In this guide, I’ll show you how to conduct professional link-building outreach campaigns from A to Z.
We’ll start from how to determine the best link acquisition technique all the way to how to refine your campaign to get better results.
So without further ado, let’s jump right into it.
Link-building outreach refers to the process of reaching out to other blogs and businesses — asking for a backlink.
In other words, it’s the process of convincing bloggers and webmasters to link to your website.
Link-building outreach is kind of like going fishing, but instead of fish, you’re trying to catch links from other websites.
And just like there are many different fishing techniques, there are also different link-building outreach methods.
Shotgun Link Outreach is like casting a wide net into the ocean and hoping to catch as many fish as possible.
Here, you don’t worry too much about having the highest response rate or getting the best-in-class backlinks.
You just send a generic template with very little personalization to all your link-building prospects and hope for the best.
Now, you must understand that shotgun outreach is a numbers game.
The more emails you send, the more links you might get.
Even if you get a 1% response rate.
That’s a backlink for every 100 emails you send.
Not so bad.
Sniper Outreach is like going fishing with a specific fish in mind — using a special bait.
Here, you target specific blogs or websites, ones that really align with your content.
You research the site owner, understand what they like, and then send a personalized well-thought-out message to them.
This method takes more time and effort, but it usually has a much higher response rate because it helps you build a connection with the website owner.
Hybrid outreach gives you the best of both worlds.
You get to send personalized emails at a scale.
How?
By segmenting your link prospects.
You'll group your link prospects into different segments based on common characteristics, such as the niche they operate in, the type of content they produce, a common page they link out to, etc.
This allows you to add a pinch of personalization to every email while reaching a larger audience.
This type of link acquisition tactic you’ll use will shape your link-building outreach campaign.
It’ll determine what link-building opportunities to look for, where to find them, how to write an email that appeals to them, etc.
Here is a quick summary of the most effective link-building techniques:
Guest blogging is like sharing your knowledge on someone else’s platform.
Find blogs that accept guest authors, pitch them an awesome content idea, write a valuable piece of content, and earn a backlink either in the content body, the author bio, or both.
This way, the host blog gets free, quality content, and you secure a backlink.
The Skyscraper Technique is about outshining the competition.
You start by identifying an article that earned a lot of links in your niche, create a superior, more comprehensive version, and then contact your competitor’s linkers, inviting them to link to this much better version.
It’s about upgrading existing content and leveraging it for more links.
Link reclamation is about retrieving lost backlinks.
This involves identifying previously acquired backlinks that have been removed or altered and reaching out to the respective website owners to request the restoration of these links.
Search for instances where your brand or content is mentioned without a link and politely ask the site owner to add one.
It’s turning word-of-mouth into actionable, clickable pathways back to your site.
Find broken links on websites, create relevant content that matches the broken content, and suggest to the website owner to replace the broken link with your working one.
It’s about providing solutions and improving the web while gaining links.
The Moving Man Technique is one of my favorite link-building strategies. And it works by capitalizing on outdated content.
Identify outdated or relocated content, create an up-to-date version, and inform site owners linking to the outdated content about your newly created replacement.
It’s like offering a more current and relevant resource for old, outdated ones.
Link magnets are about creating irresistibly shareable content.
Develop content so valuable and unique that other site owners want to link to it organically, such as:
HARO link building is about helping journalists while earning links.
Register on HARO, respond to journalists’ queries with insightful, valuable answers, and earn a chance to be quoted and linked back to in their blog posts.
Testimonial link building revolves around crafting thoughtful testimonials for the products you use, services you subscribe to, or businesses you collaborate with.
Start by creating a list of all such entities and approach them with an offer to write a testimonial.
This method is akin to spreading good vibes about the products and services you genuinely appreciate, and often, these businesses would be more than happy to feature your testimonial on their site, providing you with a quality backlink in return.
Digital PR is like the modern version of public relations for link building.
Create buzzworthy, newsworthy content or stories, reach out to journalists and influencers in your niche, and earn valuable links as your content gets covered by media outlets.
The success of your link-building campaign highly depends on the quality of your link prospects.
Have a lousy prospect list, and you’ll end up wasting hours without landing a single backlink.
That’s why in this section, I’ll show you three ways to find the right prospects.
The easiest way to find high-quality link prospects is to steal your competitors' links.
After all, if they linked to your competitors, there is a high chance they’d link to you too.
Here is how to reverse engineer your competitors:
Google advanced search operators are a bunch of commands that help you filter the SERPs for better results.
There are over 40 different search operators, but the most important ones for link prospecting are:
All you have to do from there is to use a tool like Apify to scrape the SERP, and that’s it.
You now have hundreds of relevant link prospects.
Agency Tip: Use Google’s built-in time search tool to find active websites in your niche. In the SERP, click on Tools —> Any time —> Past week, and this will show you only the websites that published relevant content in the past week.
There are also some link-building tools that can help you find thousands of link prospects without any effort.
The best ones are:
We want links from real websites.
Links that can actually move the needle and help you rank higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs.)
That’s why it’s super important to set your criteria to filter out low-quality prospects.
Here are some evaluation criteria you should consider:
This step is about finding similarities between our prospects, so we can craft semi-personalized outreach emails that appeal to a large number of them.
In other words, instead of manually writing an email to each prospect, we’ll group them into different segments and create an email template for each segment.
When done correctly, this email template will sound super personalized to the receiver — which highly increases both your response rate and your campaign scalability.
Here are a few ways to segment your prospects:
Finding the right contact information is your golden ticket in the outreach game.
If you're throwing your line into the vast ocean of the internet, you need to know exactly where to drop your bait!
Start simple. The ‘Contact Us’ page is the go-to spot to snatch up email addresses.
Take a quick glance, and often, you’ll find the golden nugget — the email address you need. If it’s there, grab it; if not, let’s move on.
Delve a bit into ‘About Us’ pages and Author Bio sections.
Grab the first and last name of the author, then use this amazing email premutator to get a list of all possible email addresses.
Plug the list into an email validator to ensure it’s legit, and that’s it!
Tools like Hunter.io and Voila Norbert can find the email addresses associated with a domain — which is perfect for scaling your link-building outreach process.
Jump into LinkedIn, Twitter, or even Facebook, and snoop around a bit.
There is a very high chance you’ll find a contactable email there.
Let’s set things straight.
Link-building is about offering value.
If you have nothing to add to the table, you’re not building links, you’re just spamming.
And by offering value, I don’t mean creating a slightly better version of an article and spamming people's inboxes thinking they owe you a link.
The truth is no one gives a flying F about how much better your content is or that you can write them an “SEO-optimized article for free.”
Webmasters get hundreds of these emails per month.
That’s why your pitch must stand out!
And that’s exactly what this section is about.
I’ll show you how to craft an email that stands out and gets the highest conversion rate possible.
You know that age-old saying, "What's in it for me?"
Well, that's precisely what every website owner is thinking when they read your pitch.
This isn’t charity.
Webmasters won’t bother updating an old article or going through the hassle of editing a guest post out of the kindness of their hearts.
You must offer something in return.
You must make them believe that doing that would actually benefit them.
How?
Well, this really depends on your link acquisition tactic and your qualifications.
For example, everyone loves to link to articles with original research, so if your post has new data or a unique perspective, that could be your selling point.
If you’re an electrician trying to land guest posts, your pitch could focus on your qualifications and expertise in the field.
If you’re an SEO or a niche site owner, you could offer them a free keyword gap analysis, and find a few keywords they could easily rank for.
No matter your angle or expertise, the key is to highlight the value you bring to the table.
So start by making a list of what you can offer, and let’s proceed to the next step.
Agency Tip: What you consider valuable, isn’t necessarily valuable to the other person. Try to put yourself in their shoes to truly understand what they need.
A good link-building outreach email should contain three key things:
This is better explained with an example, so I’ll walk you through a successful link-building campaign that I ran recently.
My client was in the energy niche.
And for those who don’t know.
This niche is super competitive with lots of high authority sites.
I noticed that although some articles were very technical, there were very few custom graphics to help explain those topics.
That was my selling point.
I looked for pages that got lots of links, made infographics that nicely explained the article, and reversed-engineered those articles to get my prospects list.
So my “why” was basically: Hey, use that infographic on your page to make it better + prevent your visitors from leaving your page to get more info.
My social proof was that I’m an electrical engineer with years of experience in the field + the infographic itself is proof that I know what I’m talking about.
Finally, since I knew that the audience was underserved when it came to custom graphics, my call-to-action plan was to offer the webmaster access to my “cheap, yet very good graphic designers.”
So that was basically my outreach email.
All that I had to do next was to use my copywriting skills to craft the email.
Spoiler alert: I’m a horrible copywriter, so please don’t hold that against me.
Here's how to perfect your outreach copy to make it compelling, relatable, and actionable:
Agency Tip: Make AI write the outreach templates for you. Or at least, the first draft.
Once you have initiated your outreach, it is crucial to monitor the responses and manage your relationships effectively.
Outreach tools like Pitchbox or Buzzstream can help you keep track of your emails, responses, follow-ups, and link placements, ensuring that you don’t lose track of your outreach efforts.
Regularly check for responses and address them promptly. A timely and appropriate response can significantly increase your chances of securing a backlink.
Maintain a record of your outreach attempts, responses, follow-ups, and acquired links.
This will help you refine your link-building strategy, avoid contacting the same prospects repeatedly, and measure the success of your outreach campaign.
Finally, regularly review the effectiveness of your link-building outreach strategy.
I’m not a big fan of outreach templates.
And honestly, if I received an email that I think is copy-pasted, I’d instantly lose interest.
It just takes away a lot of your credibility and makes you seem like you’re just there for links — which is always an indicator of low quality.
Instead, I encourage you to write your own templates using AI.
To make your life easier, I created a ChatGPT prompt that can help you write compelling emails.
All you have to do is fill in the blanks, and you should get a pretty good first draft.
Feel free to check it out yourself:
Craft an effective link-building outreach email with the following guidelines and inputs:
1. Context about your website and prospects’ content: [Details about your prospects’ page/website, link acquisition technique, and what your page is about]
2. Unique value or justification: [Why someone should link to your content]
3. Relevant social proof: [Credibility elements like mentions in a publication or testimonials]
4. Witty call-to-action: [Engaging request for the recipient to take action]
Best Practices:
Here are a few tips to take your link-building outreach game to the next level:
The outreach process for link-building consists of:
Email outreach in link building is the process of contacting webmasters, bloggers, and influencers, and asking them to link to your content.
The 3 outreach methods are shotgun outreach, sniper outreach, and hybrid outreach.
To make the most of your link-building outreach, it's essential to approach it as a two-way street.
It's not just about what you can get out of it, but what value you can offer in return.
We have been building backlinks at a scale for over 5 years now.
Each month, we build thousands of high-quality links in over 100 different niches for our clients.
If you want us to take care of all the hard work involved in link-building for you, feel free to book a consultation call with one of our link-building experts.
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