SEO Outreach Guide: How to do Manual Outreach Link Building in 2018 and Beyond

The term influence gets thrown around a lot. These days, anyone with a phone, a laptop and access to the Internet can develop a loyal following. Savvy brands have discovered that these influential people can not only use their clout to sell things, but also to gain invaluable search engine authority through link building.

We know that link building is an important component of a well-rounded SEO strategy, but where on earth do you begin? This guide is designed to get you up and running with one of the industries most strategic link building tactics: manual outreach.

One effective approach to manual link building is the skyscraper technique. This involves creating superior content based on existing popular topics and reaching out to those who linked to the original content, promoting your newly created, more valuable resource as a replacement.

This Blog in 43 Words or Less

• Link building is a key component of a sustainable SEO mix

• Highlight 4 easy steps to kicking off manual outreach SEO

• Outline the 5 most important factors to consider when vetting the publications

Introduction to Manual Outreach

Manual outreach is a crucial component of link building, involving the process of manually contacting website owners, writers, or editors to request links to your website. Unlike automated link building methods, manual outreach allows for personalized communication, which is key to building relationships and increasing the chances of acquiring high-quality backlinks. By targeting specific websites and crafting tailored messages, you can establish connections with key decision-makers, making your link building outreach more effective. This approach not only helps in securing quality backlinks but also in building a network of valuable connections that can benefit your link building efforts in the long run.

Understanding Link Building

Link building is the process of acquiring hyperlinks from other websites to your own website, with the goal of improving your site’s authority, visibility, and search engine rankings. When search engines see that other relevant websites are linking to your content, they perceive your site as more credible and relevant, which can boost your search rankings. Link building outreach is a key strategy for growing website traffic, as it helps search engines understand the relevance and credibility of your content. By securing valuable links from relevant websites, you can increase your website’s authority, drive organic traffic, and enhance your search engine visibility.

4 Steps to Kick-Starting Link Building Outreach

1. Create an alias personality using a branded domain email

2. Try testing out different personas to see what sticks – keep in mind who your target audience is and who they want to do business with

3. Always include an email signature

4. Test your email before sending it out – purchase a dedicated UP if you find your mail often lands in the junk

Using a link building tool can help manage outreach campaigns and streamline the process by setting up campaigns, building outreach lists, and managing communication with prospects.

Building Outreach Strategies

A well-planned outreach strategy is vital for successful link building outreach. This involves identifying potential link partners, crafting personalized messages, and building relationships with website owners. An effective link building strategy should focus on acquiring high-quality backlinks from relevant websites, rather than relying on automated link building methods. By targeting the right websites and creating tailored outreach messages, you can build relationships that lead to valuable, high-quality backlinks. This personalized approach not only improves the success rate of your outreach efforts but also helps in establishing long-term partnerships that can benefit your link building campaigns.

5 Steps to Vetting Backlinks

1. Sort by the number of backlinks.

2. Eliminate any that do not match with that at least 1 of the top 3 or 4 categories

3. Eliminate any that have less than 50% branded anchor texts

It is crucial to target high-quality websites during this vetting process. Reaching out to low-quality sites can damage your credibility, so use tools to identify and connect with authoritative websites.

4. Identify rates for sponsored posts

5. Compare the Trust Flow ranking against the cost to rank the list in order of importance

How to Get Started

This form of link building involves a reasonable time investment, so it’s important to develop a solid strategy if it’s going to be worthwhile. Manual link building strategies are crucial in developing a solid link building approach, as they adapt to changes in SEO algorithms and secure valuable backlinks through manual outreach specialists. We have developed guidelines for you to jumpstart your link building efforts and start populating insights that will help refine the approach going forward.

Create an alias persona

Are you an agency or brand side? If you are completing this exercise on behalf of a brand, you will need an email with the correct domain name. This will ensure you establish the right level of credibility from the start. If you are already brand side… as you were.

Test Different Personas

Similar to testing creatives and headlines, test different personas you think will resonate best with the target audience. Think about who you are speaking to and who they would feel most comfortable engaging in a dialogue with. For example, a fashion blogger might be more inclined to reply to a female than a male. Gender stereotypes aside, you’ll never know until you test.

Include an email signature

Looking authentic is the key to successful outreach. Always ensure that you include an email signature for each persona you create. The goal is to establish an element of trust, and real people have real signatures.

Test Your Email

The dreaded spam folder. We all know about it, but we don’t always know what triggers it. Before sending outreach, always test your email to ensure it doesn’t land in no-man’s land. Test the two main providers, Live & Gmail, to cover most of the bases. If the emails end up in spam on one or both providers, often it can be your host’s IP being flagged in the past that sets off the filters.  Might be time to look at buying a dedicated IP for email purposes before getting started, or talk to your hosting provider about other solutions.

How to Find the Opportunities

There is a world of content producers and distributors out there, in every niche you can imagine. So how do you find the ones most relevant to your brand or your client’s brand without falling down the dreaded Google rabbit hole?

Collecting accurate contact details is crucial for effective outreach, as it allows you to personalize your communication and increase the chances of successful collaboration.

Dorks

No, I’m not talking about your sister’s annoying boyfriend. Dorks (or Advanced Search Query Operators) are Google’s somewhat secret advanced search parameters that you can use to filter through all of the noise. They allow you to identify a specific footprint you’ve defined for your search. Take a travel company, for example. By using a dork to look for bloggers who have previously done sponsored content, it is possible to hone in on accounts that will be more likely to respond and/or accept. A higher acceptance rate = higher return on time investment. In this case, the dork would be: “sponsor” travel blog. Similar to Adwords, Google considers “” to be an exact match term. By including parentheses around the mandatory search terms, Google will only show you search terms that match exactly what you’re looking for. Pro Tip: Dig deep in the search results. Bloggers may have a great deal of clout with their audience, but they aren’t always on top of their SEO game.

How to Vet Them

There are millions of bloggers out there, and outreach could quickly become a full-time job if you don’t prioritize. This is where some marketers might pay attention to the wrong metrics. How many followers do they have? How much engagement are they getting on their posts? These metrics have “value” but not for the purpose of link building. So which metrics should you pay attention to?

Is It Worth It?

Backlinks

The name of the game for this exercise. After all, the intent behind outreach is to build backlinks of your very own, right? The publication in question may have few backlinks or many backlinks, but it runs much deeper than that. Using Majestic, a tool we use every single day, we can identify the volume of backlinks they have coming to their website but also, the topical relevancy of the backlinks. If a website has 100 backlinks, but the topical relevance does not align with the subject matter of your brand or client’s brand, they are not as valuable as a website with 50 backlinks that does.

Conducting a backlink gap analysis is crucial to identify websites that link to your competitors but not to your own content. This analysis can reveal high-probability link opportunities, especially if your content offers superior value.

Main Topical Trust Flow (TTF)

Majestic has pioneered a list of website categories that assign a numerical value to each topical understanding of a given website. This is used to quickly get an understanding of what a website is about without having to do much digging. This aligns perfectly with the pursuit of link building, to ensure that outreach is aligned topically before going any further. We like to ensure that at least one of the top 3 or 4 categories are in your niche. A Good travel blog link profile with travel specific TTF A not so strong travel blog link profile

Anchor Text

Moz defines anchor text as the visible characters and words that hyperlinks display when linking to another document or location on the web. It is used by search engines and users to provide contextual information about the content of the link’s destination. How does this play into how we evaluate a potential backlink?

The rule of thumb is to target websites that have at least 50% branded anchor texts.

Why? If the anchor focus is entirely keyword focused, the algorithm will be less likely to consider it as natural thus lowering their credibility in the SERP. An example of poor anchor text – some generic anchors but no brand and too many target high-volume keywords.

Find their Rates

Now comes the fun part for all your type-A people out there. Put the remaining websites into a spreadsheet or a table. Use a blank column for pricing – this will be the final piece of the puzzle. You will often find the most seasoned publications list out their pricing on a dedicated page. This is the best case scenario. If they have not listed their pricing, search for their contact information on the site. At times this task is not without challenge.   Try using a [site:] search with either “@” or keywords like “contact” to find contact us pages.  Going further, if the site has “advertise” or “sponsor me” pages, your odds of receiving a positive response just increased 10x. Lastly, you can try a whois lookup – sometimes the admin or contact email is publicly available. All you have to do is dig!

Weigh the Options using Trust Flow

From here, place the Trust Flow value of the root domain as the main metric for a final sort against anticipated cost.  This value is based on the quality of the link profile and you need to use your own judgement to rank them based on priority. Your table should look something a little like this:

Publication	TF Score	Cost	Rank
X	10	$500
Y	35
Z	59	$1000

If you are unable to find a price listed on the website, send an email and wait for a response back. In this case, waiting is the name of the game. Use common sense and a little numerical analysis to analyze your results. Weigh TF score against the cost to produce a logical ranking.

How to Attain Them

Now that you’ve hand selected who you would like to work with, it’s time for the fun part.   

Communication Angles

Similarly to in-person conversations, emotional intelligence plays a big part in how the communication will play out. What is it they want, and how can you defer to their emotional side to solidify a mutually beneficial agreement?

Ego Bait

This strategy walks a fine line between manipulative and just plain genius. Spend some time writing a roundup post that features X number of “insert niche here” bloggers. In our travel example, we could write a Top 10 Travel Bloggers in Canada spotlight that features 10 of the bloggers on our wish list. Upon completion of the post, we will reach out to each of them and inform them of the piece. No need to request that they share, they will do it without being asked to. Boom, link.

Source: Brown Eyed Baker

Bartering

This is the best case scenario for some brands. Free product in exchange for open and honest reviews of it on their blog. This comes with an element of risk if the product is not of high quality or often receives mixed reviews. After all, we are asking for their honest opinion!

An example of a travel blog and a sponsored post on Ordinary Traveler

Guest Posting

This is probably one of the most popular methodologies for link building, but also requires a great deal of strategy to ensure a solid ROI. There are two types of guest posts – written by the guest or written by the publication but appear to be written by the guest. This will vary publication to publication and essentially how much control they want to have over the content on their site. Regardless of the author, it is important to approach each publication with an idea of what you want the content to be about. Always get the topic approved before writing. Check to see if they have any guidelines built into their site. If not, reach out and inquire before suggesting any topics.

Finding websites that accept guest posts is crucial for effective link building. These sites are more likely to collaborate and provide valuable backlinks, so look for ‘Write for Us’ pages or specific content guidelines to identify such opportunities.

Before pursuing this form of link building, there are two important elements to consider.

What types of content can you produce that aligns with your company goals? This is the most crucial piece – how can you create content that is engaging and interesting but still leads towards a specific goal? For example, a company that sells art supplies could write a piece about rainy day crafts for children or the importance of hobbies for mental health. Each piece is written for an entirely different audience segment, yet both drive the same goal – the sale of art supplies. Does the content fit with the target publication? There is no sense in approaching a publication if your content doesn’t align with the target publication’s content. You wouldn’t approach a mommy blog with alcohol content the same way you wouldn’t walk up to a child and offer them a drink.

Creating High Quality Content

Creating high-quality content is essential for attracting links from other websites. This involves producing valuable, informative, and engaging content that resonates with your target audience. By creating content that addresses the needs and interests of your audience, you can increase the chances of acquiring natural links from other websites. High-quality content can include blog posts, guest posts, infographics, videos, and other forms of media that provide value to your audience. When your content is valuable and relevant, other websites are more likely to link to it, helping you build a strong backlink profile and improve your search engine rankings.

Building Relationships

Building relationships with website owners, writers, and editors is critical for successful link building outreach. This involves establishing trust, credibility, and mutual benefit, which can lead to long-term partnerships and high-quality backlinks. By engaging with your target audience, responding to comments, and participating in online communities, you can build relationships that can help you acquire valuable links. Guest posting, broken link building, and resource page link building are all effective strategies for building relationships and acquiring high-quality backlinks. By focusing on building genuine relationships, you can create a network of valuable connections that support your link building efforts and enhance your website’s authority.

How to Optimize

This only applies to links you are paying for. You wouldn’t complain that there isn’t enough icing on a pastry you were given for free, would you? Allow goodwill to be just that.

Links

Try to land two different links on the publication – branded homepage link and a link to your target SEO page, or the “money page” as I like to call it. This is essentially the page you are trying to get ranked.

Additionally, targeting high authority links is crucial for effective link optimization. By obtaining high-quality backlinks through strategies like guest posting and digital PR, you can significantly boost your page’s ranking.

Page SEO

Perform a little routine SEO spot check on the page. Check for standard alt tags, headings and on-page SEO best practices. If it feels like you may be asking for too much, present this as an opportunity to educate the publication of SEO best practices. Everybody wins!

Indexing

This is rare, but it is important to do your due-diligence nonetheless. Verify that the page has been indexed by searching with the following query – site: www.example.com/guestpost If you find that it has not been indexed, index it! If the site is a client or big legit affiliate money site and is in Webmaster Tools (basically not blackhat or spam site with any reason to not use WMT/Analytics, then fetch with webmaster tools/search console and it should index shortly. You can use an indexer too, but this is more of a greyish area of SEO. Try using a tool like light speed indexer! The last option here is to build links (spam and/or legit) to the URL and wait for Google to ‘naturally’ crawl it.

Conclusion

Despite being perceived as the most volatile form of digital marketing, SEO is still the best long-term brand strategy. In order to be successful, brands must take the time to demonstrate to search engines exactly who they are and what they’re about using content and strategic digital collaborations. Search engines get smarter all the time, and providing tangible context to a brand is a necessity. Use this guide to start building out your brand’s network and start getting ‘dem linkz.

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