There are a lot of link-building techniques, with each having its own features. To succeed in all areas, you need to create a comprehensive strategy, interact with site owners, and keep the situation under control.

1. What Is Outreach in SEO?

Outreach is a link-building method based on interaction with site owners. It allows acquiring links from reputable resources that do not participate in link schemes and do not refer to all advertisers.

The main value of links acquired through outreach is that they can greatly affect the site’s SERP visibility. That’s why many beginners try to figure out what outreach is and how it works.

Outreach is based on marketing ­ an optimizer who wants to acquire as many links from reputable projects as possible will need a competent commercial proposal. It should be attractive to potential partners and encourage them to continue the discussion.

Another feature of this link-building method is that it increases brand awareness. If a webmaster chose relevant sites to post links, he can generate targeted traffic and increase demand for the company’s products or services.

1.1. Why use outreach and for whom is it useful?

Optimizers often choose simpler ways to build links because the effectiveness of outreach depends on the approach to email marketing. It takes experience and a clear plan of action to establish a basic contact with partners and conclude as many deals as possible.

It is difficult to constantly increase the number of links with outreach because webmasters need to organize a working scheme of interaction with site owners. This requires compiling a list of donors, preparing a business proposal, finding the email addresses of potential partners, and solving many other problems.

Some SEO specialists use outreach as the main link-building method and acquire a lot of links from authoritative resources, which allows them to quickly become some of the leaders in the niche. And if the project is quality, references will appear organically, and links with SEO juice will appear in the link profile.

Outreach is useful when:

• Acquired links do not produce substantial results. So, they are not enough to beat the competition, and another method is necessary.
• Posted backlinks disappear over time. Outreach on a paid basis makes it possible to secure links for the lifetime of the partners’ site.
• It is necessary to inform the target audience about a new company. Or present a product that may be of interest to users of specific projects.
• There is a need to protect against search engine filters. Links acquired through outreach look natural.

Quick results are necessary. Outreach is the key to cooperation with the projects that rarely agree to post links and pass link juice.

SEO outreach is perfect when the goal is to enter a new market. If the company is already known in the U.S., and management wants to attract customers from Canada, links from popular local resources will help grab the attention of search crawlers and target audiences.

1.2. Is outreach relevant in 2023?

Acquiring backlinks from reputable resources through outreach is still relevant in 2023. Search engines are paying more and more attention to improving algorithms for detecting unnatural links. Therefore, buying backlinks without a clear strategy is a losing option, and approaches, such as outreach, become a lifesaver.

SEO experts sometimes think that outreach implies simple emails offering to post a link for free. However, each link-building method has many branches. For example, you can publish guest posts, write reviews of popular services, transcribe videos of opinion leaders, and create your own link-building schemes.

All described methods are related to outreach, but in each case, a unique approach works. Communication with site owners is very important, and it is the foundation of successful outreach campaigns that allow acquiring backlinks from donor sites.

2. Paid vs. Free Outreach

Experienced webmasters who actively use outreach to promote their projects know that in some cases, links can be acquired for free. This is only possible if a potential partner is interested in adding a link to an external resource or posting a new article to content.

However, many site owners do not post backlinks for free. They may charge for their services, ask for a link in return, or offer another exchange option.

The main advantage of paid outreach is that the advertiser receives a guarantee of saving links. Links are posted on a paid basis, and if a webmaster violates obligations, no one will buy links in the future because of a bad reputation.

The following factors affect the cost of posting:

• Site SERP position
• The number of linked domains
• Site’s organic traffic
• The place of the link in the text
• The time the link stays on the page
• Follow/nofollow link
• Site authority
• Site relevance
• Anchor text
• Link attributes
• Number of links on the page
• The priority of the selected page on the site

The secret of successful outreach campaigns is the creation of useful content and the selection of relevant donors. If a potential partner sees that the recipient’s site is high-quality, he will gladly agree to post a link to it.

3. Important features of the method

Outreach, like any other link-building method, will only be beneficial with the right approach. If you do not pay enough attention to the selection of donor sites, analysis of their quality, or mailing list templates during the preparation stage, the result won’t be satisfying.

Outreach has its own features that affect the link-building strategy. Much depends on the project niche, but the basic principles of outreach campaigns have not changed for a long time, and webmasters should adjust them to their goals.

3.1. Relevance

One of the main criteria of natural links is relevance. Donor and recipient niches must match. If a backlink looks artificial, search algorithms will suspect a violation of SEO rules and impose sanctions.

The project that posts backlinks is also interested in ensuring that they are as relevant as possible. Search engine filters apply to both parties of a link exchange scheme, namely, the buyer and the seller.

3.2. Trust

To gain the trust of a potential partner and his project audience, you will need quality content and a profitable commercial offer. Both aspects are equally important; so, maximum attention should be paid to their development.

Site owners respond well to offers that go beyond the standard. For example, if an advertiser not just prepared a useful article but spent time creating valuable elements (infographics, a checklist, a PDF manual), the chances of a successful collaboration increase.

3.3. Creativity

Authoritative projects don’t tend to post every offer from advertisers. Usually, marketers or other specialists responsible for outreach choose only the most relevant offers.

An outreach strategy has to be creative because webmasters are tired of templates. They read emails that stand out from the spam flow and pay special attention to advertisers who offer quality content.

4. A Step-by-step Strategy for Outreach

The effectiveness of any link-building technique depends on the quality of a link strategy. If an optimizer has carefully thought out each point of the plan, all tasks can be successfully accomplished.

Potential partners easily distinguish spammers from advertisers worth cooperating with. The latter category of users stands out thanks to a competent commercial offer and content that motivates users to perform targeted actions.

4.1. Defining the goal of the campaign

The goal of outreach is not only to increase the number of links several times. Many companies use link building to inform their audiences about new products or services. For example, if a SaaS that helps solve the problems of pet stores appears on the market, it can be introduced during the outreach campaign.

Defining the company’s goal is the first and most important step on the way to successful outreach. A link from a reputable resource is always useful, but if the goal is to attract as many users as possible, it is necessary to focus on content.

4.2. Finding sites to publish content

Not all reputable sites can be part of an SEO outreach strategy. Resources like Reddit or Yelp are appropriate for projects in any niche, but the advantage of outreach is to acquire links from sites that rarely or never post links.

After determining the goal of an outreach campaign, you should come up with a list of potential donors. The more sites will be on the list, the more time it will take to compose personalized letters to the representative of each resource.

Some optimizers use a strategy of analyzing competitors. They choose sites that have greatly increased SERP visibility in the niche recently and post links on all resources that are included in the link profiles of the niche leaders.

4.3. Presenting your idea

The basis of any link-building strategy should be a specific idea. It is desirable that it matches the principles of development of the projects that should become donors for the resource under promotion. Then, potential partners may become interested in cooperation.

Many reputable projects do not post paid links in articles. They review every advertiser proposal but choose the most interesting ones. The more creative the idea is, the higher the chances of acquiring backlinks from a trusted site.

4.4. Negotiations with webmasters

Interaction with website owners is not just about finding contacts and writing emails. An outreach campaign should be customized, taking into account the niche features, the company’s objectives, and other important parameters.

The basis of successful outreach link building is communication with webmasters. If the strategy is correct, and there is a list of relevant donor sites, the only thing to do is to send letters to potential partners with a personalized offer and then continue interacting with those who will get in touch.

Email communication with the purpose of posting links is a special process that requires a maximum focus on the features of a particular project and its representative. Knowledge of psychology and marketing will be very useful to a webmaster.

4.5. Content writing

It is better to create content not in advance but only after the site owner gives prior consent to posting. Then, you can ask about terms and conditions or requirements for stylistics, the appearance of media content, and other details.

Outreach link building does not always imply posting new content. So, it is not reasonable to write an article in advance. But if it can be posted on another website, the material will be useful.

4.6. Posting and content management

It is the representative of the donor site who is usually responsible for posting content, but on some resources with UGC, it is possible to publish an article on your own and add links with the necessary anchors to it.

Many optimizers disregard content management. If an article is posted on a site with a target audience, it is necessary to monitor new comments and reply to them. This way, it is possible to attract an unlimited number of new brand followers.

4.7. Analysis

If a webmaster’s goal is to acquire as many links as possible with the help of outreach through guest blogging or another link-building method, it is necessary to make sure that the posted links do not disappear over time.

It’s much more complicated with image tasks, though. If content posted on external sites is supposed to increase brand awareness, it is important to track the number of new customers who visited the site after publishing articles on external sites and order new postings based on the results of the analysis.

5. What Is a Successful Strategy for Working with Blog Outreach?

Outreach is a universal link-building method suitable for sites in any niche. When developing a strategy for interacting with authoritative resources, it is necessary to take into account the specifics of the site under promotion, but in all cases, the processes will follow the standard scheme.

A blog outreach strategy should be such that potential partners have as few objections as possible when they receive a letter with an offer of cooperation.

Here are some useful tips:

1. Look for relevant partners. Posting links on untargeted resources can be detrimental to SEO.
2. Select donor sites carefully. Not all sites in the same niche with the resource under promotion are useful as donors. 
3. Try new approaches. You may not focus on webmasters but cooperate with bloggers who can offer great coverage on social media.
4. Personalize your emails. Template mailings reduce the chances of acquiring links.
5. Use automation tools. Sending out 1,000 emails manually is not a good idea. 
6. Follow the basic rules of posting links. Make sure that the page is indexed and there are as few other links on it as possible.
7. Analyze effectiveness. Without this, it is impossible to succeed in any niche.

Many optimizers are wondering how to outreach effectively, and the answer is simple ­ focus on a personalized strategy for each project, value potential partners, and offer them quality content. Then, the response rate of emails will be high, and you can even get a discount on posting.

6. TOP Services for Effective Outreach

Quality and effective link building is impossible without tools that allow coping with standard tasks much faster. They help reduce the time to perform routine actions, which allows focusing on creativity, for example, to pay more attention to composing email templates.

There are a lot of services on the Internet that can be part of content outreach. Many leaders in certain niches offer the same tools, but when choosing a service to use on a regular basis, you need to evaluate the quality of the interface as well.

Popular services for outreach:

1. Lemlist.com. Creation of personalized email lists, a large library of templates for various niches.
2. Snov.io. A popular email marketing platform for sending trigger-based emails and tracking campaign performance.
3. Reply.io. Creating email chains, searching for email addresses on websites, multi-channel outreach.
4. Hunter.io. The most famous service for finding email addresses and checking their validity.
5. Ahrefs. A comprehensive SEO marketing tool that shows a complete overview of a link profile and perfectly analyzes the quality of a donor site.
6. LinkBox.pro. Monitoring of backlinks and notifications about changes in the structure of link mass.
7. BuzzSumo.com. Search for content ideas and opinion leaders.
8. Crystal Knows.com. A tool for analyzing people based on digital footprints on the Internet.

Every SEO specialist and PR manager uses tried-and-true tools; so, newbies must test them out and choose the most appropriate options.

7. Advantages and Disadvantages of Outreach Link Building

Webmasters who have no experience with posting links on a regular basis mistakenly think that to successfully begin, it is enough to read the manual on outreach link building. However, the effectiveness of using any method depends on a personal approach to the task and finding tips.

It is wrong to consider outreach a magic tool because it is hard to acquire quality links from authoritative resources. You can acquire free references only on rare occasions, and creating campaigns with greater coverage requires an adequate budget.

Advantages of outreach:

• Versatility ­ this link-building method can be used by both small businesses and large corporations in the world of websites.
• Attracting a target audience to the site.
• Attracting consumers of products or services.
• The possibility of acquiring a link for free or in exchange.
• High efficiency of backlinks for SEO.
• Fast results ­ traffic appears immediately after content is posted.
• A guarantee that links will be saved with sponsored postings.

Disadvantages of outreach:

• The process of preparing campaigns is time-consuming.
• It is necessary to compose personalized letters for each partner.
• It is not always possible to find out how much an outreach link costs before you send a letter.
• It’s difficult to predict the result.

Outreach is perfect for commercial companies that want to inform their audiences about new products or services. But for informational sites, it is not always a suitable link-building method because of high link costs and competition with niche leaders.

8. Conclusion

Preparing and conducting outreach campaigns is a complex task that involves a large number of intermediate steps. A specialist should take into account project features and create a personalized link-building strategy, which will include the type of posting, anchors, content directions, and other parameters.

The method is suitable not only for building up link mass and attracting the target audience. Therefore, many commercial companies should assign employees to understand how to do outreach and be able to find partners for cooperation.

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