If backlinks weighed anything, they’d be worth their weight in gold.
Backlinks are currently extremely popular amongst search engine optimisation (SEO) experts and strategists for online marketing, thanks to their value in improving a website’s ranking in search engines and their potential for building new audiences.
Not sure what they are, or how they relate to outreach – or what outreach is? Read on.
What are backlinks and why do they matter?
A backlink is a link from another website that leads to your business’ website.
As you’d expect, backlinks are a great way to drive traffic to your site and attract potential new customers. But the marketing benefits go further than that.
This is because backlinks are a major factor that Google uses to determine a page’s search position. Having a strong backlink profile – links from a variety of trusted sites back to your site – can significantly impact your rankings.
RELATED: What is backlinking and why does your site need it?
How to get backlinks.
Aside from simply hoping the quality of your products and services will organically earn backlinks to your website, the major way to create backlinks is with outreach. Outreach is an email marketing tool where you get in touch with bloggers or websites to ask for backlinks.
Many big businesses dedicate a portion of their digital marketing budget to outreach to help build their backlink profile. While you probably don’t have the luxury of a big budget, you can still conduct outreach on your own.
Keep in mind, though, that not all backlinks are created equal. Ideally, you want to be getting links back to your site from trusted and reputable sites.
One way to evaluate this is by looking at a site’s ‘domain authority’ or ‘domain score’ This is a score developed by Moz that predicts how likely a website is to rank on search engine result pages. The higher a website’s domain authority, the more likely it is to be trusted by Google.
You can find out a website’s domain authority by using Moz’s free domain SEO analysis tool:
The closer to 100 a website’s score is, the more valuable backlinks from that site would be in terms of SEO.
When you’re looking for potential people to approach about links, try to find those that are not only relevant to your brand in some way, but also have a solid domain authority and a reasonable social following.
A Domain Authority score ranges from one to 100, with higher scores corresponding to a greater ability to rank.
Backlinks have become part of many marketing strategies as they are also good for SEO. This is because when search engines ‘see’ that your site has been listed by someone else, it serves as something of a vote of confidence and can help you move up the rankings.
The source is vital as well. If a hugely popular website with a high ranking of its own links to you, it is worth more than it would from a relatively unknown website.
RELATED: 11 free SEO tools to simplify your marketing strategy.
To find out if a website carries enough weight to be useful by backlinking to you, you can check its ‘domain authority’. The closer to 100 their score is, the more valuable their backlinks are in terms of SEO.
Aside from simply hoping your excellent products and services will earn backlinks on their own merit, the major way to create backlinks is with outreach. Outreach is an email marketing tool where you get in touch with certain bloggers or websites to ask for backlinks.
In your email, you’ll need to be polite, honest, and upfront about your reasons for contacting them. Below are a few email marketing templates to get you started.
Link-building for SEO: Cold email templates.
So you want to give outreach a try. That’s great! But what should you say? How do you contact someone without seeming spammy?
As a general rule, aim to contact people or businesses that would have a genuine interest in your products or services, or could benefit from a partnership with your business.
For example, if you’re a nutritionist, you could reach out to a local media outlet about linking to your website in an article about a health and wellness festival in your area. Or you could partner with a local gym to offer a 10% first-time discount to their members in exchange for a link back from the gym’s website.
There are lots of ways to propose backlinks and it’s all about thinking creatively. We’ve put together some cold email outreach templates to help you get started.
Email template: To ask for a backlink in exchange for a blog.
Hi [name],
My name is [your name], and I work for a company called [company name]. We [explain your brand or service and what makes you special].
I recently came across your [blog/website], and I’m getting in touch because I had a few ideas for articles that I think your readers would love. I’d be happy to send a blog your way, either on a topic of your choosing or perhaps [suggest a good topic that would fit well with their brand and offer an opportunity to link to your site].
Alternatively, I’d love to discuss any other ideas that you have, even in terms of partnering up on a piece of content you’re already working on.
Let me know if this is something you might be interested in and we’ll get the ball rolling!
Many thanks,
[your name]
Email template: To ask for a backlink via a review.
Hi [influencer name],
My name is [your name], and I work for [company name]. We [explain your brand or service and what makes you special].
I was recently browsing through blogs in [your industry or field] and came across yours. I particularly loved the article on [name specific article] because [give specific, realistic and fun reason for why you genuinely liked it, expand as much as you can to make this personal].
I’m sure you get plenty of review requests, but I’d love to add one to the mix. I’d like to [offer you a free trial/send you a free product]. [If it’s not immediately obvious, explain more about what the product or service is and what makes it stand out here].
I think it would be right up your alley and we understand that if you don’t like it, it won’t get a positive review (although we’re pretty confident you’ll love it!). To keep our marketing team happy, we are looking for a backlink included somewhere in the review as part of the agreement as well.
Please let me know if you’d like to give it a try, or if you have any questions for me at all.
Many thanks,
[Your name]
Email template: To ask for a backlink directly.
Hi there [name],
My name is [your name], and I work for [company name]. We [explain your brand or service and what makes you special].
I was recently browsing through blogs in [your industry or field] and came across yours. I particularly loved the article on [name specific article] because [give specific, realistic and fun reason for why you genuinely liked it, expand as much as you can to make this personal].
Now I’ll cut to the chase as I’m sure you get plenty of inquiries, but I was wondering if you are open to working with brands? At the moment we’re working on creating a few great backlinks to our site, and I’m only getting in touch with a handful of bloggers that I think would be a good fit for the brand.
Please let me know if this is something you’d be interested in at all and we can take it from there!
Many thanks,
[Your name]
What’s next in your digital marketing plan?
While backlinks are essential to boosting your SEO, there are also a number of other important factors to consider, such as fresh and relevant content, a keyword strategy and many more.
If you need a hand with linkbuilding SEO or your digital marketing strategy, Yellow Pages can help. Our team of dedicated experts have years of experience developing and refining SEO strategies for small businesses. Find out more here.
