Link Building Outreach: Ultimate Beginner’s Guide [Updated 2024]

Any link building specialist knows that the success of your link building campaign is closely tied to the effectiveness of your email outreach campaign. After all, the outreach helps build relationships, establish connections, and convince others to link to your content.

How to create quality emails? From personalization to compelling subject lines to clear value preposition to follow-ups, it’s a tough game to play but the rewards are so amazing!

Here is a complete link building outreach guide for you to try in 2024.

What Does Link Building Outreach Mean?

If you have some idea about link building, you know that once you list down the most relevant and credible websites in your niche, you then have to reach out and convince them to partner up with you.

This is where link building outreach comes into play. You can call it an art more than science because it’s all about persuasion.

Remember that there’s no automated bot sitting on the other side to receive your offers. It’s going to be a real person. They probably get dozens of outreach emails per day and so they’re not really dying for your offer. On top of that, if you have targeted a high-authority site then this is probably not even their top priority.

So, you need to be confident and compelling enough to make it a success. Don’t just write another email that will end up in their spam box.

The secret is to stand out with your offer and be impressive enough to get noticed. How to do that? This is what we will talk about today.

Skills Needed for Link Building Outreach

It may seem like a highly convincing pitch will make your outreach campaign successful. But there are more factors to consider, such as:

1. Technical skills

If you have some working knowledge of link building and SEO in general, you will be able to make the best of it. Being familiar with the top outreach tools also matters here (we will talk about them in detail below).

2. Personal skills

Patience is always mandatory in this game. You can send 100 emails to prospects and get only five replies; all of which are rejections. This is the reality that you should accept as the norm.

What’s more, be persistent. Don’t give up after a few tries. Prepare for your 101^st e-mail. Your creativity needs to be present in your effort as well.

3. Interpersonal skills

Never think about spamming. In fact, if you send a huge number of mails, that won’t cut it. Focus on empathizing with the prospect. Make them see reason. Let them realize why they should get back to you. Be more social and engaging to be adept at negotiations.

4. Social media skills

Not ‘skills’ per se; you’ll need to be familiar with the different social media platforms and how they work to figure out the contact information of your prospects. Social media is also a quick and easy way to connect with your potential partners or influencers before the formal outreach takes place.

Link Building Outreach: Step-by-Step

1. Find Good Prospects

The very first step to take is to identify your targets – websites, blogs, influencers, and so on for your link building outreach campaign.

The choice depends on how you’ve decided to reach out:

• Manual Search

You can simply Google with your topic in mind and find websites relevant to your niche on the SERP. Research further to select a prospect of your preference.

You can also grab the opportunity to guest blog on high-authority sites and gain a couple of links in this process. This is a surefire way to earn dofollow links and higher referral traffic to the site. The quality of your content matters most here.

Just Google the keyword and add an extra string like “write for us” or “guest posting” and see if there are any opportunities. They might be your prospects of the day!

This is also possible if you use SEO tools like Ahrefs, SEMRush or Moz. For each keyword in the search box, they return a list of websites that you can download in a CSV format and check out individually. They provide you with data and metrics on each site that may help you with the search.

Let’s use SEMRush for the same topic:

• Competitor Backlink Analysis

Competitor analysis reveals how your niche competitors are building links. Using this information, you can sort out some referring domains that can give you backlinks.

You can easily do your competitor analysis with the SEO tools mentioned above. In this case, let’s use SEMRush’s Backlinks Analytics.

First, type in your domain and figure out the list of competitors in your niche.

Now individually analyze each competitor and the referring domains they got their backlinks from.

These domains might be your prospects since they are already interested in your niche. All you have to do is List down and reach them out one by one!

Competitor backlinks open up more opportunities for prospects like broken link building.

If you do the backlink analysis well enough, you should be able to list out the sites with dead links in your niche. If allowed, you can then approach them with the relevant and active links of your own.

• Networking

It doesn’t always have to be an in-depth research session to find your prospects online.

The healthy SEO practice is to build genuine relationships with varied businesses, bloggers, and influencers. The better you network with different types of people, the more your chances of getting organic backlinks.

You can just think of a friend who might help you out with a link and approach him when the time comes for the link. So, invest more in personal and professional relationships.

Influencer marketing is so popular now. Try to find some influencers in your niche whose target audience suits yours.

You can use their popularity to your advantage and promote your product through their relevant and quality content. Before reaching out to them, make sure they have a decent following on their platforms and the follower engagement rate is high.

2. Organize the Prospect’s Data

Now that you have listed all the prospects for your outreach campaign, it’s time to organize them with key information.

Note down the essentials for each prospect like its –

• Domain URL
• E-mail address
• Info on the person in charge e.g. webmasters and content managers
• Important metrics like domain authority score (DA) and traffic data
• Niche information
• Primary keywords you are hoping to target

Use an Excel file or a spreadsheet for this job.

Start segmenting your list based on different criteria e.g. the DA value or traffic. List segmentation is important to your campaign because it helps you strategize smartly.

So, you can take care of the high-DA prospects by investing more time and effort in content marketing. For low DA sites with less traffic, you shouldn’t put that much effort into customization.

3. Get their Contact Info

Making contact is the most essential part of an outreach program. But figuring out “how” is just as important.

Since the outreach usually takes place through email, note down the email address of your prospect.

It is not as easy as it sounds.

You may have to manually search through the website. In that case, we recommend that you look into the pages where contact information is usually on, for example, the ‘Contact us’ or the ‘About us’ page. Sometimes, you may find the email address on the homepage as well.

If not found, check their social media profiles like Facebook and LinkedIn for any contact information since they opened these accounts with their email IDs. The ‘About’ section of both social media pages usually has an email address.

You can also use Email finder tools like Hunter.io, GetProspect or Tomba to quickly fetch you the mail address. In fact, this is the easiest way to get your desired email or contact info.

Let’s take the GetProspect tool for example.

Say you want to reach out to the online marketplace Etsy and so you want to know about their contact information.

Just search the company and click on View.

The next window will give you a brief contact information of the company. If you want to reach out to someone specific, navigate to View Company and find a list of employees.

You can also filter out the search result with the position of the person you want to work with. Usually, you need to get in touch with their webmaster or content manager. So, find them and click View Mail to get their email IDs.

Link building outreach tools like Buzzstream or Pitchbox also work.

If you can give a personal touch, that’s even better! Get hold of the individuals in charge of partnerships or content management in the target sites. They can be content managers, editors, or webmasters. You can also connect with them on social media and exchange informal introductions before approaching them for any official deal.

4. Send a Customized Email

Your email is your pitch. If you send a generic, boring and uninspiring email, don’t expect any good news in return.

Craft a convincing mail in your own words. Ask yourself this – “why should they care about me?”

Tell them right off the bat what your content is all about. Share your idea in detail and help them see why it’s going to work. Finally, outline the process you’re expecting to build your links through (e.g. external linking in their existing blogs, guest posting, sponsored posting and so on). All in all, give them a whole picture so they feel interested in your proposal.

You’ll get hundreds of email outreach templates online. Our suggestion is – don’t use any of them. You can follow the structure of the templates but the words have to be of your own.

Research your prospects and their content to know them better. Point out the strengths you appreciate and highlight their business goals that align with yours. Be genuine in your outreach. Don’t write all of this just for the sake of building links.

The webmasters are experienced and may have gone through thousands of emails like this. They’ll smell from miles away if you’re being inauthentic in your approach.

This may be your only chance to strike a deal. So, pull out all the tricks from your bag when writing the mail –

• Generate unique ideas
• Figure out gaps in their information and promise to cover them through your content
• Pitch multiple ideas to prove your topical authority on the subject matter
• Use ego-baits i.e., showcase your prospect in a positive light in your content
• Add a little bit of humor in the text
• Appeal emotionally if possible

Whatever your content may be, clearly state its nature to ensure the webmasters it will satisfy their users. They may be –

• Long-form content
• Research-based content
• Data-heavy case studies
• In-depth analysis with infographics and visualization
• News
• Controversial issues

If your content doesn’t fit into any of them, figure out what’s unique about it and address it creatively.

Here’s a sample template you can follow-

Hi there,

It’s [Your Name] from [Your Website URL or Company Name]. I was surfing the web when I landed on this page: [Blog Title or Page URL]. I liked it since it’s very informative and full of interesting content. I browsed it for almost 10 minutes before I decided to write to you.

I wanted to get in touch to see if you would be interested in posting an article on your blog for us. I really love your voice and content – you have truly defined yourself as an influencer in the blogging world!

I already have a few interesting and engaging pre-written articles on [Your Topic or Niche] that are sure to be appreciated by your readers. Alternatively, if you have any topic ideas, you may share that with us too.

Beyond that, you have creative freedom to edit our article wherever you want – the only thing that we require is that we approve the post before you publish it (In case you do any editing on your end), and that you link to [Your Website URL].

Please don’t hesitate to knock us should you have any queries.

Thanks & Regards

Name:

Designation:

Website or Company Name:

5. Follow Up Effectively

A Backlinko study found that while around 8.5% outreach emails get a response, follow-ups work like magic with twice the success rate. That means you should never just sit back after sendin