Save Time and Get More Backlinks with these 11 Link Building Prospecting Hacks
If you’ve ever tried to do the manual outreach of link building you know how hard it can be. You can do email outreach to dozens or 100’s of sites and get little to no responses.
More often than not, I’ve learned that the reason for this is that you have chosen a poor site to perform outreach too.
In today’s video, (which is something of an advanced SEO tutorial) I’ll show you 11 quick link prospecting hacks — in part based on Google’s Panda Questionnaire — that will save you time, help you filter your link building prospecting sites more quickly, and ultimately, give you more outreach success, resulting in better rankings and more traffic.
What is the Panda Questionnaire?
Before we begin, here is some context to using the Google Panda Questionnaire and why the questions that were used to help people vet “high-quality” sites are some of the same ones we use for building high-quality links.
Here’s how this process came to be:
Google gave questions to a group of people, had them assess a bunch of websites, and then ran machine learning algorithms on top of the human data. In effect, these questions helped move up or down search results based on human feedback. The primary factory of “what makes a quality website” was incorporated into Google’s Panda algorithm.
You can use variations of these same questions when link prospecting to ensure you are getting the most value out of your link building efforts. These are some of those Panda questions mixed in with some of our own link prospecting questions.
1. Does the site contain contextually relevant content
Is the site’s content you want to build links from similar in scope or nature to that of your site? If so, that means it is likely a strong link candidate. Now, not all sites have to cover the same types content as yours, but it definitely is a preference.
For example, if you run a fitness website, you could make a connection with a nutrition website as the two main focuses of content — fitness and nutrition — are related.
2. Would you trust information from this website?
Does the site’s aesthetic meet your professional “website sixth sense?”
You can easily tell if a site looks credible or not. If it doesn’t, don’t waste your time prospecting it.
3. Would you recognize this site as an authority?
Sites that cover all sorts of different, irrelevant content are usually a waste of time and link farms. On the other hand, if the content seems very credible, well-researched, and professionally made, then it likely makes for a good link prospect.
4. Would you give this site your credit card info?
We’ve all been to websites that sell products or services that we instantly have a sense of trust with. Some of these trust signals may include an SSL certificate, professional design, and a strong brand presence.
If the site doesn’t pass the “smell test” of one that you’d make a purchase from, scratch it from your link outreach list.
5. Does the domain rating match what you are looking for?
At Digital Elevator, we use the Ahrefs Chrome extension to quickly see the Domain Rating (DR) of a website. You can also use the MozBar which displays Domain Authority.
Internally, when we do link prospecting, we’ll generally set a floor for the DR of the sites we want to get links from. For example, often this floor is a DR 30 meaning that a site with a DR under 30 will be thrown out immediately.
This is especially true if you are using guest posting as a link building strategy – you don’t want to dedicate a bunch of time to a site that demands 1,000 word posts when they have a low domain authority.
The idea is to prospect quickly, and that also means that you don’t want to waste time on a site that may give you a link if the link is weak and doesn’t provide the SEO value that you want in your link building efforts.
6. Is the site written by subject matter experts?
Does the site seem to let anyone guest post? Do the writers seem to conduct thorough research and have insightful content?
Read through a blog or two to get an idea of the quality. If it is choppy and littered with grammar errors, it probably is a poor outreach partner for you.
7. Does the site get any traffic for relevant keywords?
Check the keywords the target site is ranking for to determine if it actually gets any traffic. We use Ahrefs to do this, but there are a number of SEO software tools you can use. A trustworthy site will generally rank for a number of keywords whereas a spammy site will likely rank for none.
You have to watch out for spammy sites that have artificially inflated DR; these links look good on paper but are unlikely to help your efforts.
8. Does the site regularly post or are they an active brand?
There are a few ways you can do this:
See if they publish blogs regularly
If not, check their social media feeds to see if they are active
On that note, see if their content actually gets any social shares (an indication of some sort of following)
9. Is there actually a person you can contact (rather than just a generic email)?
Many sites hide their email because they don’t want to get spammed. While you can use a service like Hunter to find emails, if there is no real contact information you may want to scratch them off the list.
10. Does the site have a “Sponsored Post” option?
This means they are big enough to get money for their posts and means, technically, it’s only an advertising opportunity. If you do outreach to these types of sites, expect them to respond with a “yes, but it will cost you ‘x’” for a post.
11. Is the site a really large brand?
Large brands typically have in-house teams that create content and are unlikely to respond to any link outreach. While you can certainly try to perform outreach to them, I generally find them unlikely to respond.
What other vetting questions do you use to prospect sites? Please let me know in the comments.
Ever wonder why you can’t rank first in Google for your brand’s name? This post will show you how.
As an SEO company that regularly helps clients build their brands, it’s been natural for us to get a few clients that want to rebrand under a different name. Naturally, they want to rank for Google searches for their new brand name, and sometimes this can require more effort than other times.
In fact, when Digital Elevator was started, the phrase “Digital Elevator” was associated with some LG (the TV-makers) ad that had some global reach. That meant that I had to do a bit more legwork to get my brand name to rank first for searches for the company.
But, as I would find out, and as I have come to find with others clients, my brand name was slightly generic and this brought out a very important consideration for how difficult it would be to rank number one:
My brand name was slightly generic and this brought out a very important consideration for how difficult it would be to rank number one:
That’s right, the context of your brand name has a lot to do with its difficulty ranking it first. For example, I once led an SEO campaign for a cosmetic dentistry website that featured a product called “Lumineers,” a type of dental veneer. At one point, we had the Lumineers page on our website ranking second, just under the brand’s website, until Google came along and made some context-related changes to the search engine results pages (SERPs).
As you may know, there is a band called “The Lumineers,” and these guys became very popular shortly after our dentistry website was created. Because Google figured that a search for “Lumineers” was more likely to be for the band than the dental product, the context of this search, at least in Google’s eyes, leaned more towards results for the band.
This remains true for this search to this day; Lumineers, the band, dominates the SERPs while the dental product only shows up once on the front page:
This is a perfect example of how context – for a brand trying to rank or for rankings generally – can present a challenge for ranking.
In the case of Digital Elevator, we were able to successfully rank number one for our brand as well as fill the first page of the SERPs with our social media profiles. This is the marking of a successful branding campaign. I’ll teach you how to do this below.
If your company is like Lumineers, the type of name that exists already and is associated with something else, the likelihood of you ranking first depends on a few things:
How popular your company is compared to the other product/service/person
The context of the phrase that comprises your brand name
How much SEO you are willing to do
Now, I don’t want to get your hopes up if you just named your company Coca-Cola Paint and want to have it rank for “Coca-Cola.” You’ll never do this, no matter how much money you spend on SEO.
If Google feels a phrase is contextually related to something specific, it will always want to deliver that result to searchers in an attempt to match their perceived intent.
If Google feels a phrase is contextually related to something specific, it will always want to deliver that result to searchers in an attempt to match their perceived intent.
However, if there is not some megabrand, band, or phrase dominating the space, you may have a shot.
How to Rank for Your Brand Name
Ok, so you’ve made the decision to rank for your brand name. Here’s how to give it the ol’ “college try.”
1. Get the exact match domain
In my case, I bought the domain name thedigitalelevator.com. According to Moz’s Search Engine Ranking Factors 2015, Domain-Level Keyword Usage, or having “exact-match keyword domains, partial-keyword matches, etc.” is the seventh most highly correlated ranking signal.
If this is already taken as a .com, you can always try to buy a different TLD: .tv, .co, .biz, etc. A dot com is always going to be your best bet, but in an effort to maintain branding consistency and play nice with ranking correlations, I’d advise this. Of course, you have to take a look at whether or not a brand that owns the dot com is ranking and if you want to compete with that.
2. Update all of Your Social Media Accounts
Slightly less tricky than getting the domain, but tricky nonetheless, getting all of your social media profiles to have your brand name in them is your next step.
Facebook
Facebook, being the nice guys that they are, will allow you to change your page name once, and only once. They will also allow you to change your business URL as well… but only once.
Obviously, with Facebook and all of your social media accounts, you want to change the name rather than create a new profile because you want to maintain your followers.
Twitter
Twitter has far less strict rules about name changes than Facebook, but this doesn’t always mean the @name you want will be available. If it is, you’re home free. If not, you have a couple of options:
Contact the person who is using the handle you want and negotiate (you’ll have a better chance of getting this if they don’t use it and if they don’t have any followers)
File a trademark issue with Twitter. You will, of course, have to prove all of this.
Instagram
Changing your name on Instagram is pretty easy as well. Here’s how.
If you refer to the above Moz graphic, you’ll see the most highly correlated ranking signal is Domain-Level Link Features. This would include link metrics such as the quantity of links, the trust of those links, domain-level PageRank of those links, etc.
Link building may be the single most important thing you do in your effort to rank for your brand, but you’ll still want to do the other items mentioned above.
Link building may be the single most important thing you do in your effort to rank for your brand
So, what is a brand-based link? For me, a link that used the anchor text “Digital Elevator” is what I’d be shooting for. If you were to take a look at my backlink profile and that of most brands, you’d see that most instances of links to our sites include the brand name as the link text. Ex. a link to the Yankees website would be Yankees.
If you wanted to increase the likelihood that you would rank for your brand name, building links with the anchor text of your brand name would be the most powerful way to do so.
If you don’t have the resources to build links (or simply don’t know how), you have another option. You could try to make changes to the instances of your brand around the web and see how that does. This assumes that your brand is preexisting though and has mentions on the web. To do this, you’d find all the sites on the internet that mention your brand but don’t link to it, and ask them to.
When you are building links for your website you got to be very precise on what you do. Every marketeer worth their salt knows what a backlink is. Building backlinks can quickly become a minefield of mistakes and mishaps for the uninformed SEO. Check out this step-by-step process on how to build backlinks the right way in 2018.
Rank for Your Brand Name: Next Steps
After reading this post you should have a good idea of whether or not the brand name you want to rank for will actually have a shot of ranking first on Google. If it is super-generic, your chances become much harder, but this doesn’t mean it is impossible.
Regardless, you should try and update your domain to have an exact match of your brand name or at least contain the main words. Secondly, update your social media profiles so that they are all consistent with your new brand name.
Finally, build links to your website using the exact words of your brand name. This will be the most powerful thing you can do but will also be the most time-consuming, depending on how competitive or contextually challenging that name is.
If you have any specific questions about how to do this, for help doing this, or to determine how viable this would be, feel free to reach out to me or comment below.
One well-known method of getting links is through the HARO platform that connects reporters with expert news sources. If you are an expert in any particular industry you can greatly benefit from HARO (short for Help a Reporter Out) if you are featured in their stories, some of which are on major media outlets like The NY Times, Huffington Post and Entreprenuer.com.
As you are probably already aware, getting featured on huge media publications does wonders for your exposure but the reference to your website in link form is also a huge win in terms of SEO.
Today I’m going to talk about how I’ve successfully managed to bat at about 50 percent in terms of getting links from HARO reporters. In other words, I have figured out a nice little method that sees that for about half the time I respond to stories I do in fact earn the media exposure and that thing I’m really after, a backlink from a high PageRank site.
And guess what? I’m going to share all of my tips and secrets with you today so you can do the same thing for your website.
Getting Started with HARO
This post is not going to be about how to setup an account with HARO – any monkey with an internet connection knows how to do that. I am talking about how I bat 50 percent with a free account as HARO does offer premium accounts that start at $19 a month.
I’ve never actually tried a premium account but the major differences are that you get to build a profile on the HARO website in which reporters can find you and you get to search their database anytime rather than wait for one of the three-a-day emails they send out with a free account.
I’ve got nothing against the premium accounts and in fact I think they would be a great value for someone who wants to dedicate a lot of time to getting featured. But I’ve had some good success with the free platform (and I pay for plenty of other SEO-type software) so this post is all about free!
Should you want to learn a bit more about the premium accounts and using HARO that way, Quicksprout University has a nice little video by Brian Dean that covers some of the ins and outs of using the platform from his perspective.
In case you’re wondering if HARO links are on the radar of Google’s Penguin algorithm the same way they are for gamey press release or low quality links, here’s a post by Search Engine Land titled “Actually, we don’t think Google Hates HARO links” that should rest that case for you.
So, now that we have gone through the assumption that you have done the following:
Setup a HARO account
Setup your preferences based on your (or your clients) expertise
Are getting HARO emails
We can move on to my secrets for getting more links from HARO.
Tip #1: Open HARO Emails Quickly to be the First to Respond
If you are truly on the prowl to get media exposure and links from HARO reporters you have to be diligent about the process.
This means anticipating that each email you get from HARO will present a link building opportunity for you should you capitalize on it. That said, once you get your HARO email, open it quickly and peruse the topics to see if there are any that stand out.
What I would not recommend is flagging the email and getting back to it later. Timeliness is something that is very important to reporters. Keep in mind that they are pressed for time and want to get their story compiled and sent over to their editors as quickly as possible.
Without mentioning the obvious component of every story, the deadline, just because a reporter says their deadline is in three days doesn’t mean you can take your time and submit your story in two days. You’ll be doing so after they have already received dozens, if not 100s, of other submissions that might be worthwhile.
Continuing on the timeliness factor, once you have decided that a topic that comes across the HARO email is appealing it is time for you to stop everything you are doing and get to responding.
Even if you are the most qualified person who responds and provides the most detailed, well-written response, if you respond late there’s a good chance your email won’t even be looked at because the story has already been formulated.
As soon as you get that email, get to writing and try to submit your response as soon as possible.
Tip #3: Drafting Your Email Response to Improve Chances of Earning a Link
Your email response is where you will really be able to shine. Remember that you have to click the email link to respond to the reporter.
What this means is that the reporter does not know who the hell you are and might not necessarily know why you are emailing them. This is why it is important to give them a clue as to what story you are responding to as this story may not be the only one they have on HARO.
Below is an exact email response I drafted for a PR 4 link that I earned. Take note of the following:
Title– I titled the email response “HARO: How Do You Write Your First Paragraph” because that was the title of the summary listed on the HARO email. If I used the above summary I would have titled the email “HARO: How to road trip with a baby.”
Personalization– You’ll notice I start my email with “Hi Amanda” before diving directly into my response. Sometimes the reporter won’t list their name but when they do I always call them by their name. Sometimes I even thank them for their thoughtful consideration to set a nice, polite tone.
About You– Generally the reporters will be very specific about what they want to include about you in their story. Sometimes they ask for a brief bio (in this case they did not) as well as social media links (in this case they did not). This reporter only asked me to provide my name, title and a link to my website. Still, I provide additional contact info in my email signature like my phone number (I should probably have some social links there too) in the event they want to call me or follow up in some way that they did not mention outright.
When possible, look at other stories your reporter has written (by searching for them on their media outlet) to check their format style. This helps you two ways: one is that it allows you to cater your writing style in a way that meets their approach. Two is that it will give you an idea if you will be featured in isolation or if you will simply be quoted with your expert opinion along with multiple others (most likely).
Tip #4: Write Your Response in MS Word First and Follow These Writing Rules
One of the biggest mistakes you can make with a reporter is sending them something that is littered with grammar errors. This is why I always, always, always write my response in MS Word first so that it spell and grammar checks everything. My Outlook email does this too but not in the same capacity as Word.
After I write the response in Word, I paste it directly into the email (more on attachments below).
It goes without saying that I proofread the crap out of these – 3 to 4 times – before sending them off. If you have a colleague/wife/spouse/seeing eye dog nearby have them read it too and check for edits.
When responding, write in a way that the reporter can cut and paste your content directly into their article. They don’t want to spend their time editing your content (and I don’t mean grammar) so if you place it in a way that they can simply quote you and give attribution you are more likely to get featured.
Tip #5: Consider the Media Outlet to See if the Work Required is Worth Your Time
After I look at topics that I think I want to respond to I also look at the media outlet that is inquiring. Sometimes the reporter won’t place the media outlet in the summary and a lot of times I won’t respond to these queries unless the topic is really appealing and the Query gives some hints that it is actually a pretty big news outlet.
When the media outlet is mentioned, I do a couple of things. The first one is I visit the website (by Googling the name first and finding the .com) and checking its PageRank and trustworthiness (trustworthiness is something that you’ll know just by looking at a website). If the site is less than a PR2 I decide if there is a possibility that the site could become popular or if it has a decent size social media following.
Although my primary goal with HARO is to get links, you can’t forget about the value of exposure even if the site has a low PR.
Thirdly, I look to see if the links on their site are follow or no follow. If you know anything about SEO, you know you want a follow link.
That said, before you invest your time in writing an article and stopping everything you were doing, you have to decide the following:
Is the link worth it?
Is the exposure worth it?
Is the link follow?
If none of these answers is yes, don’t waste your time. If the link is no follow but comes from a huge news source, it will probably be worth your time.
Tip #6: Reading and Responding to the Question to Make Sure it’s Worth Your Time
It is imperative that you have a full grasp on both the Summary and the Query. Sometimes a Summary will look really enticing coupled with the media outlet but when you read the actual Query – the real meat and potatoes of the reporter’s goal – you’ll find that you don’t want to answer the question or are not suited to.
Sometimes reporters will specify who they want an answer from – be it geographical location, profession, gender or some other limiting factor – and if you don’t fit this bill don’t waste your time responding.
Also, sometimes the Query will differ slightly from what the Summary covers. Point is, read both very carefully and craft your answer in such a way that addresses exactly what they are looking for.
Tip #7: Response Length Should be Around 3 to 4 sentences
Before I started having a lot of luck with HARO links I’d write really long responses. Props to Bryan Conklin from Zylo for bringing my attention to this one.
What I’ve found is that most reporters just want a 2-3 sentence paragraph from you and not a full on blog post.
I think the best rule of thumb is to try to compress your answer to 2-4 sentences and if the reporter wants more leave it up to them to follow up with you.
If you feel that a more substantial piece is needed the benefit is that if it doesn’t get picked up you have yourself a nice blog post or at least the start of one.
If a reporter doesn’t specify response length look for hints in their previous work or stick with the 2-4 sentence rule of thumb as to not waste half your day writing something that may or may not get picked up.
Tip #8: Don’t Haggle the Reporters to See if They Like Your Submission
Once you send off your finely-tuned email don’t go all nuts trying to get in touch with the reporter to see if you are going to get featured.
For one, the HARO-masked emails won’t work after a certain period of time and if you go all stalker status finding a reporter (they are not that hard to find if they provide their names) don’t haggle them on Twitter.
If they like your response they’ll use it. Don’t be offended if you don’t get any sort of response; these guys and gals are busy, taking things personal won’t help anyone.
Tip #9: How Reporters Will Typically Respond if at All
In my experience most reporters won’t ever respond to you at all. There will be no “thank you for your submission” email or “we’ll be in touch” Tweet. You’re at their mercy and if you don’t like it don’t use the HARO platform!
If you are not selected it’s because you suck at writing and are but a pawn in your industry. Just kidding! It’s just that reporters don’t respond to tell you that you didn’t make the cut. That’d be an awkward conversation anyway.
If you are selected, here’s what I have usually found to be true based on medium:
Phone call– you are an industry ninja and you deserve a plaque. This probably also means that the article that is being written requires more details and specifics from those that are featured.
Email– your reporter probably just needs a little bit more info. I hardly ever get emails with the links to the finished articles I am featured in although I wish I would.
Social media– most likely Twitter because they can alert multiple contributors at once. They usually just @mention 2-3 people at once and then give a link to the site.
Skype– your reporter is either overseas, needs some sort of visual of you, or can’t get enough of your good-looking profile picture and needs to have their day made by seeing you in-person.
Live in person– if you are in the same town as your reporter every so often they might want to meet for coffee. Buy them a cup and keep in touch with them!
Things that I Think Work to My Advantage in Getting Selected
I probably should have started this post by saying I am no Rand Fishkin, Neil Patel or Brian Dean SEO ninja. I am, however, somewhat known in the industry and my name pops up from time-to-time (sometimes in ways that don’t hurt my feelings).
Here are some reasons why I think I’ve had some pretty decent success with HARO:
Big Twitter following: While not huge, my 3,600+ followers dwarfs the 200 follower Twitter average. Many reporters don’t even have this many followers so it sort of looks like I’m an authority on something.
Nice website: I keep the Digital Elevator website up-to-date and modern as well as try to post blogs regularly. This lends to my expertise in both content marketing and SEO.
Polite & Professional: You want to appear as polite and professional when speaking to reporters. If you are neither you don’t stand a chance.
I am truly an expert in the topics I respond to: Although I hate to call myself an “expert” at anything, I am very experienced with managing SEO and content marketing strategies and these are predominantly the types of topics I respond to.
Getting HARO Links Recap
By no means is getting HARO links consistently an easy thing and anyone who approaches it should look at it as a numbers game. The more inquiries you respond to the more of a chance you’ll have of getting links. If you can get three links from high quality sources a month then you’ll be getting some decent press and perhaps more attention from potential clients.
Hopefully you learned some good takeaways from the above and you too are on your way to batting 50 percent. Your homework is to implement the above into your next HARO response and to see if you have better luck getting links.
If you have any questions shoot me an email or Tweet and let me know how these strategies worked for you.
