Perhaps the most valuable and cost-efficient method to get good quality backlinks is via blog and content outreach. We have been doing outreach for our clients and have seen good results with it. Outreach is a simple process and there is no much science to it. You get good content, approach an influencer (a blogger with a good following and good website metrics like domain authority, good backlinks, good trust flow, etc.) and offer to publish your content in exchange for a link. It’s that simple… Or is it?
If you have ever done an outreach campaign you would know that it is not as simple as I made it sound. The success rate of a typical outreach campaign is fairly low and it could get increasingly frustrating to secure good backlinks if you do not use the right techniques and tools when outreaching.
Over the years, we at CrunchSEO, have experimented with a lot of techniques and tools and have now successfully improved our outreach efforts. This post aims to educate our clients and readers about how we outreach and what tools and techniques one can use for a successful outreach campaign.
An effective outreach strategy has three components – finding influencers, making them an offer and building up your communication for future partnerships. Let us analyze the three components and see how we can effectively improve our outreach efforts.
Probably the best way to find influencers in your niche is by browsing through social websites and social news sharing websites; like – Reddit, Triberr, Stumbleupon, Twitter, Facebook, etc. Find webmasters and bloggers who are consistently sharing niche relevant information and actively blog in the niche. They are easier to approach. I personally have used Triberr to connect with over 3000 bloggers in that last 3 years or so. Another important tool I would like to mention here is Pitchbox. Pitchbox is an outreaching tool with some serious juice. It is clean in design and has powerful features that can help you scale your outreach efforts significantly. It allows you to save email/outreach templates that you can personalize for each webmaster. It also gives information about the influencers’ site metrics and link authority. It is a must-have tool for anyone looking to scale their outreach effort.
Just any 500 words of content won’t cut it. You have to provide the content they would appreciate. So how do you do it? There is no absolute value in the content. The value of content would change from perspective to perspective. This is what economists call marginal value. You can understand the term ‘marginal value’ better by the following example. An autographed Sachin Tendulkar (a popular Indian cricketer often called God of cricket) cricket bat is worth tens of thousands of dollars to a cricket fan in South Asia but is of no value to an American who doesn’t even know the sport. He would realistically pay just for the cost of wood it was made out of. So the autographed cricket bat is valuable only when you find the right buyer for whom the marginal value of that cricket bat is greater than the value of an ordinary bat.
Following the example above, we need to provide webmasters with the content they value. So how do we do that? Simple. Go through their content, understand their point of view, their writing style and their take on the niche. Content prepared by doing this research will be of more value to the webmaster and so will improve your chances of acceptance. Also, look through their interactions with their readers in the comments section and on social media. See if they are discussing some topics they are planning to cover in the future. This could help you get inspiration for what to write about.
Treat these new connections as gold because they truly have their worth in gold. These influencers that you connect with now will prove to be valuable assets in the future as well. They can prove to be a valuable partner when you are launching a promotion or a giveaway. Make sure you keep up the communication and text them or email them casual greetings, day wishes or some appropriate funny images you find. The idea is to build a repo with the influencer so you can reach his audiences easily the next time.