Building high-quality backlinks is crucial if you want to increase your rankings. While you will probably get organic backlinks without doing any outreach if you publish high-quality content, those backlinks can trickle in slowly and be too far and between. That’s where outreach link building comes into the picture — it allows you to get many high-quality backlinks in a short period.
What are the benefits of outreach link building?
The advantage of backlink outreach is that instead of waiting for backlinks to come to you, you can be proactive and obtain quality backlinks from multiple sites at a low cost, quickly. Furthermore, you’ll be getting links from websites that you’re specifically targeting. This means you have more control over who links from you as well.
Backlink outreach uses a wide range of methods to obtain backlinks that do not necessarily require creating content or paying for a link. But it all stems from the simple act of reaching out to someone that you want a link from.
What’s the difference between outreach link building and guest posting?
Guest posts are also considered outreach link building, but outreach link building is not limited to just guest posting.
While guest posting has several significant drawbacks, it’s still very popular (we still run multiple outreach campaigns right now.)
First, it requires a lot of time, effort, and money.
Also, you need to submit unique content to each site, so you are limited in how many sites you can get backlinks from. Finally, editors can always reject a guest post article if it doesn’t meet their standards, even after you wrote it, in which case your work will have been in vain.
That doesn’t mean guest posting isn’t an amazing strategy for getting backlinks; it is. However, if you limit yourself to guest posts, you will be limiting yourself in terms of how many backlinks you can get, and from which sites.
Not all sites accept guest posts, in fact very few will…but that doesn’t mean you can’t get a backlink from them.
Backlink outreach can involve other forms of backlink building as well. One very effective method is the broken link building method.
Here’s how it works.
First, you find websites with broken or dead links. (There are several tools you can use to check if a website has dead links, such as Check My Links.)
Why would a site link to a dead page?
The site they linked to might have gone offline… or it might have restructured its pages and forgotten to set up redirects.
The writer or blogger might also have made a mistake when copying and pasting the link.
Nobody wants to link to a 404 error page!
(That ruins the user experience.. and if the destination URL got hijacked, clicking on it can cause malware or adware to download to the reader’s computer.)
If you find a dead link, you can email the webmaster or editor and suggest that they replace the dead link with a link to one of your articles or blog posts. Of course, that is assuming your article is relevant and contains the information they wanted to reference.
It’s a win-win for both of you, as you get a backlink while they get to improve their user experience and maintain their credibility. It also doesn’t require you to write any new content.
If you have original research, a comprehensive guide, a helpful infographic, or an exclusive interview, you don’t even need to search for sites with broken links.
You can simply email editors and suggest they use your infographic and link to you; if it is good, many will be happy to do just that.
There are other forms of backlink outreach as well.
For example, you can get backlinks from other local businesses that are not competitors in exchange for a link back to their site (reciprocal link building).
In any case, there are other outreach link building methods that have the possibility of building links faster than regular guest posting.
Want to learn more about link building? Click here.
Should you outsource your outreach link building or go DIY?
A common question small businesses have is whether they should outsource their backlink outreach or take a do-it-yourself approach. My advice? A professional agency will always get you better and quicker results than trying to do it yourself.
Professional outreach link builders have the tools, resources, and connections necessary to get you an unprecedented number of backlinks. Even if you hire in-house talent, it’s always better to go with a company that has experience in the field and has achieved solid results for previous clients.
The hardest part, when doing it yourself, is finding enough quality sites to reach out to. Regardless of the outreach method you are using, you need to make sure the site you are getting the backlink from is worth it. That will depend on its link profile, Domain Authority, traffic volume, and other factors.
Wrapping it up
Link building doesn’t have to be expensive, time-consuming, or slow. With the right tools and an effective, tried-and-tested strategy, you can get quick results and start driving more traffic and boosting your SEO rankings sooner than you thought. Get in touch if you’d like to learn more about how we can help your local or small business obtain quality backlinks, or check out our link building services.
