Running a link building outreach campaign is essential to increase your Google rankings. The Internet is way too crowded to make an impact as a lone wolf. You need a pack surrounding you, and unless you are a blue chip company with an infinite amount of money, then you need backlinks, social media mentions and a whole lot of people saying nice things about your website and your company. This article offers tips on your latest link building outreach campaign.
Table of Contents
What is Link Building?
Backlinks are links from other websites that point to your website. In the old days, they acted as a vote for your website, a vote that Google would rank your website on. These days, they are signals for popularity, and they offer a small trickle of traffic that builds up over the long term.
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People talk about the quality of backlinks, which is sort of true and relevant, but only in a commonsense frame of mind. There is no metric for measuring authority, even if online tools will say otherwise. It is all about common sense. If you are running a small business selling rugs, then backlinks from new, cheap, and spammy websites will be useless because they probably won’t be on Google themselves, and they won’t send over a lot of traffic.
On a similar point, if you have a backlink from the My Little Pony website to your rug selling website, then even though the My Little Pony website is popular and well respected, you are probably not going to get much traffic from the website, nor will the search engines pay it much attention when ranking you up the search engine results.
Why is Link Building Important?
Back in the day, it was one of Google’s major ranking factors. These days, backlinks are important because they offer organic traffic, and they signify potential popularity, which is something that Google is interested in. When you use Google Chrome to navigate from a different website to your website, Google takes note. If this happens enough, then Google assumes you are popular and ranks you up the search engine results accordingly.
By improving your link profile, you improve your online rankings, your brand awareness and your visibility in search engine results. Plus, as mentioned, you are also growing your organic traffic numbers. These days, organic traffic from backlinks is one of the best ways to cultivate your audience in a sustainable way, especially if your backlinks are stable and targeted.
Targeted means that the people viewing the other website are the sort of people who would normally view your website too. Stable means that the backlink is not likely to be deleted, corrupted or redirected any time soon.
Link building outreach campaigns are long term efforts. They are an ongoing process that helps you drive traffic and attention to your website. They enable lasting and long-term success for your business. To run a successful outreach campaign you can hire freelancers or link building team or even do this by yourself.
How to Run a Successful Link Building Outreach Campaign
Start with the people you know, from your business associates to members of your family. Get the easy links out of the way first. Email the people in your contacts book and the people you have connected with on LinkedIn.
Define A Set of Goals
What is the end goal and how long will your link building outreach campaign last? Consider goals, but also consider a long-term plan. Even if you reach your goals, there is nothing stopping you from keeping the campaign going in a less intensive way. Perhaps keeping the campaign ticking over with just a third of your initial resources and time.
Do Your Research
Some, if not most, websites you approach will not respond to your link building outreach campaign. Others may seem okay but are owned by companies that are frequently banned from search engines. Check out the websites yourself to see if they have predatory adverts. See if they look cheap and spammy. Only dedicate time to high quality websites that are white hat, because the lower quality ones don’t tend to last very long.
Create Compelling Offers
When you make contact, you may need to offer a guest post, a sponsorship, or perhaps a social media shout out. Find out what the web master wants in return for posting your content or adding your backlink to their website.
Create Compelling Offers – What
Don’t try to create intrigue. Do not try to guerrilla sell the idea. You need to be clear and unambiguous. People need to know what you want, you need to be upfront, and you need to be as direct and concise as possible.
Create Compelling Offers – How
They may have guest posting rules on their website, or you may have to generate your own offer when you first make contact. As you learn how to approach webmasters, you can generate and refine your best offers so that you get the best possible result for the lowest possible price.
Create Compelling Offers – Why
The initial response is why they should bother helping you? The reply is usually that you will create a guest post, which is content for them. Though, some may want money. If you have a good social media following, then people are happy to accept social media mentions in return for backlinks.
Be Real
The recipient is used to receiving spam, so you have to do all you can to ensure you do not look like a spam message. The recipients will also expect a template email message that was sent out with no thought or consideration. If you can make it appear as if the email was written just for that website, then that makes your offer look better. The downside is that this takes longer, and time is often your biggest expense when conducting a link building outreach campaign.
Deliver Great Value
This article was careful to say that you should work for backlinks for the lowest price, and not for the lowest amount of effort and work. If you are offering guest posts, then make them good. At least try to add a few good points rather than rewriting the first few articles you find on Google. Find out if the website wants you to add images, media or outgoing links to your guest post articles.
Why Some Outreach Backlink Strategies Fail
The biggest reason they fail is because people gather up a list of ill-gotten email addresses, spam them, and get themselves shadow banned from every server this side of the Great Wall of China.
It’s Not Personal (and you are ugly)
The advice from earlier still applies; try to make your initial contact seem real and original. When things are a little too mechanical and clinical, it seems fake. Addressing it to “Dear Sirs” or “To Whom it May Concern” is worse than offering no opener at all. Also, try writing in the first person, using “I Statements” rather than business language.
You’re Messaging Everyone
There is a thin line between enthusiastic outreaching and spamming. People don’t start out as spammers. They create hundreds of personal emails, they get no response, and so they start spamming and hope for the best. Try not to fall into this trap.
You Keep Bombarding People
Losing people after making first contact is easy. Keep harassing them, keep nagging them, keep asking too many questions, and you will lose them. They have better things to do than fiddle with you all day. Do not bombard people with the same email repeatedly for your link building outreach campaign.
Your Emails Were Not Proofread
Don’t add spelling and grammar mistakes to make it seem more personal and original because it just looks more like spam. Spammers use poor spelling and grammar on purpose so that regular people simply ignore them and don’t report their emails, and the feeble minded and vulnerable fall for it. The last thing you want your link building outreach campaign to be lumped into the same group as predatory spammers.
Giving Up Too Easily
You can control a lot of things, but not your response rate. You need to create a plan that is long term and consistent. That is the only way to build backlinks over the long term. Giving up too easily is fine, especially when you consider how difficult it is to get a response from people. However, if you stop trying, then you will stop getting backlinks, so the choice is yours.
Final Thoughts
Link building is a fair way to improve your SEO and generate long-term sustainable traffic flows. The problem is that it is difficult, time consuming, and ultimately demoralizing. The only way to win is to stay consistent and to keep your link building outreach campaign burning over the long term. Over time, your level of success will even out, you will learn and adapt, and you will generate a fair number of backlinks in return for your efforts.
