can still have some great results.