Their content isn’t necessarily better than yours, so what’s their secret?

The difference often lies in a solid outreach strategy that expands the reach of their content beyond their immediate network. This is where blogger outreach comes in.

Blogger outreach involves collaborating with influential website owners to amplify your content’s visibility. 

But it’s not just about writing the occasional blog post. An effective blogger outreach campaign hinges on great content creation skills, an attention-grabbing guest post pitch, and the ability to build long-term relationships.

There’s a lot to understand!

That’s why we compiled this guide to blogger outreach. We’ll show you how to streamline your efforts with blogger outreach tools, an email template, Ahrefs Content Explorer, and more.

What Is Blogger Outreach?

Blogger outreach is a strategic approach that connects you with influential bloggers who can help expand your content’s reach and boost your authority in your niche. For example, a fitness brand might partner with a popular health blogger to review their products.

This approach combines the strengths of content marketing and influencer marketing, which allows you to collaborate on content that provides mutual benefits.

Many link-building processes involve blogger outreach in some form, including:

Guest posts: Writing posts for influential blogs allows you to showcase your knowledge to a broader audience. Guest post outreach involves pitching your ideas to these bloggers. If they publish it, it can drive traffic back to your site, help you get inbound links, and establish you as an expert in your niche.

Content shares: If you explain that your content is new, well-researched, and valuable to their audience, a blogger might share it. When an influential blogger shares your content with their followers, it opens the door to more engagement, new followers, and potential customers who want to hear what you have to say.

Asking for a link: Outreach for links involves demonstrating the relevance and quality of your content to webmasters and asking them to post backlinks to your site. Getting backlinks from relevant blogs makes it more likely you’ll rank on search engines for terms related to your niche. 

Building partnerships: Outreach for partnerships involves identifying mutual benefits and building relationships with bloggers. Long-term collaborations can take many forms, such as co-hosting webinars, creating joint content, or cross-promoting each other’s products and services. 

This article focuses on the first type of blogger outreach—guest blogging—but the process and steps you’ll learn here can be applied to any of these outreach methods or goals. 

What’s In It for Popular Bloggers? Why would influential bloggers want to share your content?  It’s a fair question–after all, they already have a solid content strategy, loyal visitors, and visibility within their niche. The answer is simple: blog owners are always on the lookout for ways to keep their target audience engaged and grow their reach.

Why Is Blogger Outreach Important?

If you’re already regularly uploading content and sharing it to social media, you might be wondering why you need to add blogger outreach to your strategy. 

Besides, all it takes is for one influencer to stumble upon your content and share it, right? 

While that may be true, there are billions of social media posts every day. 

Relying on chance isn’t the best strategy for growth. 

It might not be as trendy as the latest digital marketing trick, but blogger outreach is incredibly effective. 

In fact, 64.9% of link builders use guest blogging as their primary link-building strategy.

Blogger outreach often earns you “free” links, but it’s wise to know how much link-building can cost in case you opt for paid placement or services.

Here’s why it’s so valuable:

It helps you build relationships

Blogger outreach isn’t just about one-time collaborations. It’s about building lasting relationships within your industry. 

One study by Sprout Social found that 64% of marketers build relationships with other bloggers to create content partnerships. 

These connections can lead to future partnerships, collaborations, and a strong network around your brand.

It helps you stand out from the crowd

While blogger outreach is a great way to build connections, one Backlinko study found that the average response rate for outreach emails is just 8.5%. 

So, you need to go the extra mile if you want to beat the odds by crafting personalized outreach emails and following up to build and maintain these relationships. 

Most blogger outreach campaigns are generic and lack personalization, which is why they fail to capture the attention of influential bloggers. 

By putting real effort into your outreach strategy, you can maximize the number of link-building opportunities you’ll receive.

It helps you build credibility

When an influential blogger features your content, it acts as a powerful endorsement. 

This not only builds your credibility but also fosters trust with new audiences who may not have heard of you before. 

How to Launch an Outreach Campaign

Launching your campaign can be daunting and time-consuming. From finding the right sites to crafting the perfect email, the process requires a lot of effort. 

Follow these steps to streamline your efforts and increase your chances of success:

1. Identify guest posting sites

The first step is identifying the right sites. 

While there are countless tools, one of the most effective ways to find blogs is by using Google. 

Start by searching for specific keywords related to your industry along with phrases that indicate posting opportunities. 

For instance, if you run a blog about veganism, you might search for:

• “veganism” + “write for us”
• “veganism” + “guest post”
• “veganism” + “submit an article”

The above keywords deliver a goldmine of potential bloggers and sites to reach out to:

You can also use informational keywords in your niche to find relevant blogs. 

For example, use search for terms like:

• Vegan dessert recipes
• Losing weight on a vegan diet
• Are avocados vegan?
• Vegan meal prep

These searches will yield a mix of blogs and authoritative sites. Focus on the blogs that appear in the search results rather than major authority sites:

After a search, scroll down to the “Related Searches” section at the bottom of the search results page. 

This provides additional keywords that can lead you to more blogs relevant to your niche:

2. Choose which bloggers to target

Once you have your list, it’s time to narrow it down. 

But why should you narrow it down instead of emailing all of the target bloggers on your list?

Not only does narrowing it down save you valuable time in the long run, but it also allows for personalized outreach that shows that you’ve done your homework and value the blogger’s work.

Consider the following factors to choose the most suitable bloggers:

Domain authority

When planning your outreach strategy, prioritize blogs with high domain authority (DA). 

Developed by Moz, DA is a score ranging from 1 to 100, with higher scores representing a greater ability to rank on SERPs.

When you get a backlink from a site with high DA it’s like receiving a vote of confidence from a trusted source. 

Google considers these high-quality backlinks as indicators that your content is valuable, which can improve your own site’s rankings.

How to Evaluate Domain Authority Use tools like Moz’s Link Explorer, Ahrefs, or Semrush to check a site’s domain authority. Each of these tools provides its own authority score along with a comprehensive analysis of the site’s backlink profile and overall SEO health.

Website traffic

You can use tools like SimilarWeb or Google Analytics to help you estimate the traffic a blog receives. 

The more traffic a website that links to you has, the more people your content is exposed to—this can drive a steady stream of visitors to your own website and increase your visibility. 

Number of blog comments

Active engagement shows that the audience is interested and interacts with the content. A blog that garners numerous comments per post suggests an active, engaged readership. 

This engagement can spill over to your post and lead to more interaction with your content. In addition, an engaged audience is more likely to share your post, which can further increase its reach.

Popularity on social media

Check how many social media followers the blog has and the level of engagement with their posts. 

A blogger with a large, active following on platforms like Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook can amplify your content beyond their blog. 

Look at how frequently they post, the engagement rate, and how their audience interacts with them for insight into how well your content might perform when shared through their social channels.

The quality of their content

Read several of their blog posts to get a feel for their writing style, the depth of their research, and the topics they cover. 

This will help you gauge whether their audience would be interested in your content.

Collaborating with bloggers who produce high-quality content ensures that your post will be showcased in a reputable context, which will help boost your brand’s credibility.

The relevance of their content

You can have a great post idea, but if your content isn’t relevant, it is very likely that it will be rejected.

Focus on relevant websites but be creative. For example, if your blog is about fitness, don’t just target health and fitness blogs.

Look for lifestyle blogs that cover health and wellness, or parenting blogs that might benefit from fitness tips for busy parents. 

This broadens your potential reach while ensuring you only reach out to relevant prospects.

Make Sure Your Outreach Campaigns Are Realistic Targeting highly influential bloggers with massive followings might seem like a great idea, but high-authority blogs receive countless outreach requests every day.    If your blog is still growing, your chances of getting a response from a big name blogger are slim.    Instead, focus on small or mid-size bloggers. They are often more open to collaborations with growing blogs, and would probably have more time and interest in engaging with your content and audience.

3. Find their contact details

Once you’ve narrowed down your list of relevant bloggers, the next step is to contact them.  Here’s how to do it efficiently:

1. Send an email 

This is the most straightforward method. 

Visit the blogger’s website and explore the “Contact” or “About” page. Many bloggers list their email addresses here, which makes it easy to get in touch directly. 

2. Look for contact information on their “Write for us” page

Some bloggers have a dedicated “Write for us” page, where they provide guidelines for post submissions and include their contact details. 

This page often outlines the types of content they accept, their submission process, and other relevant information. Here’s an example of what this might look like:

Source

3. Use a blogger outreach tool

If you can’t find an email address on the website, don’t worry! Blogger outreach tools can help you find the email address associated with a specific domain. 

Just enter the blog’s URL, and the blogger outreach tools will provide the blogger’s email address, which makes your job a lot easier. Some of our favorite tools include:

• Hunter
• Cognism
• Kaspr

Once you’ve found all the contact details you need, add them to a spreadsheet. 

Create columns for the blogger’s name, blog name, email address, website URL, notes, and any additional headings you wish to add, for example:

Source

This keeps everything in one place, so you can manage your blog outreach efforts and ensure you don’t miss any follow-ups.

Make Sure They Accept Blog Posts Before reaching out, make sure the blogger actually accepts posts.    Blogger outreach is all about maximizing your efforts and targeting the right opportunities—targeting bloggers who don’t accept these posts wastes your time and resources.   If you can’t find the blog’s contact form or “Write for us” page, look for recently published guest posts on their site to see whether they accept them.

4. Get on the blogger’s radar 

Influential people often miss or ignore outreach emails simply because they’re inundated with them. Plus, some of your emails may end up in the spam folder. 

But don’t worry, there’s a way to avoid this from happening to you. 

Successful outreach is all about relationship building, and people are much more likely to respond if they know who you are. 

Here’s how to get onto a blogger’s radar:

Follow and engage with them on social media

Start by following the bloggers you want to connect with on their social media platforms. 

‘Like’ their content, leave an awesome comment, or share their posts. Genuine engagement shows that you’re interested in their work and not just looking for a favor. 

Add value to their posts

When you engage with their content, add value. 

Leave insightful comments, ask thoughtful questions, and contribute to the conversation. This demonstrates your expertise and shows that you’re genuinely interested in their content:

Share their content

Share their blog posts, articles, and social media updates with your own audience. 

When you share their content, make sure to tag them and add a personal touch to your share. 

In the example below, the marketer made their post feel more like a personal recommendation rather than a generic share:

Email them and say you’re a big fan

Sometimes, a simple, genuine email can make all the difference. 

Reach out to the blogger and let them know you’re a fan of their work. Be specific about what you like and why. 

This isn’t about asking for anything—it’s about making a connection and showing appreciation.

Build a face-to-face relationship

While not always possible, building a face-to-face relationship can be incredibly effective. 

If you have a podcast, invite them on as a guest. Alternatively, if you’re attending the same industry events, suggest meeting up for a coffee. 

In-person interactions can leave a lasting impression and make your future blog outreach efforts more successful.

Effective Blogger Outreach Is a Two-Way Street Remember, blogger outreach campaigns are not just about what you can get, but also about what you can give.  When you build relationships with authenticity and respect, you’ll find that bloggers are much more receptive to your efforts.

5. Write your outreach email

A popular blog owner might receive hundreds (or even thousands) of outreach emails a week. 

To get their attention, you need to craft an email that makes a strong impression. 

Here’s how to do it:

Write a strong subject line

Your subject is the first thing the blogger will see, so make it count. Keep it short, intriguing, and promise something useful. 

For example, instead of a subject line that says Guest Inquiry, try something more engaging, like Guest Post Idea: Increase Your Traffic with Proven SEO Techniques. 

This line is more compelling and hints at the value your post will provide, which makes it more likely that the recipient will open your email.

Personalize your email 

Don’t just use their name—show that you’ve taken the time to understand their work. 

Mention something specific about their blog or recent posts that you enjoyed. Demonstrating that you’ve done your homework shows respect for their work and makes your outreach more meaningful. 

Pitch original, valuable ideas

Your pitch should offer fresh, valuable content that aligns with their blog’s theme.

Explain why your post idea is unique, how it fits in with their other high-quality blogs, and how it benefits their reader.

Provide a clear call to action

At the end of your email, specify what you want the blogger to do next. This makes it easier for them to respond and move forward. 

For example:

• Please confirm whether you’re able to publish my proposed article?
• What is the deadline for submission?
• Could you please send me your posting guidelines?

Blogger outreach email template

While each outreach email should be personalized, the reality is that fully personalizing each one can be incredibly time-consuming. 

To balance efficiency with personalization, use a template that allows you to quickly customize key details. 

You might even want to create multiple email templates that cater to different types of bloggers, topics, or tones of voice. 

Here’s a template to get you started:

6. Follow up

Bloggers are often very busy and may miss your first email, so a polite reminder can increase your chances of getting a response.

Send one follow-up email if you haven’t received a response within a week or two, and keep it concise and polite. 

Remind them of your initial email and reiterate your interest in collaborating.

Don’t Hound the Same Bloggers   If you still don’t receive a response after your follow-up, it’s time to move on.    Avoid bombarding the blogger with multiple follow-ups because this can come across as pushy and unprofessional. Instead, redirect your energy toward other potential collaborations.    Persistence is key, but respecting their time and space is equally important.

Create awesome content

Congratulations, a blogger has just accepted your offer to write a guest post—now what? It’s time to create some truly awesome content.

Here are some tips for making an impact:

Research thoroughly

Before you start writing, dive deep into research. 

Use Ahrefs Content Explorer or other tools to analyze top-performing content in your niche:

This will give you insights into what works well and help you identify the gaps you can fill with your post. Look at the keywords used, the structure of successful posts, and the engagement they generate.

Align with the audience

Tailor your content to fit the style and preferences of the blog’s audience. 

Review previous posts on the blog to understand their tone, format, and the topics that resonate most with their readers. 

Matching your content with the blog’s established voice will make it a good fit and more likely to engage their audience.

Optimize for SEO

Use SEO best practices to ensure your post ranks well in search engines. 

Incorporate relevant keywords naturally throughout your content, use clear headings and subheadings, and include internal and external links where appropriate. 

Tools like Ahrefs Site Explorer can help you identify the best keywords to target and analyze your competitors’ SEO strategies.

Edit and proofread

Spelling or grammar mistakes leave a bad impression. 

Edit for clarity, coherence, and readability. Tools like Grammarly can help you catch grammatical errors and improve your writing style. 

  Promote your post

Once your post has been published, don’t stop there. 

Share it across your social media platforms, email it to your subscribers, and engage with readers in the comments section. 

Content marketing doesn’t end with publication—promotion is key to maximizing your reach and impact. Plus, promoting the blogger’s website benefits them too, which encourages future collaboration. 

There’s an Easier Way to Perform Blogger Outreach

Blogger outreach is key for boosting your content’s visibility and credibility, but let’s face it—it’s a lot of work. 

From researching the right bloggers to crafting personalized emails and following up, it requires time, effort, and expertise to be effective. In addition, successful blogger outreach demands a deep understanding of influencer marketing and content marketing.

If the thought of managing all these tasks feels overwhelming, there’s an easier way: hiring a link building agency. 

At Authority Builders, we offer specialized services that take the burden off your shoulders. Because we’ve refined our influencer marketing strategies over time, our success rates for securing guest posts and link insertions are high.

Ready to simplify your outreach and achieve better results? Let us handle the hard work while you reap the benefits of increased visibility, credibility, and traffic.

Whereas traditional PR was all about getting your brand mentioned in print media, digital PR focuses on raising awareness through digital media, such as:

• Online publications 
• Blogs
• Social media 
• Digital press releases 

Digital PR also shares a lot in common with search engine optimization (SEO) and link-building, but there are some key differences. 

In particular, digital PR encompasses more than boosting online visibility on search engines. It’s more people-focused in nature and involves things like media monitoring, reputation management, and social media marketing. 

However, building reputable backlinks plays a huge role in digital PR, which is where the overlap with traditional link-building occurs. 

Why should you bother with digital PR?

When polled, 92% of marketers agree that brand authenticity is essential for success, and digital PR is one of the most reliable ways to get your target audience to view your brand as genuine, high-quality, and authoritative. 

In this article, we’ll give you a comprehensive overview of everything that goes into digital PR, a few examples of effective digital PR, and what it takes to conduct a successful digital PR campaign – so stick around to learn more.

What is Digital PR?

Traditional PR involves rubbing elbows with prominent journalists to get your brand featured in print publications. 

It’s also about keeping the public informed of new updates at your organization through official press releases. 

Lastly, PR steps in to recover an organization’s reputation whenever a crisis occurs. 

Digital PR still encompasses all of these things, albeit in a digital space. 

Instead of forming relationships with print journalists, you’ll focus on networking with bloggers and online journalists. Rather than trying to get your brand mentioned in The New York Times print newspaper, you’d try to secure a mention on their website. 

Also, social media plays a significant role in digital PR campaigns. 

In fact, 79% of marketers claim Instagram is an integral part of their PR campaigns, and that’s just one platform. Digital PR professionals also make heavy use of Facebook, X, TikTok, and LinkedIn. 

The social channels you choose will depend on the demographics of your target audience. 

For instance, if your business markets its products to a younger crowd, you’ll want to have a strong presence on TikTok and Instagram. 

If you’re dealing with B2B professionals, LinkedIn is their main hangout, so you should focus the majority of your efforts there. 

Building backlinks and improving visibility on search engines are two goals of digital PR, but they don’t encompass the entire practice. 

Common digital PR outreach methods include:

• Digital press releases. Is there a significant development happening at your organization? If so, don’t hesitate to let the public know through a digital press release. These will A) keep your audience informed of new updates at your organization, and B) raises brand awareness and generates backlinks. 

• Building relationships with online journalists. Digital PR professionals reach out to online journalists to secure brand mentions, guest posts, and backlinks. 

• Conducting targeted media outreach to bloggers. There’s no shortage of blogs on the internet that encompass every industry, niche, and quirky interest. Reaching out to bloggers for guest posts and brand mentions is a common practice in digital PR. 

• Partnering with influencers on social media. Just like bloggers, there are influencers in virtually every space online, and you can work with them to raise awareness for your brand. Partnering with prominent influencers in your field will help get the word out about what you do. 

• Looking for sponsorship opportunities. Another tactic is to find websites and influencers to sponsor and promote your products and services. 

The Difference Between Digital PR and Link-Building 

While digital PR and link-building share some undeniable similarities, they are two different marketing practices. 

Link-building also conducts outreach to journalists and bloggers, but the goal is only to secure high-value backlinks that improve rankings on search engines like Google. 

A digital PR professional, on the other hand, is not only after link placements, but also opportunities to raise brand awareness and boost their brand’s reputation. Therefore, if a journalist or blogger isn’t willing to provide a backlink but will mention your brand, that’s considered a win in digital PR (and a failure in link-building). 

Press release distribution is another tactic that digital PR professionals and link-builders share, but there is a key difference here, too. 

If your goal is to build backlinks with your press releases, you can’t mention any time-sensitive events happening at your organization. 

Why is that?

It’s because the press release has to continue to exist online for the backlink to provide any juice to your SEO profile. 

If you’re mentioning a time-sensitive event, the press release will have to go down after the event occurs, otherwise you have a web page containing outdated information (which provides no value to users). 

That’s why you can only mention non-time-sensitive events, like adding a new department or hiring a new CEO at your company. This information will remain relevant indefinitely, so it’s fair game for a press release geared toward generating backlinks. 

On the digital PR-side, you don’t have the same restriction for digital press releases. Mentioning a time-sensitive event will inform the public and raise brand awareness, which are your primary goals. That’s not to say that digital PR professionals don’t use press releases for backlinks, too, just that they aren’t restricted in the same way as link-builders. 

Here’s a look at some other key differences:

• Digital PR appeals to more stakeholders than link-building. Link-builders are only concerned with securing link placements on other websites, and only conduct outreach to do so. Digital PR professionals are constantly rubbing elbows with influencers, journalists, marketers, and other stakeholders. 

• Digital PR encompasses more activities than link-building. Building links is only one tiny aspect of digital PR. It also entails content creation, crisis management, influencer partnerships, and building relationships with journalists. 

• Digital PR is about reputation management. Digital PR professionals are tasked with maintaining a positive reputation for their organizations, which is something link-builders don’t have to worry about. For link-building, the only thing that matters is acquiring valuable backlinks without incurring any penalties. 

Digital PR campaigns may involve using outreach or paid placements for backlinks – our link-building pricing guide explains typical costs for such efforts.

How Digital PR Will Benefit Your Business 

If you’re already finding success with SEO and link-building, you may feel that a digital PR campaign isn’t worth your time. 

However, this isn’t true, as digital PR can benefit your business in ways that link-building and SEO can’t. 

For example, if your business experiences a crisis, all the links and high-ranking blogs in the world won’t save your reputation, but digital PR will. 

That’s why it’s worth taking the time to put together a digital PR campaign for your business. 

Here’s a look at all the benefits you’ll enjoy from incorporating digital PR. 

Better brand perception 

The businesses that enjoy the most success are perceived as reputable and trustworthy among their target audiences. 

The proof?

81% of customers need to trust a brand before they’ll consider buying anything. 

While link-building and SEO will boost your authority in the eyes of search engines (and help you rank higher), digital PR will convince the public of your brand’s excellence. 

Through a strong social media presence, frequent press releases, and partnerships with notable influencers/bloggers, you’ll improve your audience’s perception of your brand. 

Reputation management 

Should a crisis occur at your organization, such as a massive data breach or embarrassing lawsuit, SEO and link-building won’t save you. 

Instead, you must turn to your digital PR professionals to rise to the challenge and salvage your business’s reputation. 

As long as they’re on top of the crisis as soon as it happens, you should be able to maintain (or even improve) your brand’s reputation in the eyes of the public. 

You’ll have a hard time generating sales if your brand’s reputation is in the toilet, which is why digital PR matters. 

Boosted brand awareness 

Building serious brand awareness goes beyond basic content creation and stretches into social media marketing, community outreach, and newsjacking. 

These are all techniques that are unique to digital PR, and they’re enormously effective at making the public aware of your business. 

In short, digital PR tactics will boost your brand awareness more than publishing outstanding content on your website (although this is absolutely crucial, too). 

After all, who doesn’t want a digital PR professional brainstorming fun ways to interact with your audience through social media and other digital channels?

More backlinks and website traffic 

While this benefit aligns with SEO and link-building, that doesn’t make it a moot point. 

Even if your SEO efforts are paying off, why not generate even more traffic and backlinks through digital PR?

Tactics like press release distribution, content creation, and social media influencing will generate backlinks and referral traffic, which is never a bad thing. 

In other words, with digital PR and SEO working in tandem, you’ll have two teams working tooth and nail to raise brand awareness and generate more leads and sales for your business. 

Examples of Effective Digital PR 

Now, let’s take a look at some of the most effective digital PR techniques, including examples of brands that put them to good use. 

These are real-world brands that won big through digital PR, so take notes. 

Newsjacking

Newsjacking is the art of using viral news stories to promote your brand. 

Its name comes from the fact that you’re ‘jacking’ a news story to market your brand, and it can be extremely effective when done right. 

In some extreme cases, brands have even made themselves the central focus of a significant news story, which is a true testament to the technique. 

Speaking of that, Oreo had a huge win with newsjacking when they commented on the infamous blackout that took place years ago during Super Bowl XLVII in New Orleans. 

The post was expertly timed and led to a ton of interaction and shares. 

Creative social media campaigns 

People love fun trends and challenges on social media, which can be a goldmine for digital PR when done correctly. 

Try to brainstorm ways that your brand can inject itself into current trends on platforms like TikTok. 

You can also come up with original challenges for your audience to try, which can have outstanding results. 

Chipotle is the master of social media challenges, as they’ve had several extremely successful campaigns. 

Their viral ‘Lid Flip Challenge’ featured prominent influencers from social media and YouTube, and attracted tons of attention online. 

Sponsored content 

You can use influencers, celebrities, and bloggers to promote your content through sponsorships, which have become extremely popular in recent years. 

After all, you can’t watch a YouTube video from a prominent creator without hearing about their latest sponsor, which is all by design. 

Of course, you have to go after influencers that are relevant to your business; otherwise, it won’t make sense. 

Luxury brand Coach reached out to celebrity Selena Gomez to promote their products due to her interest in and love of high fashion. The results were impressive, as her fans responded positively to her sponsorship. 

How to Develop and Execute a Digital PR Campaign in 6 Steps 

Now that you’re familiar with common digital PR techniques (and why the practice is worth your time) let’s learn how to create a digital PR campaign for your brand. 

There are 6 steps to the process, including:

1. Set objectives
2. Understand your audience 
3. Analyze the competition
4. Create content 
5. Perform outreach
6. Monitor results 

Let’s take a closer look at each one. 

Step #1: Set objectives for your digital PR campaign 

What do you ultimately hope to achieve from your digital PR campaign? Do you want to generate more referral traffic, or is building brand awareness more important?

It’s crucial to set objectives and know your goals before you get started – as they’ll inform the rest of your campaign. 

Common digital PR objectives include:

• Brand awareness
• Boosting sales for specific products
• SEO links
• Company news
• Generating more referral traffic
• Improve your brand’s reputation 
• Boost recruiting 
• Share important company news

Once you have your objectives set, you can move on to the next step. 

Step #2: Understand your target audience 

You need to get inside the mind’s of your target audience if you want your brand to appeal to them. 

This involves diving deeper than surface-level demographic information. 

One of the best ways to learn more about your target audience is to build a buyer persona or personas if your products/services appeal to more than one demographic. 

What’s that?

A buyer persona is a detailed representation of a typical target audience member. Your buyer persona should have the following:

• A name
• Occupation
• Age
• Hobbies
• Pain Points
• Desires 

Frequently visit your audience’s favorite social platforms and forums to learn more about them. 

Tools like SEMrush are also invaluable for gaining insights about your target audience. In particular, its Market Explorer Tool summarizes different audiences and their primary characteristics, including age, employment status, education level, and more. 

Remember to create several buyer personas if your audience is segmented into different age groups/interests. 

This is an extremely crucial step, as the more you know your audience, the easier it will become to appeal to them with your promotional content. 

Step #3: Analyze the competition 

Just like SEO and link-building, you can learn a lot from your direct competitors in the digital PR space. 

In particular, you can pick apart your competitor’s content strategy, backlink profile, and outreach efforts. 

Certain tools really help out with this process, such as Ahrefs’ free Backlink Checker. 

How does it work?

All you have to do is enter a competitor’s URL, and you’ll see a breakdown of their backlink profile. You should pay attention to where a majority of their backlinks are coming from, as you may find opportunities that you can capitalize on – such as a website in your niche that accepts guest posts. 

Also, pay attention to your competitor’s content and social media presence. Are they getting more engagement from their followers? If so, why do you think that is? 

These insights will help you improve your digital PR strategy. 

Step #4: Create compelling content 

Next, it’s time to put your content creation skills to the test. 

If you want to boost your brand’s visibility online, you’ll need to create informative blogs, entertaining videos, shareable infographics, and other types of engaging content. 

For your content to generate the most buzz, it needs to align with the desires of your target audience. 

That’s where keyword research comes into the picture, and you can use tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs to help you find relevant search terms related to your business. 

Ahrefs has a free Keyword Generator that you can use to uncover trending topics/buzzwords in your industry. 

Look for keywords that have high search volume, an upward search trend, and relatively low keyword difficulty scores. 

Step #5: Conduct outreach 

This is the time to start rubbing elbows with prominent journalists and bloggers in your field. 

After all, why create all that content if you aren’t going to promote the heck out of it?

Your goal should be to improve visibility for your freshest content and most important product/landing pages. 

Beyond press releases and guest posts, pursuing link insertions on niche-relevant sites (by adding your link to existing articles) can secure extra authoritative backlinks for your campaign.

However, conducting outreach is often easier said than done. 

In particular, you’ll need lots of insider contact information to make outreach happen in the first place, and it can be difficult to know where to look. 

That’s where the tool Prowly comes in extremely handy. 

It has a massive database of media contacts, which can speed up your outreach process dramatically. 

Step #6: Monitor your results 

By now, you’ve got a digital PR campaign up and running. The only thing that’s left to do is monitor your progress to ensure you’re inching toward your goals and objectives. 

Tools that help in this regard are Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Google Alerts, and media monitoring apps. 

Google Search Console keeps track of your search performance on Google, and it provides key metrics like search position rankings and organic traffic. 

Google Analytics analyzes your website’s visitors, including demographics, where they visited your site from, and more. 

You can set up Google Alerts to let you know whenever something significant happens, such as acquiring a new link, picking up a media mention, or whenever a trending topic pops up. 

Lastly, there are plenty of media monitoring apps out there that will help you keep track of relevant trends in your industry. 

Use Digital PR to Boost Your Brand’s Online Visibility 

That’s what it takes to get a digital PR campaign up and running for your business. 

When done right, you’ll boost your brand’s awareness, enjoy a better reputation, and generate more links and traffic. 

Do you need help building reputable links for your digital PR campaign?

If so, don’t wait to sign up for our coveted Guest Posts, Content, and Link Insertions services from Authority Builders. 

Our link-building & digital PR gurus will ensure you secure top-tier link placements to elevate your brand into the stratosphere, so don’t wait to sign up today.  

The choice is obvious, as WSJ’s domain has far more ranking power and influence than an obscure directory. 

Links from news publications, online magazines, and journalists are known as digital PR backlinks—or PR backlinks for short. 

These are especially valuable links because they tend to have higher domain authority than links that come from other sources (like small business directories and blogs). 

Backlinks coming from major publications like The New York Times are considered the holy grail of link building due to their sky-high domain authority (95 in the case of the NYT). 

Snagging links like these will significantly boost your search engine rankings and provide tons of referral traffic. That’s why PR backlinks should be a critical aspect of all link-building campaigns. 

This article reveals why PR links are so highly valued and how you can start building them yourself with the right techniques.  

What Are PR Links, and Why Are They So Valuable?

A PR backlink is a link from any media outlet that points back to your website. It could be from a news publication or online magazine. 

Acquiring them involves reaching out to prominent journalists in your field and creating content that their audiences will love. 

Why do link builders hold PR backlinks in such high regard?

There are several reasons, but the primary one involves Google’s ranking system. 

If you want to appear in the #1-ranked organic position, Google has to trust you and view your content as accurate, credible, and valuable to its users. 

Google sees established newspaper websites as credible, so high-quality backlinks from them act as ‘credibility votes’ for your content. 

So, if you have many links from established newspapers, Google will see your content as especially valuable and high-quality. 

Not all backlinks have the same ranking power, as links coming from lesser-known websites will carry less clout. 

However, if you can land high-quality backlinks from major news sites like The New York Times, you’ll see a significant increase in your ranking power. That’s why high-value PR backlinks are enough to make any link builder’s mouth start to water. 

Here’s a look at the benefits you’ll enjoy from acquiring top-tier PR backlinks.

Improve your website’s E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) 

Google looks for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, or E-E-A-T for short, when choosing which websites to display in its search engine results pages (SERPs). 

Trust is about proving you’re a real, live business. Experience and expertise are two factors you should reflect in every piece of content you create—but authoritativeness works a bit differently. 

To build your authority on Google, you need high-quality backlinks more than anything else, and as we mentioned before, PR backlinks are the cream of the crop. 

Therefore, many PR backlinks will boost your E-E-A-T, making it easier for your website to rank in the #1 spot for your most important keywords. 

Enjoy more organic traffic and referral traffic 

By boosting your backlink profile with press links, you’ll rank higher on Google and generate more traffic. 

Besides that, you’ll see a spike in referral traffic from getting your website featured on popular media outlets in your industry. 

Referral traffic is valuable because:

• The traffic isn’t affected by SEO or algorithm updates (which means that competitors can’t poach it, and it won’t disappear after a Google update). 
• It can introduce your products and services to new audiences. 
• Referral boosts your brand awareness online, expanding your reach and influence. 

Rank higher in search results

Lastly, press links from reputable sources will pass lots of authority on to your site, improving your ranking power on search engines. 

If you’re able to secure multiple backlinks from major news sources, you’ll enjoy more traffic and better rankings. 

You can find out how authoritative a website is with an SEO tool like Ahrefs. 

In Ahrefs, click on “Site Explorer” and type in the publication’s website. 

Hit enter and you’ll be taken to an overview page. Here, you can see tons of information about the website’s traffic, backlinks, and paid search. 

On the left, you’ll see a number out of 100 labeled “DR,” along with a purple circle bar—that’s how Ahfrefs indicates a website’s authority. 

DR means domain rating and it is measured out of 100. The fact that the NYT scores 94 means that it is extremely authoritative. 

Where PR Backlinks Get Tricky: Dofollow vs. Nofollow Links: What’s the Difference?

Dofollow and nofollow are HTML attributes that can be applied individually to each of your backlinks. They control whether or not Google considers your links when establishing your site’s authority.

If a backlink has a nofollow tag, then it’s telling Google to ignore this link. This means that it passes on less SEO benefit than a dofollow link would.

Why is this relevant to high-quality PR backlinks? 

Prior to 2013, lots of companies built links by publishing press releases with a link to their website on free newswires.

Because these news sites were high authority, the people who posted on them got a significant ranking increase. 

Once people realized this, they started publishing press releases everywhere—even if the releases offered readers no value. 

In 2013, Google stopped this practice by updating its guidelines to require all press release links to be nofollow.

What does this mean for digital PR link building?

There are two main things to know about the impact of Google’s rules.

1. Use press releases…just not for link building

You can still publish press releases, but their main focus should be to announce something to the public—for example, a new service that you’ve launched or a charity event that you are hosting. 

You’ll still get some SEO benefit—but not enough to make press releases a worthwhile link-building technique.  

Despite this, nofollow links still offer some value, as they:

• Drive organic traffic to your website.
• Build brand awareness.
• Encourage other journalists and bloggers to pick up your story. 

2. Use outreach for link building

Google says that press releases need to be nofollow, but it says nothing about links from media sites needing to be nofollow. 

This means that if you can get a media website to link to yours naturally, then you’ll get a dofollow link—and hopefully a massive rankings boost, too!

But to do this, you’ll need to build relationships with journalists working at news publications. You’ll also need to offer them something interesting to publish.

How to find out if a link is nofollow

Here’s how you can find out which links are nofollow.

1. Right-click on the web page where the link is located.
2. Select “Inspect” or “Inspect Element” from the context menu. 

3. This opens the browser’s developer tools. In the developer tools panel, locate the section of the HTML code that corresponds to the link. You may need to hover over the elements in the panel to see the specific link highlighted on the web page.

4. Look for the <a> tag associated with the link. If the link has a rel=”nofollow” attribute within the <a> tag, then the link is a “nofollow” link.

How to Secure Valuable PR Backlinks for Your Business Step by Step 

When done correctly, press links will introduce your brand to new audiences, generate referral traffic, and positively affect your search engine rankings. 

Sounds great, right?

Well, there’s a lot you need to know before you start reaching out to journalists and bloggers, which is why we put together this step-by-step guide for securing PR backlinks. 

Step #1: Research your target audience 

As with any marketing campaign, PR links are only successful when you have an intimate understanding of your target audience. 

Otherwise, you may wind up creating the wrong type of content or even offend your audience by not using the right tone of voice. 

Before you do anything else, do a deep dive into your audience:

• Demographics: What is the primary age group that your products and services appeal to? 
• Popular media outlets: What do the magazines and publications in your industry typically look like? Do they publish the same types of stories?
• Editorial style: Does your audience prefer a certain tone of voice or aesthetic (i.e., colors, fonts, images, etc.)?

Once you have a solid grip on these factors, do your best to cater your content to the needs of your audience and the media outlets they frequent. 

For example, if you notice that your audience’s preferred publications use lots of terms popular with a younger crowd, your content should follow suit. 

Step #2: Find a relevant digital PR campaign topic 

Next, it’s time to come up with a digital PR campaign that your audience will find compelling. 

There are two main things to consider:

The format.

The subject.

The format is how you deliver your digital PR campaign. Examples include:

• Announcing exciting events.
• Interesting infographics.
• Revealing research.
• Commenting on current industry events.

Think about a format that your audience will enjoy. For example, if you run a cooking channel on YouTube, then your subscribers may enjoy an event where they get to meet you, see you cook, and chat with their fellow fans.

The topic you feature should form part of the content you deliver in the format of your choice. This is where Google Trends comes in handy. 

It will help you identify currently trending topics that you can work into your digital PR campaign. 

This step ensures that you cover something that’s genuinely interesting to your target audience, heightening the chances that they’ll click on it (or share it with others). 

As an example, let’s say your cooking show often covers how to make healthy snacks. Here’s what happens when we search for ‘healthy snacks’ on Google Trends:

You get to see the level of interest in the topic over a set period of time, which lets you know whether the topic is ‘trending’ or not. 

Moreover, you can see interest by subregion, and Wyoming has the highest interest in healthy snacks. 

Lastly, we get to see some related keywords and topics that you can use to brainstorm content ideas. 

Having learned from this, you may wish to host an event in Wyoming and present a session on how to make sweet but healthy snacks. 

Step #3: Create professional content

The content you produce for your digital PR campaign needs to be highly professional. If it isn’t, neither your audience nor journalists would be interested.

This means:

• If you’re running an event, hire an event coordinator.
• If you’re publishing research, hire researchers and writers to compile the report.
• If you’re creating infographics, hire a graphic designer. 

Crafting professional content adds value to your brand and ensures the audience will want to share it with others. 

Step #4: Compile a list of target publications

Brainstorm which publications you want to get coverage from. Think about ones that are relevant to your business and those that might be geographically relevant. 

For example, in our YouTube cooking event example, you might target New Food Magazine. However, because the event is taking place in Wyoming, you might also want to target local media outlets like the Casper Star Tribune.

Another way to find publications to target is to see which newspapers have previously linked to your competitors.

You can do this with “link intersect” on Ahrefs. Here’s how to do it:

1. In the top menu, select “Competitive Analysis”.
   

2. Enter your website’s URL or domain in the top bar. Then, enter the names of competitors in the bars below. 

3. Highlight “referring domains” at the top and click “Show link opportunities.”

4. You’ll now be shown a series of domains that have linked to your competitors’ sites but not yours. Choose “Dofollow” at the top so you only see these kinds of backlinks.

5. Now, go through the results and try to spot the ones that could be PR backlinks. If you find one, click the drop-down arrows on the right-hand side. This will show you what competitor content has been covered. This also gives you an idea of what the publication might be interested in.

In this case, the real estate industry website realtybiznews.com has linked to two of our sister link-building companies. The articles cover SEO or link-building guides that are tailored to realtors. This suggests that we could pitch a similar guide.

Step #5 Outreach

Outreach is a critical stage in PR link building. This is when you reach out to journalists, introduce yourself, and pitch your ideas. 

Outreach is about building relationships, so you must explain to the journalist how your business will interest their audience and how you can add value to their content.

Getting a journalist to respond to your message, let alone accept your pitch, may take several attempts. If you have the time, message the journalist first and introduce yourself. Don’t pitch any ideas. 

This way, when you eventually pitch a digital PR campaign, they will recognize your name and be more likely to read your message.

Journalists are busy people whose inboxes are overflowing with PR pitches. You need to write a killer outreach email to stand out and get read.

Here are some tips for doing so:

Personalize the email

Address the journalist by name and mention something specific about their work. Show that you’ve taken the time to research them and understand their focus or recent articles. Reference recent stories they’ve written to show genuine interest.

Start with a strong subject line

Use a clear, concise, and attention-grabbing subject line. Make it relevant to the journalist’s content and audience. For example: “Exclusive data on [topic]” or “Insights on [industry] trends your readers will love”. Keep it short—aim for 6-10 words—and avoid overly promotional language.

Offer something newsworthy or unique

Journalists are more likely to respond if the content is exclusive, data-driven, or offers a unique angle. Focus on how your content can support their current coverage or bring fresh insights to a trending topic.

Highlight the benefit to their readers

Emphasize how your content will benefit the journalist’s audience. They care more about what’s valuable to their readers than your brand. If applicable, show how your resource answers questions or solves problems relevant to their niche.

Keep it brief and easy to read

Avoid long-winded emails. Stick to a few paragraphs that contain short sentences to make your email easy to scan. Journalists appreciate brevity. Introduce yourself and your pitch within the first couple of sentences. If possible, use bullet points or lists to convey key points more concisely.

Include relevant details and links

Provide the journalist with any necessary links, data, or resources they’d need to evaluate your content, but don’t overwhelm them. Offer to provide further information if needed.

Include a direct link to your content, but avoid attaching files—these can clutter inboxes or get caught in spam filters.

Include a clear call to action

End your email with a polite, clear call to action. Ask whether they’d be interested in covering or featuring your content, and be specific about what you’re hoping for—whether that’s feedback, a link, or a mention. 

Be polite and professional

Maintain a friendly but professional tone. Acknowledge their expertise, and thank them for their time. Avoid making demands, but subtly convey urgency if the content is time-sensitive—e.g., “I’d love to send this over before it goes live elsewhere.” Avoid sounding overly pushy—respect their decision if they’re not interested.

Follow up (but not too much)

If you don’t get a reply after a few days, send a short and polite follow-up. Gently remind them of your initial email, but don’t overdo it—one follow-up is usually enough.

Here’s an example of how we might pitch to realtybiznews.com:

Subject: Exclusive SEO Tips for Realtors from America Property Expo – Perfect for Your Readers?

Hi [Editor’s Name],

I hope you’re doing well. I’ve been following RealtyBizNews for some time and enjoyed your recent article on optimizing real estate listings for search engines. Clearly, your readers value actionable advice on growing their online presence—something we’re passionate about, too.

My name is [Your Name], and I’m speaking at the upcoming America Property Exhibition, where I’ll present a seminar titled “How to Generate Property Views Online.”

Our session will focus on providing actionable SEO tips to help realtors attract more property views and drive traffic to their listings.

We’ll also be publishing a video of the seminar on our website, and we’d love to share exclusive access with you, should you be interested in covering the session.

Please respond and let me know if your readers would enjoy this. I’d be happy to send over more details.

Thank you for your time, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts!

Best regards,
[Your Full Name]
[Your Job Title]
[Your Company]
[Your Contact Information]

Step #6: Monitor your progress 

Lastly, you need to monitor the impact of your digital PR campaigns to determine your success rate. 

If, for example, your press releases aren’t generating the kind of links you want to see, it’s a clear sign you need to go back to the drawing board and try something new. 

How can you tell when you get new PR links?

A great way to know this is by setting up Google Alerts. Doing this will let you receive a notification every time someone mentions your brand online. 

Getting set up on Google Alerts is easy. Go to Google Alerts and type in your brand name and any other terms relevant to your digital PR campaign, such as branded product names.

Adjust the options as required and then click “Create Alert.” You’ll now receive emails whenever your brand or other terms are mentioned online. 

Start Using PR Backlinks to Boost Your Online Visibility 

Now you know what it takes to build high-value PR backlinks for your business. 

By reaching out to relevant news publications and media outlets in your field, you’ll significantly boost your brand awareness and online visibility. 

Do you need help securing top-tier PR backlinks for your business so you can focus on more important things?

If so, check out our advanced link-building services from Authority Builders. We’ve been helping businesses build backlinks since 2016 and we cover everything from Link Outreach to Content Creation and Guest Posts.    

In the past (think pre-internet), the beauty PR game revolved around networking with journalists from influential beauty and fashion magazines to secure brand mentions, features, and reviews. 

Currently, most of these publications have transitioned to the digital space almost entirely, which has led to the prominence of digital PR for beauty brands. 

Besides online beauty magazines, other digital marketing channels have become even more important for beauty brands, such as:

• Social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok
• Building links from influential beauty and fashion websites/publications (for more referral traffic and better search rankings) 
• Prominent beauty and fashion blogs
• User-generated content (think user reviews and social media posts containing photos and videos) 
• Influencer marketing 
• Sponsored content and guest posts on relevant websites 

As you can see, digital beauty PR encompasses quite a lot. 

The global beauty market is set to hit a whopping $615.92 billion in 2024, and it’s an industry brimming with both opportunity and fierce competition – hence the need for stellar promotional techniques. 

In this article, we’ll fully explore the world of digital PR for beauty brands. 

Along the way, we’ll teach you how to develop a digital PR strategy from scratch for your brand to increase your online visibility, search rankings, and brand awareness – so stick around to learn everything you need to know. 

Beauty Brand PR vs. Beauty Product PR: What’s the Difference?

Digital PR for the beauty industry involves boosting awareness and managing the reputation of beauty brands and products. 

For the most part, it’s about getting your beauty brand or products featured on the websites, social media platforms, and publications that matter most to your target audience. 

By securing brand mentions, building backlinks, and creating engaging, authoritative content – beauty brands can expand their influence online. Digital beauty PR isn’t something that you only invest in once, either. 

Instead, it’s a strategic, long-term strategy that pays dividends when done right. 

For example, if you build a bustling online presence and become an authority figure for your target audience, you’ll generate tons of new customers, and you’ll be able to scale your brand as a result. 

Search engine optimization (SEO) also plays a role in digital beauty PR, as it’s always beneficial to boost your visibility on search engines like Google, but it’s only one aspect of the process. 

The digital beauty PR world has two unique branches, which are:

• Beauty brand PR 
• Beauty product PR 

Beauty brand PR is about building a positive image for your brand as a whole, and beauty product PR is focused on generating buzz for specific products and product lines. 

There’s a lot to unpack here, so let’s dive a bit deeper into both concepts. 

Beauty brand PR 

Are you most concerned with positioning your brand as a thought leader and trendsetter?

If so, then beauty brand PR should comprise the majority of your efforts. It’s where you focus on building brand awareness by aligning your brand’s values with those of your target audience. 

Beauty brand PR is best for the following types of businesses:

• Newer brands that have yet to build a loyal customer base. 
• Established brands that have unique value propositions (in other words, you’re truly different from the competition). 
• Brands that are already highly trusted and respected within their niche. 

Remember, this type of PR is all about building a positive image for your brand as a whole. If you’re trying to boost sales for a specific product line, you’re better off using beauty product PR (although there’s certainly no rule stating you can’t incorporate both at the same time). 

Key activities for beauty brand PR 

Whenever your goal is to improve the visibility and reputation of your entire brand, you should take part in the following types of activities:

• Brand storytelling. There’s a reason why 72% of PR professionals consider storytelling to be the most important skill in their profession; it’s because narratives are extremely powerful marketing tools. If you want to effectively use storytelling in your promotional materials, then you need to frame your customer as the hero, while your brand is the Obi-Wan Kenobi-style mentor that helps them transform (i.e., transforming into a more beautiful version of themselves, thanks to your products). 

• Media relations. Newsjacking is a popular brand PR technique where you take a trending news story and insert your brand in some way. In the most successful examples, brands can actually hijack news stories and make it all about them. Arguably the most famous example was when Oreo tweeted about the blackout during Super Bowl XLVII back in 2013. Their claim that ‘you can still dunk in the dark’ placed the cookie brand front-and-center whenever anyone mentioned the news story. 

• Events and event coverage. Keep an eye out for relevant events that you could use to promote your brand. It could be a fashion event, a conference, or even a webinar. The only qualifying factor is that the event must matter to your target audience. 

• Sponsorships and influencer partnerships. If you want your brand to become a household name, you need to partner with the right people. Look for influencers in your specific beauty niche that have significant followings, and then reach out to partner with them in some way. 

Beauty product PR 

If your brand wants to boost sales above all else, then you should look into beauty product PR. It involves heavily promoting specific products and product lines through media outreach, link-building, and other methods. 

Your goal is to get your products featured in prominent ‘best buyer guides’ in your field (preferably from popular bloggers and influencers). 

Beauty product PR is best for:

• Brands eager to boost product revenue. 
• Businesses that have unique product lines that are distinct from competitors. 
• Brands that are about to launch a new product line. 

Third-party reviews are also integral for beauty product PR, so your outreach efforts should include review sites, prominent beauty and fashion blogs, and influencers (that you can hopefully get to review your product). 

Beauty product PR tends to drive more relevant links to your website, which is good not only for referral traffic but also for better search rankings on Google (and other search engines). 

Key activities for beauty product PR 

These are the types of activities you should focus on if your primary goal is to boost product revenue:

• Product launch strategies. If you’re about to launch a new product, you must brainstorm effective ways to promote it, and having an intimate understanding of your target audience really helps. An example would be filming short influencer videos on TikTok if your products cater to younger audiences. It’s also a good idea to designate relevant influencers as ambassadors for your new product launch. 

• Start an affiliate program. One of the most popular ways beauty brands promote their products is through affiliate programs. This is where content creators, affiliate marketers, and influencers sign up to become affiliates for your brand – which means they’ll actively promote your content through their various channels. They receive an official link to direct customers to your products (and they earn a commission for every sale), and you get to enjoy boosted sales and brand awareness. 

• Media features. Get your products featured and reviewed on influential media outlets in your niche, such as websites, online magazines, blogs, and social media profiles. 

While beauty brand PR and beauty product PR are both distinct, they typically intersect – leading to integrated campaigns. As stated before, there’s no reason why you can’t make use of both methodologies, which may actually provide better results. The most effective digital PR strategies are ones that communicate a brand’s values all while promoting its products. 

How to Develop a Digital PR Strategy for Beauty Brands 

Quite a bit needs to go into a digital PR strategy for a beauty brand if you want it to be successful.

It involves building an in-depth list of media contacts, engaging in link-building techniques, creating high-quality content, and conducting outreach to all sorts of professionals (bloggers, influencers, online journalists, etc.). 

To ensure you don’t get overwhelmed, we’ve put together this step-by-step guide for building a digital PR strategy for your beauty brand, so let’s dive right in. 

Step #1: Build a media list 

First, you need to focus your PR efforts where they matter most, which means building a list of relevant media contacts. 

In particular, you need to identify the journalists and publications that are most likely to share your stories and link back to your website. You need to hunt down:

• Media outlets
• Editors
• Bloggers
• Journalists
• Online magazines
• Beauty blogs 
• Social media influencers 

How do you do that?

Luckily, there are several tools that will help you build a bustling list of media contacts, which are:

• Prowly. With Prowly, not only will you find relevant media contacts, but you can also pitch to them directly from the platform (and create press releases). 
• Muck Rack. This is another platform that will connect you with journalists, editors, and bloggers. 
• Google. You can also handle things the old-fashioned way and do Google searches for media outlets, journalists, and bloggers. 

Step #2: Engage in PR link-building 

Whether you’re focusing on beauty brand PR or product PR (or both), you’ll want to build relevant links that point back to your website’s content. 

Why is that?

There are two reasons why. First, the more links you have on other websites pointing at yours, the more you’ll generate referral traffic. 

Next, backlinks are a crucial ranking factor for search engines like Google. They act as ‘credibility votes’ for your website, meaning you need to build links from trusted websites. The more reputable links you have, the higher you’ll rank in the search results. 

Link-building is a core aspect of both SEO and digital PR, which is why you shouldn’t ignore it. 

When engaging in PR link-building for beauty brands, consider the cost of acquiring backlinks to ensure your strategy remains budget-friendly.

Here are the two most common ways digital PR professionals build links:

• By creating compelling content that naturally generates shares (videos, infographics, how-to posts, etc.). 
• By securing brand mentions and guest posts through targeted media outreach. 

Additionally, you can leverage link insertion outreach—placing your link into existing relevant articles—to earn extra high-quality backlinks as part of your digital PR strategy.

Also, you can uncover valuable backlink opportunities by analyzing your competitor’s link profiles. 

How do you do that?

The quickest and easiest way is to use Ahrefs free Backlink Checker tool. Simply enter a competitor’s URL, and you’ll see a breakdown of where their backlinks come from. Pay attention to each referring domain, as you may find viable backlink opportunities for your brand (such as websites in your niche that accept guest posts). 

Step #3: Create engaging and relevant content 

Content creation is another core aspect of digital PR for beauty brands. 

After all, you can’t build a loyal following without releasing top-tier content on a consistent basis. 

However, you shouldn’t create content on a whim or because you think a topic is important. Instead, every topic you cover must be backed up by keyword research. 

Keywords are search terms your audience looks up online, and they provide helpful clues into what type of content your audience wants to see. 

Ahrefs comes in handy again, as their Keyword Generator tool will help you come up with relevant content ideas. Simply enter some keywords related to your brand, and the tool will spit out loads of related suggestions. Try to find keywords with high search volume and low difficulty scores. 

For example, here’s what comes up when we search for ‘skin toner.’ 

The keyword ‘best skin toner’ is a viable option here because it has a decent search volume and an ‘easy’ keyword difficulty ranking. 

Also, the keyword has commercial intent, meaning users searching for it are in the market for a skin toner, and they’re looking for the best one. 

Therefore, the perfect content idea for this keyword is to create a blog post entitled ‘The Best Skin Toner Options for 2024’ and then highlight your offerings in the list. 

Popular digital PR content for beauty brands includes:

• Guest posts 
• Sponsored content
• Infographics
• Data-driven research
• Press releases 
• Reviews 
• Interviews with industry experts 

Step #4: Perform media outreach 

By now, you should have a list of media contacts, and an editorial calendar’s worth of content to release. The only missing piece of the puzzle is to reach out to your contacts to promote your new content. 

When crafting outreach emails, do your best to personalize each message as much as possible. 

In other words, don’t copy and paste the same generic template over and over. Mention the media contact’s first name, compliment their content (include details that prove you actually consumed it), and mention any relevant interests you share. 

From there, mention that your beauty brand has a new product/piece of content that you want to promote, and include a value proposition (what’s in it for them? Will traffic from your audience benefit their brand as well?). 

Here’s a quick example of an outreach email:

Hey (first name), 

I’m writing to you with a unique opportunity for both our beauty brands. I’ve been a huge fan of your content for a while now, especially (specific example). I think your brand has a special style that competitor’s can’t touch, which is why I think we’re destined to be partners. 

We’ve already partnered with (other fashion brands), and they’ve seen (impressive metrics). 

I’d love to promote your products and services on my website and social media, and I’d appreciate it if you’d do the same. I’m super excited about working together, and I’d love to discuss our partnership further over a phone call. Do you think we could schedule something this week?

Best 

(Your name) 

Step #5: Use media monitoring tools to keep track of your progress 

The only thing that’s left to do is to use media monitoring tools to ensure you’re getting closer to meeting your goals. 

What’s media monitoring?

It involves using special tools to notify you whenever your brand gets mentioned in the media, either on a website, blog, or other online source. 

Alerts by Ahrefs really come in handy in this regard. 

By setting up the Mentions Alert, New & Lost Backlinks Alert, and Keywords Alert, you’ll receive an email notification every time that your brand:

• Gets mentioned online 
• Acquires a new backlink (or loses one) 
• Ranks for a new keyword

This will make it effortless to track your digital PR efforts for your beauty brand, and you’ll be able to pinpoint your most successful outreach efforts. 

Use Digital PR to Improve Your Beauty Brand’s Online Visibility Today 

That’s everything you need to develop a digital PR strategy for your beauty business. As long as you stay on top of your efforts through media monitoring, you’ll be able to tweak your strategy to ensure you’re seeing the results you want. 

Better PR means boosted brand awareness, a better reputation, and more sales – so it’s definitely worth the effort. 

Do you need help with the digital PR strategy for your beauty brand?

Authority Builders is here to help. Our team of PR and link-building experts will provide top-tier Guest Posts, Content Creation, and Link Insertion Outreach, so don’t wait to get in touch today.   

The SEO community wears many hats:  the black, the grey, the white, and the money hat. All of these have advantages and disadvantages. In today’s post, we are going to focus on discovering efficient but often overlooked link building methods.

With this goal in mind, we reached out to 30 SEO experts and asked them:

What is an underused (or less common) link building strategy that has brought you great results?

We received a variety of answers. Although some of the techniques recommended below require some financial investments or a strong brand, others can be used by anyone, even by someone that just started a new site, with no budget.

The experts we selected are all successful SEO agency owners and a part of them are international speakers at SEO conferences and events. So rest assured we’ve got you covered with the best experts in the field. Without further introduction let’s read below what they had to say.

Olga Andrienko – Semrush

You’ve probably heard people say, “great content and authentic researches” bring the utmost results when it comes to link-building. But actually…it’s not that clear-cut. What we found at SEMrush (from our own experience) is that it takes much more than great and authentic content to make sure your content brings you any high-quality links at all.

We worked relentlessly over the years to make sure that the SEMrush brand is recognized and trusted as a reliable data provider. So, just conducting a research and giving away some numbers won’t cut in today’s world that’s already oversaturated with data. You have to build enough brand prestige and brand awareness to make sure your “research” efforts actually bring great results.

So only by initially building some quality brand awareness and reliability, will providing numbers and figures actually become the link-building strategy you can leverage. It’s totally white-hat, it increases brand prestige, creates wide brand awareness, and gives you the so-desired backlinks without actual link-building efforts.

Just to give you an example – our research on 40 most common SEO mistakes organically attracted over 200 high-quality backlinks.

What we do differently is we diversify the kind of data we both provide on demand and pitch ourselves – from information on the World Cup or the most recent fashion trends to industry-specific researches on fintech or site performance issues.

That way, we ensure the widest brand exposure possible, and a constant flow of new audience that interacts with our brand. And backlinks, of course!

Eric Enge – Perficient Digital

Here is one that will work for any business that has a decent budget to pursue it. This is the idea of publishing data-rich studies. It does require some real investment of either money or time or both, but it can bring in large-scale dividends. We used it to great affect at Stone Temple Consulting, and now that we’re part of Perficient Digital, we’ll keep on using it to promote our business.

There are many ways to execute these types of studies, but one of them is to interview 1,000 plus consumers on a topic closely related to your business. You can conduct the survey through a platform like SurveyMonkey. Key things you need to do to produce a winning survey:

* Pick a topic that’s of great interest to many people.

* Pick a topic that has not been comprehensively covered by someone else’s survey.

* Create a great question set. This is part art and part science and does take experience to get right.

* Treat the data with great care and integrity. Let the data tell the story. Your pre-conceived bias of what the data would tell you actually mean nothing. Learn from the data, and write your story based on what it tells you.

* Put together a great list of media people who have written about closely related topics.

* Customize each and every single pitch you send out so you maximize your yield from your campaign.

Be prepared for the fact that this is a significant investment, and that results are not guaranteed. And, not every one of these you do will be a big hit. But, we’ve had successes with surveys that have netted 50 or more DA 50 and higher links. Now that’s a home run.

Bonus 2nd idea: Here is one that works surprisingly well for major brands. It’s an old concept, that of finding mentions of your brand that were not implemented as a link, and reaching out to those folks and asking them if they would turn it into a link.

Those of us that have been involved in SEO for 5 years or more know it well, and it works for any site, but most major brands don’t do it at all. And, most major brands have hundreds (or more) unlinked mentions out there, with much of it pointing to high-value deep pages on their site. Turning 10% of those unlinked mentions into links is pure gold!

Publish data-rich studies:

– Build a strong and trustworthy brand.

– Publish data-rich studies that are based on in-depth research and extensive surveys. 

– Analyze those data and then provide efficient solutions to the problems you’ve encountered.

– Pitch these studies to other authority sites from your industry.

Tim Soulo – Ahrefs

Our marketing team at Ahrefs is mostly focused on “earning” links, as opposed to proactively “building” them.

But one of the underused strategies that we’re working on at this very moment is called “unlinked mentions.”

We recently did a search for mentions of our brand name – “Ahrefs” – and were quite surprised how many websites have mentioned us while never linking to our website. Which is a huge low-hanging opportunity.

And besides our main brand name, there are smaller “mentions” that we decided to dig.

For example mentions of my own name – Tim Soulo – there are quite a few articles online where I was mentioned without any link to ahrefs.com. Or mentions of our proprietary metrics: “Domain Rating,” “URL Rating,” etc. Or mentions of the tools from our toolset: “Content Explorer,” “Keywords Explorer,” etc.

In other words, there’s a very good chance that your business (or parts of it) are mentioned online without proper attribution. And, as a link builder, you cannot waste this amazing opportunity.

Chris Makara

One underused tactic is claiming brand mentions where you are not actually getting a link from. For example, by running a few searches on Google you can see who mentions your brand. You can then view the page that mentions you and see if they actually link to your site. If they aren’t, you can reach out to the website and ask for a link to your site.

What’s nice about this approach is that it helps build branded links to your site and reduce the likelihood of having too many keyword rich backlinks.

Of course, not everyone will link to you (just like any other outreach approach), but over time you’ll have an easy way to increase your branded links.

Lukasz Zelezny

I personally see link building as something that needs to be done with care. The old way of simply amassing a huge number of backlinks from any site is no longer a viable strategy. In fact, it will get your site penalized.

What you want is a series of relevant backlinks from quality sites. You can actually create a bigger impact SEO-wise with fewer backlinks, as long as they are of the highest quality. Every little detail matters, from how well your keywords are distributed to whether a reference to your site blends well with the rest of the host site.

In my view, there are two underused link building strategies that you can implement today to get great results. The first one starts with a bit of a research on your brand name and generic keywords that relate well to it. You can use brand tracking tools to find sites that mention your brand name and those keywords; Brand24 does a very good job in most cases.

With the list of mentions in hand, start reaching out to the site owners and webmasters. Thank them for mentioning your brand. Don’t just use a pre-written email. Be sincere and actually talk about the content in which your brand name or keywords appear. You can then ask if those mentions can be converted into links to your site.

The second strategy involves checking incoming links to your social media pages. It is easy to find sites that link to your social media pages, particularly Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. If you have an active YouTube channel or Instagram, capture external links to these pages too.

You will then have a list of sites again, and you can repeat the same process of contacting the webmasters and thanking them. Ask them if these links can be repointed to your main site instead. With these two strategies, you’ll end up with new backlinks that will impact your SEO performance in a big and positive way.

Unlinked brand mentions:

– Research your brand name using a monitoring tool and identify websites that have mentioned your brand without linking to your site. 

– Do the same search for your name and your main keywords

– Contact the site owners and ask them to include a link to your site in the articles where they mention your brand.

– Apply the same strategy to sites that link to your social profiles instead of your site.

Andy Crestodina – Orbit Media

My standard answer is very common. Build link-worthy content and build relationships with people who create content on authoritative websites. Together these two elements create the potential for links to appear organically. It’s been my philosophy for years, it’s fundamental to the basics of SEO, it’s led to thousands of links and many close friendships, and I’ve taught it to lots of companies.

• The first company produced a bit of content, built a few relationships and a few people linked to them
• The second company ignored my advice… and took 10 senior citizens to Burning Man, a huge art party in the desert. Everyone linked to them.

So there are tricks, tactics and best practices. You can make things, do outreach and pitch to the media. Or… you can do something awesome. Be original and make a splash. Which would you rather do?

Aaron Wall – SEO Book

Reaching out to people in a way that is not obviously automated or scaled works quite well.

For instance, if you wanted to interview someone you could mention having read their book, read some of their prior interviews before interviewing them, etc.

Basically, my advice is to do the opposite of everything that is easily outsourced if you are trying to make a good impression with someone you really care to connect with.

Dimitar Karamarinov

Link building comes in many forms but what works best are the genuine contextual topically-relevant links to your target pages. Personally, I never trust pure chance and I always put the manual effort to use. Natural links can and do happen but just making great content and pray for links is not a viable option.

I myself have done a ton of outreach and let me tell you I really do that a lot:

– cold outreach, tier outreach (contacts of contacts), force outreach (“the dark side is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural” and implementing that dash of evilness can really work well for people refusing to collaborate), multifront outreach (1:1 has nothing to do with how things happen when 2:1 or 3:1)

– answering “input requests” as I call them, such as Haro, Response Source, Source Bottle, Journorequests, the many other Twitter hashtags, Facebook blogging and link building groups, slack channels, Reddit threads, and etc. etc. etc my list goes on.

But the one thing that really matters is to just be an honest and caring human being.

Of course, if you want to do my “force reach” mojo, arm yourself with “weapons” such as ddos, spam links and etc. tools for repression and go crazy terrorizing people (be careful tho, for somebody might fight back.

Once I had my entire domain and website suspended from the registrar, lol), or start outreaching in teams of 2 or 3 (if you manage to pare well, that multifront outreaching can work wonders). These are more of methods than strategies but still are concepts that I’ve never seen anybody mention.

But again, if you’re not “real” and honest to what you do, you’ll most likely end up being ignored. The web is run by machines but ultimately meant for humans and showing compassion and care for the person on the other end does and will always do more than “work”.

I’ve nailed quite a few beast domains with history and metrics off the chart, where one link can cost you a kidney if sold at all, but what’s the really valuable “thing” are all the good friends I’ve met.

People I can have a meaningful conversation with and collaborate way beyond one stupid link. This is the most underused “strategy” of all. Sadly, most people in the link building game cannot see beyond that.

So my most honest and sincere advice would be to build real and meaningful relations and care for more than your own well-being and self.

Adam Connell – Blogging Wizard

One of the more underused link building tactics I’ve used is networking – particularly creating a network of influential folks in your niche.

I’ve had a good bit of success with this and scored some great links.

And on the flip side, it’s easy to see why acquiring links from your contacts works better than cold outreach.

For example:

I get loads of link requests (most outreach emails suck). But if I get a link request from someone I know and trust – the decision of whether to link out gets a whole lot easier. So I’m more likely to say yes because the trust is already established.

And in some cases, you may not even need to ask for the link.

The only challenge with this technique is that it does not scale, and it takes a lot of time to develop these relationships and even more time to maintain them.

Is it worth it? Definitely – even if it can only be done on a small scale.

Justin Morgan – Dental Marketing Guy

When it comes to link building, it’s as much who you know as it is what you know. I’ve found that teaming up with SEO and marketing experts in other industries can yield great collaboration and results.

Teaming up with people in my industry who help dentists in different ways (things other than SEO and web design) can prove useful with link building.

At the end of the day, if you can’t convince someone else to link to you, all the SEO skills in the world will fail against someone who has great relationships with the right people.

As I’ve ascended through the ranks in the dental industry, I’ve noticed that making a favorable impression with well-respected and influential people can carry amazing link-building potential!

Influencer networking

– Reach out to people in an authentic, personalized way.

– Network with influencers and build genuine relationships with other site owners from your niche.

– Although some of your friends may link to your site without you asking them, it’s always best to ask them for a link when it’s appropriate.

– Create partnerships with other internet marketers from your industry. Always offer a win-win situation where both parts can benefit.

Minuca Elena

Link building is all about creating relationships with other bloggers and giving them a reason to link to your content. The type of content that you publish matters a lot. My favorite articles are, obviously, expert roundups.

This type of posts gets a lot of engagement, social shares, and backlinks. Although some say that they are a bit overdone in some niches but if you know how to make them right roundups bring excellent results. Start by building a strong brand and a good image as an expert in your niche.

Connect with other bloggers and influencers from your niche to learn from them and to make friends. This attitude is much better than seeing everyone else as competitors or potential clients for your services or products.

Invite your friends and mentors to a roundup. If they know you and respect you, then most of them will accept. After the post goes live, ask them to help you promote it by sharing and linking to the post. It’s very important the way you ask. Don’t write a template email and cc everyone in it. Talk with each person in particular and ask them for a favor. Don’t try to take advantage of them and don’t be too pushy.

Another one of my favorite ways of getting backlinks is by featuring in roundups. There are many posts like this where you can send an answer, get a backlink and improve your image.

It’s so easy. Instead of spending time doing cold outreach for guest posts, it’s much more efficient to write 200-300 words and get a link. Make a habit to not refuse any roundups, interviews or podcasts. It doesn’t matter if the site is new or it has a low DA. A site with a low DA today that is offering you for free a backlink, can have a high DA next year and then it could be much more difficult to get a link from it.

There are many ways of getting featured in roundups. Use resources like Source Bottle, HARO, MyBlogU.

I have done over 40 roundups in lots of different niches. They work for any site (e-Commerce, affiliate, authority site etc), in any niche.

Aaron Lee – Ask Aaron Lee

We all know that link building is still play a role in SEO, When done correctly, it will boost ranking and will 100% help improve website traffic. One of the underused link building strategies that I personally do for one of my blogs is to collect influencer opinions for a roundup post (just like this one).

Once I’ve collected. created and published the roundup post, I’ll send an email to all the people I’ve interviewed and politely mention that they could share it with their followers or link to it on their website. Some will just share, some will do both. Either way, it’s better to mention it rather than just asking them to share the post.

You’ll be surprised with the results.

Shane Barker

According to Google executive Andrey Lipattsev, content and links are the top two factors that Google considers when determining search rankings. Reason enough for people to give a lot of emphasis to their link-building efforts.

Now, there are several ways you can go about earning backlinks, but I’d like to talk about one of the more underused ones. I can personally attest to its efficacy as it has served me well.

Expert Roundups – It’s common knowledge that interviewing industry influencers and experts is a good way to earn authority backlinks. Many websites leverage this, but often only in one post involving a single interview. That earns you just the one backlink from the influencer.

Why settle for just the one? If you want to earn more backlinks and fast, conduct regular expert roundups. Ask multiple influencers one maybe two questions and quote them in your roundup posts. This way you’ll earn a good 10 or 20 backlinks (or more) from high-authority sites and industry experts.

Compile a sizeable list of experts you want to interview and email them your questions. Subtly mention they can share the roundup with their followers or even link back to it on their page if they want to.

The advantage here is two-fold. Not only will you gain several quality backlinks, but a roundup like this will rake in engagement for you. After all, it’s being shared with your audience as well as those of your experts.

I’d go so far as to recommend making it a regular thing. I publish one or two every month, for instance.

Expert roundups:

– Publish expert roundups where you feature opinions of the top influencers from your niche.

– Through a roundup, you provide high-quality content to your readers, and you get to connect with many other industry experts.

– Organize and design the layout of the post in a very appealing way that will make it a valuable resource.

– Reach out to the experts from the post and ask them if they can help you promote the post and link to it.

– Be friendly and helpful. Focus on building a long-term relationship, not only on chasing a link

Artëm Klimkin – LinksHero

The more things change, the more they stay the same, right?

So…I have been fairly successful with something that’s been overused during the last 2-3 years and therefore labeled with “doesn’t work”.

The something is – infographics.

Infographics helped me to build links to affiliate money pages.

Infographics got my clients into respectable publications.

Infographics even got a stream of people looking for me to contribute on their websites.

Yes, they work.

Yes, there is a caveat.

Infographics are just a medium, so you need a solid idea that your audience will find useful.

A good question to ask here is – if someone shared your work, would you find it useful?

I recommend using this medium to:

· Condense research and findings into a bite-size information

· Include specific details and numbers into it

· Keep it up to a point

And here is a little bonus.

If you want to find a proven topic for an infographic, find a listicle type post with many backlinks pointing at it.

Create an infographic about the subject.

You can now pitch the infographic to all those people linking to the original article + anyone else interested in the subject.

Good luck!

Jon Dykstra – Fat Stacks Blog

One of my favorite underused link building strategies is coming up with and commissioning informative graphics and illustrations that I let other bloggers use as long as they provide an attribution link. These are not infographics. Instead, they’re an illustration or a design or some form of unique graphic that provides information that only an illustration can provide.

I’ve produced over 50 of these for one niche site and they attract links. If I were to promote these I’d probably get more links, but I don’t bother and still attract natural links from these.

The cost to produce these is less than you think. I hire skilled graphic designers in the Philippines and my main designer can do one to two per week which ends up costing me $50 to $100 per illustration. If ever you’ve commissioned an infographic, you know that $50 to $100 is much less than a professionally created infographic.

Another favorite method for attracting links naturally is to collect poll data from website visitors and email subscribers and then publishing the results in my content. Data and statistics attract links quite nicely and it’s the easiest content to create because it’s the result of a very simple poll or survey.

Infographics & illustrations

– Infographics are a popular type of content that gets backlinks.

– To be successful, your infographics should have a beautiful design and be based on detailed research.

– Alternatively, you can publish informative graphics and illustrations. These are similar to infographics but you can get them at a lower price.

James Reynolds – SEO Sherpa

No matter what the industry or the size of the company, businesses love to publish testimonials. Often, these testimonials appear on the website homepage because everybody loves to show off when a good word is said about them.

And, since businesses also want to prove their testimonials are real, they will often provide a link back to the source (you) to verify. This means high-power links from the website’s most authoritative page.

Here are the steps:

-Make a list of every product you recently purchased or service you recently used.-Check each of the sites of these services or products for the opportunity to provide a testimonial.-Submit or email a short written testimonial letting the site know you are happy for it to appear on their website.-Don’t forget to ask that they include a link to your site alongside it.

In the future, keep an eye out for relevant sites that include testimonials, and seriously consider buying their product so that you can submit a recommendation. The value of the resulting link can be well worth the cash outlay.

Quentin Aisbett – OnQ Marketing

Here’s a couple of quick link building tips:

1. We’ve had great success providing testimonials to relevant services within the same industry. It’s a great way to get a contextual link and further promote yourself as an authority to a new audience.

Not to mention, the conversion rate is much higher because the website publishing your testimonial is getting something valuable. I should note though, not every site with testimonials is going to provide a link.

2. While not a tactic for every situation. Look at the sites that are ranking for your target search terms. Do any of them feature outdated research or still have last year in their title? If so you’ve got a great opportunity.

Look at the sites that link to them still and reach out with your post, demonstrating that it’s more up to date and relevant to their readers.

Steve Wiideman – Wiideman Consulting Group

Creative link bait ideas have always been a hallmark of a successful link-earning campaign with our clients.

When a business serves their local area, one strategy that has worked well is a quarterly event, such as Free CPR Lessons, Blood Drive, Backpacks for Kids, Stockings for the Homeless, and Disaster Readiness Workshops.

Getting neighboring businesses and charities to link to this type of content yields a much higher response rate than referencing an article, and allows for structured markup opportunities where event names and dates can appear within organic results. Those are our favorite link-earning ideas at Wiideman Consulting Group.

Testimonials

– Write testimonials for services and products that you have used.

– The companies that will feature your testimonial on their site will most likely link to you as a way of proving that you are a real consumer.

– If your business is local, create events a few times per year, and ask other local businesses and charities for a link.

David Krauter – Websites That Sell

Real News Exposure!

I’m not talking about getting your release on thousands of news websites via PR Web, NewsWire or even some cheap Fiverr gig.

Coming up with a REAL interesting story about your business, finding a hook for this story that’s going to make it newsworthy and get real coverage by a local journalist and the local paper.

Why are these links powerful?

You get topic relevance, geo-relevance on high authority, high traffic sites.

Yes, you may only get coverage on a few, but these few links have stuck some of our clients to the top of the No.1 positions for years (among other activities of course) however it’s the local, topic and real traffic relevance that makes these links powerful.

Will it require a little more work, a little outside the box thinking?

Yes of course… but if it didn’t – everyone would be doing it

Nedelina Payaneva – Asian Absolute

Local Business Citations

Local link building is an ideal back-linking opportunity for you. You can get great links and you can draw additional traffic from the many people who routinely use local searches to find businesses near them.

Local Business Citations are key factors if you want to improve your positions in local search results. While creating your local business citation, make sure to add the same “NAP” i.e. Name, Address and Phone number you feature on the website.

These citation links are important for local rankings and help search engines (Google, Yahoo, and Bing) to verify your business location.

Links from Yelp, Yahoo Local, Yellow Pages, Bing Local etc. create authority for your website and can help improve your rankings in local search results.

Effective Guest Blogging

Building quality links is all about providing unique and helpful content. You need to show those high authority sites why they should link back to you.

One effective way to earn high-quality backlinks is through guest posting. Some say guest posting is a dead practice, but it still has some bearing if you know how to do it right.

You are showing the users and the search engines that you are an expert in your niche by establishing authority in high domain guest posting sites.

The most important thing to remember when creating content for other sites is that you are doing it for more than a link. You are aiming to educate and add value to your target audience. That should be the main goal of guest blogging.

A link back and any clicks from the blog to your site should be secondary. Taking this approach will help keep your practice ethical and within Google’s guidelines.

Andrew Lowen – Next Level Web

Although this may sound controversial to some people, utilizing web valuation sites are a quick and simple way to help build links and brand awareness to your website. These types of sites not only help new sites get indexed quickly, but they also help strengthen established sites and improve keyword ranking. Utilizing these types of sites takes very little time and can bring in a lot of value.

For example, the valuation site cubestat.com has a domain authority (MOZ DA) of 60. When a URL is submitted to cubestat, a profile page is created and featured on the cubestat.com homepage. Sites like this are crawled multiple times a day by search engines and can directly benefit your website.

But not all valuation sites are beneficial. There are quite a few out there that have little-to-no value and have even been flagged by some search engines as spam. You definitely do not want to get your website tied up with these sites as it may harm you in the process. The best thing to do is to follow these three tips:

1. Make sure the site is indexed and prominently listed in the major search engines. Simply, go to your search engine and type in “website valuation sites.” The valuation sites that appear on the first few pages have high value and are ranked well in the search.

2. Check the authority of the valuation site you are interested in. A high domain authority score (MOZ DA) is another good factor in determining how much value that site has.

3. Trust your instincts. If you have looked over an evaluation site and are still not comfortable with using it, simply leave the site and search out others.

By utilizing these high authority websites, you can leverage their power to help boost the success of your website and invest the extra time you save into building more links.

News Exposure & Local Business Citations

– Come up with an interesting story about your business and pitch it to local reporters. Links from newspapers bring a lot of traffic and improve your rankings.

– Get links from local business citations sites like Yelp, Yellow pages, Yahoo local. These links are very useful for traditional businesses that provide services in a certain area.

– Use web valuation sites to grow your brand awareness and get some quick links.

– Do in-depth research before submitting your site to such websites. Links from some web valuation sites can hurt your rankings so be careful and use this method with moderation.

Steven Kang – SEO Signals Lab

Internal linking is often underutilized by SEOs and its power is often underestimated. I’ve been testing this on a large scale and I’ve witnessed over 80% positive rankings. It seems Google is forgiving with the exact match anchor text as well which is a big plus.

Here is an example. After getting 1,000 pages of content indexed, I’ve added 3 exact match internal links on the footer of each page targeting a specific page to see what happens.

After 3 months, all three keywords with several thousand searches a month moved up from page 2 to page 1. I was then able to replicate the process on other sites. You are missing out if you don’t take advantage of it.

Dave Schneider – LessChurn.io

Buying websites. It’s somewhat of a little-known fact that you can buy existing websites/domains, transfer the content, if there is any, and redirect all of the links to your main domain.

What’s difficult about this strategy is finding quality websites for sale at a price that you feel is worth it.

You want to make sure that your site monetizes the traffic better than the one that’s selling, and that the traffic is relevant. You can look on sites like Flippa to find options.

Dennis Seymour – LeapFroggr

I have a simple answer to this.

I offered free web design work in exchange for being able to place links or an opportunity to place them in the future because I built a relationship with the owner, usually government, influencers or celebrities.

It’s underused because resources are needed but you can’t deny the results.

Less common link building strategies

– Take advantage of the power of internal linking. Many people focus only on getting links from other sites so they forget or neglect the value that internal links have.

– Buy sites, transfer their content on your blog, and redirect all of their links.

– Consider offering free services in exchange for backlinks.

– The two strategies mentioned above can be quite pricey so make sure that you’re applying these tips only on very good sites.

Julien Raby – Combustible

Utilize job posting websites.

In most industries, there are local job posting/directory sites and most of them still have dofollow links. We find this tactic to be very scalable. We have 100+ clients and we’ve been able to get easy, strong links for the better part of them.

We recommend posting an offer for an intern as sometimes the ad will be free.

And as an added bonus, some clients have found value in having interns in their company and now make it a recurring tactic.

Kellen Kautzman

Link building is the foundation for increasing SEO, and now possibilities are exponential with the use of images and video on social media.

As the second largest referrer of traffic to websites, Pinterest presents amazing opportunities to share quality content and simultaneously reap SEO rewards. On this platform, when you link an image back to your website it counts as a backlink, and that link can be measured in the Google Search console.

Furthermore, every time the image is re-pinned (shared), the link duplicates. This means that a picture that is relevant to your business can create hundreds of backlinks, which is huge for SEO and rankings.

We’ve built tens of thousands of links from Pinterest by creating customized photos that have subsequently gone viral. Some of our best-performing pins have been for a dog rescue organization where we’ve received over 36,000 re-pins on original funny Corgi memes we created.

Because the photos on Pinterest link back to our website, each time they are repinned, we receive another link to our site.

Job posting sites & Pinterest links:

– Use job posting sites and directories when searching for interns or new employees. Some of these links may be do follow.

– Although, backlinks from social media are no follow, getting a post viral helps with your SEO.

– A post that is reshared thousands of times will bring you an increase in traffic and social signals that will indicate to Google that your content is great.

Zac Johnson

With more than a billion active sites on the internet today — all of which are creating content — it’s extremely tough to rank a website or blog against the competition and established sites that have already been ranking for years.

In order to successfully compete in this online world of search, social, and SEO, you must do the following:

• Create better content than the competition (and have at least 2,000+ words)
• Go for long tail keywords and use them in sub-sections of your content
• Include references, original images/charts, or even create infographics
• Promote the heck out of your articles through social, backlinking and guest blogging

At the end of the day, it really comes down to these few simple steps. As you can see, most of these are accomplished through time and effort, and not just throwing freelancers or money at the problem. Follow them, and you will find success with ranking in the search results.

Sean Si – SEO Hacker

Based on my experience, along with the experience of our skilled link building team, there are truly no underused link building tactics, as we use a varying amount of link building strategies to our clients and tend to use a combination of them in order to become successful.

Important elements of a successful link building strategy include sticking to the right niche, building relationships with webmasters, stealing quality competitor links, and thorough research and experimentation.

With our clients coming from different kinds of industries, sticking to the same link building strategies might spell disaster and bad results. Being adaptive to current trends bodes well for our link building, as we are able to generate great results that leave our clients satisfied.

Like other digital marketing strategies, link building is a diverse world that requires a lot of trial and error in order to become successful.

Greg Elfrink – Empire Flippers

Guest posting is tried and true, and it is something we do A LOT. It is not as sexy as other link building methods, but it is a great way to build real relationships with influential people in your space that can really help grow your brand.

We also look for more than just a backlink from our guest posting. We’re looking to do deeper collaborations that will get us mentioned over and over again to the influencer’s audience.

A good example of this is with Matt Diggity’s The Lab course, we did a module all about buying and selling online businesses. This piece of content doesn’t provide backlinks in the traditional sense, but it gives us an awesome amount of credibility for anyone that buys the course.

Also, this kind of collaboration makes us more on the influencer’s mind, which leads to many natural links occurring in their normal content.

Matt Brooks – SEOteric

1. Authenticity Wins

– When we reach out for links, our first step is to make sure the subject of the link we are trying to create matches the publication. Google isn’t dumb, so if it sees a link to a trucking service in an article about lipstick on a health and a beauty site, you better believe red flags are going up.

Once we are sure there is a logic behind the link, we reach out to the publication owners and offer value- not in the form of money, but in the form of knowledge and expertise. We represent over 100 different companies who all have their own specialties, so when we try to find links for, say, a pizza franchise, we offer ourselves as experts on the topic.

If there is interest, we then look for opportunities to either contribute to existing content or contribute an entirely new post. At this point, the publication owners will usually quote a price for adding content, and if it’s reasonable, we proceed.

When we add the link, we make sure the content surrounding it flows with the article and actually provides value. This way everyone is happy, even Google!

2. Build Partnerships

– If you serve multiple clients, try to reuse a publication as many times as possible. It is way easier reaching out to someone you’ve already worked with and you are giving them more business.

We have put links for 10 different clients on the same publication, which is only possible because the subject matter on the publication’s site is diverse enough to relate to all 10 clients. Remember, the subject of the link should match the publication.

Quality content & guest posting

– Create in-depth quality content for your blog. Include visual elements.

– Promote your articles on social media and then start a guest blogging campaign to get links to it.

– Reach out to sites from the same niche, so the links you get make sense.

– Experiment with different link building strategies to see what works best and build a diverse link profile.

Matthew Woodward

The strategy I’m suggesting is quite simple, spy on your competitors and get the links they get. Otherwise known as reverse engineering competitor backlinks.

Reverse engineering is simple, yet it takes a bit of creativity.

You need to complete an analysis to figure out why your competitor got its links, using these steps.

1. Start by making a list of your competitors in the top 10 search results.
2. Ignore those that have few links as well as those that have a strong brand and get links exclusively due to their fame.
3. Then analyze the backlinks with the help of Ahrefs or Serped.
4. In Ahrefs, go to the Site Explorer, add your competitor, and once you have the results, click on the link that says Backlinks.
5. There, click on the Link type button, and export the whole list of URLs you get.
6. With this list, you want to open each link and figure out how and why they got the link.

Then you need to ask yourself, is it because of the quality of their content? Is it because they offer something unique and valuable? You want to know the why behind the link.

Then replicate it.

It would be remiss of me to discuss link building strategies though, without first ensuring that you have a site worth linking to.

Jimmy Rodriguez

When you are trying to increase the number of backlinks your website receives, you need to implement a variety of strategies simultaneously. However, all the strategies in the realm of possibility will barely produce any results if there is nothing worthy of a backlink.

Solid, well-written content and copy is the foundation of any backlink campaign. It must be interesting and informative, capable of answering a question that customers may have. Additionally and importantly, it must be well-written, and not just in terms of SEO (though that is vital, of course). When most people see copy riddled with confused grammar, syntax errors and poor diction, they immediately assume that the website is a scam.

Remember that websites do not decide to give backlinks to other websites through an algorithm. This decision rests solely with a human being, meaning your content must be relevant to that human being and what they do. If they like what they see, then you will have an easier time of persuading them to throw you a backlink.

Naturally, producing high-quality content and copy is not the only action required in your strategy. However, it is an essential and valuable step that can make or break your attempts. You can only receive backlinks if you earn them.

“Steal” your competitors’ links

– Research the sites of your main competitors. See who links to them.

– Create better, more in-depth and up to date content than them.

– Reach out to the sites that link to your competitors and inform them that you wrote a piece on the same topic that is much better than the one they are linking to.

No matter which tactics you choose, keep your budget in mind – our link-building pricing guide can help you estimate the costs of different link-building strategies.

Thank you so much to all the experts that contributed to this post! There are many golden nuggets here. Link building is part science, part art. You have to try and experiment with different techniques and see what work best in your niche.

If you have any questions let us know in the comments below and we will soon answer.

Don’t forget sharing is caring.

Backlinks are by far the top search engine ranking factor for showing up on Google’s first page.    

Why is that? Because backlinks form the basis for the PageRank update that laid the cornerstone for Google’s ranking algorithm.          

Not only that, but independent research has also confirmed that there is a direct correlation between backlinks and organic traffic. 

A study conducted by Ahrefs concluded that 90% of content gets no traffic from Google at all. 

With that said, let’s explore why backlinks are so important and how you can create a winning backlink strategy for your business. 

What is a Backlink Strategy and Why is it Important?

Backlinks are simply links that point back to your website from a different domain.  

The best part about backlinks is that they can help boost your website or blog just by hyperlinking back to you from an authoritative source.   

In fact, a study published on Backlinko found that the number of domains linking to a page was the number one factor that had the highest correlation to rankings on Google.  

Additionally, there is a ton of opportunity to be found from high domain authority websites by creating a successful backlink strategy. 

Backlinks help prove to Google that your website is valuable, credible, and useful to its users. 

That’s why they can be so helpful for your digital marketing strategy. 

One way to track the number of backlinks you receive is by using Google Analytics. 

Google Analytics is a free tool developed by Google to help you track your SEO metrics and  referral traffic

With Analytics, you can see any broken or new backlinks you may receive. 

The more backlinks your website has, the higher your authority and trustworthiness is. And, the higher your authority, the higher you will rank on Google. 

How Do You Create a Backlink Strategy?

To be able to boost the ranking of your business on Google search results, you will need to improve your link-building methods and begin to find high-quality sources that will donate some of their domain authority.   

As a site owner, you need to begin designing your backlink strategy. 

Here are some methods you can use right now to earn backlinks:

• Reclaim unlinked brand mentions
• Get contextual links
• Become a source for publishers
• Reach out to other thought-leaders in your industry
• Update old pre-existing content
• Create infographics
• Publish ultimate guides for your audience

Write shareable and long-form content

At first glance, long-form content doesn’t seem like it’s good for user engagement. However, long-form content on average receives 77.2% more backlinks than short articles. 

To be able to win backlinks, you need to create a content marketing strategy that has high-quality content. 

It would be best to make sure your content is:

• Authoritative 
• Relevant
• Unique
• Natural

For example, an Ahrefs case study suggests that statistics pages tend to get a lot of backlinks.

Additionally, here are a few tips for writing long-form content:

• Section off your ideas into headers 
• Make sure your thoughts are well organized
• Use a conversational tone throughout your piece of content
• Hook the reader with an engaging introduction
• Add images and other visuals to break up long sections 

Broken link building

Broken link building is basically just finding broken links on website pages and reaching out to the webmasters and replacing their source with a relevant piece of content you’ve created. 

Broken link building can be an effective tool in your link-building toolkit. 

Just be careful not to come across as a shady salesman when outreaching. 

Keep it natural and authentic, and remember that you are trying to build a relationship. 

With that said, here are a few suggestions for broken link building:

• Find relevant broken pages with broken anchor text via search engine results (SERPs)
• Vet the backlinks before publishing
• Create a replacement page that’s optimized with search engine optimization
• Avoid spammy websites when building your backlink profile
• Perform appropriate blogger or webmaster outreach via social media or email

Write guest posts

Writing guest posts can be effective for building backlinks. 

In fact, a survey polled 70 correspondents who outreach for guest blogging and 60% end up writing 1 to 5 guest posts per month.

Here are a few ways you can begin ghost blogging for backlinks:

• Find guest post targets of authority sites
• Send your pitch
• Write out your new piece of content for your guest post
• Follow up with targets
• Influencer outreach
• Offer a link exchange

Create a podcast

Podcasts can be a fun and effective way to earn high-quality links. Podcast listeners account for about 20.3% of all internet users.

Here are a few suggestions for using podcasting to earn help your link-building strategy :

• Begin your podcast with the goal of getting backlinks
• Create a link-building target list
• Create a thought-leadership list
• Find email addresses for your target list
• Outreach
• Publish episodes
• Ask for a backlink

Look for brand mentions

One great method to use for gaining more backlinks is a tried and true practice of finding unlinked mentions of your brand name and turning them into links. 

This practice involves a simple strategy of searching for anywhere your business is mentioned that isn’t linked back to you. You can then outreach and ask for a backlink. 

Most of the time, the webmaster will be more than happy to give you a link. 

• Run a Google search with your brand name as a keyword
• Search for tagged posts
• Stay on the lookout for Google alerts
• Craft a great pitch

High-Quality Backlinks vs Low-Quality Backlinks

Now that you know how important backlinks are for your digital marketing strategy, you may be wondering what the difference is between low-quality backlinks and high-quality backlinks. 

The difference between the two is:

• High-quality links are authoritative, relevant, and hold value
• Low-quality links are irrelevant, not authoritative, and spammy

Low-quality links can be easier to come by and are often self-created or requested. 

High-quality links need to be earned by creating great content that is useful or informative. 

For example, a website that lets anyone submit a link is not very likely to have high curated content that could offer any type of domain authority.

Also, keep in mind that links to your website from a spammy domain are low-quality and generally useless. It may even hinder your rankings in SERPs. 

White-hat links are a great way to pay for a backlinking service that offers clean, legal, and natural backlinks that are not against Google’s guidelines. 

That said, let’s move on to the best tools to use for backlinks:

Best Link Building Tools 

On Google, high-quality link building makes for 30% of your entire page score. Not only that, but businesses with blogs obtain 97 percent more backlinks to their website and see an increase in their Google ranking. 

With that said, here are some of the best backlink tools on the market today:

JustReachOut

Because guest posting is one of the best ways to earn backlinks, JustReachOut is a great place to find and pitch to reporters and journalists. 

PR is one of the most powerful ways to link-build and when done right, PR can earn high-quality links from authority news sites. 

The issue is that most outreach platforms are designed to help you find bloggers, not journalists. 

If your content is in alignment with authoritative news outlets, then JustReachOut is the platform for you. 

Linkody

Linkody is a user-friendly backlink tracker. It’s a paid tool, but it offers a ton of features for being one of the least expensive tools on the market. 

With Linkody you can see the exact pages that get the most links. 

This is useful for reverse engineering because you can see what’s working for your competitors and figure out how you can do the same. 

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is the world’s largest backlink index. Ahrefs offers link building software suite designed specifically for SEO professionals. 

It also has a ton of features such as:

• Target keyword research tool
• Content Explorer
• Rank tracking
• Technical SEO website and link audits

The cool thing about Ahrefs is that it has a ton of advanced features for pros, but it’s also really user-friendly for people just beginning to enter the SEO world. 

You can register for a free account and get a full analysis of your backlinks which includes how many you have, where they came from, and the anchor text used. 

BuzzSumo

Buzz Sumo is a paid tool with a free trial, but it offers a huge amount of data and other information about who is linking to you, your competitors, and how your content is performing as a result of any backlinks you may have earned. 

You not only can find opportunities for links, but you can also find out what type of content attracts the most backlinks. 

That’s About It!

Backlinks are the most important ranking factors for reaching your goal on the first page of Google. 

If you aren’t sure where to begin or need some expert advice on building the perfect backlink strategy, we’re here to help!

Register today!

Some of the best backlinks out there can be had for free, as long as you can provide something most brands can’t get enough of: Social proof.

What is social proof? Who wants it? And more importantly…

How do you leverage that desire to get super-powerful free links, free content, and even free stuff delivered to your home?

That’s what you’re going to learn in this guide, along with all the advice you need to do it right the first time. Let’s look at…

• What is social proof?
• How the “Social Proof Link Strategy” works
• Where to find prospects
• How to craft compelling pitches
• How to follow up on a successful pitch
• A look at the crazy results we’ve gotten.  Like this…

Homepage Testimonial Link  

Video Version

Consider this a new standard for my posts.  Here’s a short video version of the below content for all you visual consumers.

For everyone else…

What is social proof?

It’s both a way to describe human behavior and one of the big goals of any advertising department. First, the original concept…

• Q: What is social proof?
• A: Social proof is a psychological concept that was created to describe how we tend to mimic the behavior of others when we’re in unfamiliar situations.

Endorsements, surveys (“4 out of 5 dentists agree”) and other means are all used to convince customers that they can feel confident about making a decision to buy.

That confidence is something you can help provide. Brands crave outside reviews, testimonials and ratings.

How do you make the connection? Here’s an example.

Example: How to provide social proof

Imagine you have a budding health site. You’re aware that some people in your niche (let’s say a supplement site called TestoMonsters) are still working on building their authority.

BONUS: FREE Guide on How to Acquire High-Quality Links​

Maybe their homepage is completely bare of any encouraging endorsements.

This is your opportunity. Reach out to the guys at TestoMonsters. Tell them you have an authoritative health site and you’re considering to review their product.

In return, you’d like a backlink to your post.

This is an easy sell

TestoMonsters wants their prospects to know that people are reviewing their product favorably.

If you apply the strategy discussed next, you can leverage this desire for social proof into much more than just one choice link in your niche.

The Social-Proof Link Strategy

The goal of this strategy is to leverage the desire that brands have for social proof at a larger scale. To think not just in terms of one link, but maybe 20 over a period of time. Maybe a stack of free content. Maybe some swanky free products.

That’s going to take ambitious outreach and a strong pitch, but don’t worry, because this guide is going to tell you how to handle those in just a bit.

For now, let’s focus on your link targets. To pull this off without wasting time, you need to target people who have a lot of need for social proof. People like…

• product manufacturers
• product/brand owners
• course creators
• service providers

They’re going to want social proof that keeps their product in a positive (but objective-looking) light. What kind of content would that be? Well, to stick with the supplement example, titles like…

• Top 5 Testosterone Boosters
• The Best Boosters for Bulking
• Venus Factor Review

If you’re doing client SEO for a local business you could apply the technique locally. Here are two example businesses and titles that could make for a compelling pitch.

If you’re doing ecommerce, you can go for a shoulder niche.

If you’re feeling skeptical that this could make a difference, make sure you don’t miss the data at the end. We’ve got some numbers to show you.

Why does this work?

Companies want these offers because this kind of content is valuable social proof. They want their website visitors to know they’re mentioned on top 5 lists or raved about in influential places.

Sometimes you’ll even get homepage links—that’s how important it is to them to show off their ratings.

• Q: Won’t it look weird to receive too many link exchanges?
• A: It won’t look weird to have link exchanges as long as you’re diversifying with plenty of other links. Nonetheless, if you are worried, then just link to their Amazon listing instead.

For now, the most important part of this strategy is connecting with valuable link targets. Let’s focus on where to find them.

Where to find people

If you have experience in a niche, you know where the best fishing spots are. In almost any niche, you can…

• Reverse engineer your competitors, see who they link out to
• Look in affiliate networks
• Go nuts browsing on Amazon

BONUS: FREE Guide on How to Acquire High-Quality Links​

If all that sounds like too wide a net, you can just brainstorm. Anywhere online that people in your local area or niche congregate can be a good source of relevant leads.

How to find their emails

Some high-value partners (in order to avoid spam) avoid making their direct emails too easy to find. You can usually locate it by…

• Searching their site: If the contact information isn’t on the homepage or sitewide footer, it is often still listed on the contact page. Be prepared to go a few clicks deep into contact page links to get the real email.
• Using scrapers like hunter.io: This application uses a full name to scrape from public profiles all over the internet. From the data, it gathers the most likely contact information for the name.  ContactOut can even get you phone numbers.
• Social selling: Contact them through the social pages (not their private profiles) for their product or company. Ask for more direct contact information if they seem receptive in direct chats.

How to write compelling pitches

If you’re going to be managing a lot of contacts (it’s wise to build a long list), you can use email clients designed for outreach to make things easier. The following platforms have features like automation, targeted tracking, and reply management.

• PitchBox
• Mailshake
• Gmass

Doing it manually is always an option.

If you have no experience with these tools or methods, you can catch up with this scalable white hat guide. There, you’ll find in-depth information on snooping contact information, organizing it and developing a written pitch.

Here’s an example pitch that you can modify for your social proof campaigns. It works better when they have some incentive. In example 1, the incentive is getting placed on the list. In example 2, the incentive is improving a poor position on a list.

Example pitch email: Opening Pitch I

Hello _____________,

I wanted to reach out to you about an article I’m getting ready to publish about The Top [Products] in [Niche].

[Your Product] only came to my attention after the list was done, but if you’d be willing to link to our results, it would be worth it for me to do a quick writeup and add it. Let me know.

Best regards,
(Name)

Example pitch email: Opening Pitch II

Hello _____________,

I wanted to reach out to you about an article I’m getting ready to publish about The Top [Products] in [Niche].

[Your Product] came in at 6th place. It’s still a good showing, but I don’t want to be unfair. I think it may not have done as well as some of the others because I didn’t have as much information on it.

The piece is already complete, but if you’d be willing to provide a link to the piece, I would be willing to re-evaluate [Your Product] with any extra details you can provide about its features.

Let me know if you have any information before the piece is published on [date]

Best regards,
(Name)

If your website has a persona attached to it (see more in section 4.4 of the scalable white hat guide), testimonials can be used as bargaining chips.

For each of my authority sites, we work with real influencers that become the face of the site. And we’ll get these influencers to offer a testimonial.  [Make sure to opt in to my list.  I’ll publish a guide on how I get real E-A-T for all of our sites]

These testimonials can be leveraged in exchange for placement on homepages, and accompanying links. This usually happens after the first link has been placed, as a sort of, follow up ask. You can approach the topic with a pitch like this one:

Example Pitch Email: Persona Pitch

Hello _____________,

Thanks so much for the link. I think your visitors are really going to appreciate our take on [Product]. After seeing the review and the feedback from our own readers, [Persona] from our company tried out your product and became an instant fan.

[Persona] is interested in featuring [product] in some future content and providing a testimonial on their experience. If you’d be willing to host it on your homepage, we can work together to build what you need.

Best regards,
(Name)

And for good measure, add a signature.

This framework lays out the value proposition for your potential partner and doesn’t take too much of their time.

They may not want the content, though. Especially if it’s a “____ review” post, they might offer to help you write the content. Sometimes, when you ask for details, they’ll just rewrite the whole thing for you. Go for it. its free.

Just remember to tone it down when needed.

If it’s going to come off overly salesy, you could lose the respect of your readers (and the value of your site as a source of social proof).

Say yes, but maintain the right to edit it.

How to Follow Up on a Successful Pitch

A little negotiation will likely follow a successful pitch. Even if someone is interested, they may want different terms. This isn’t always a bad thing because this is where you learn there can be amazing rewards for providing social proof.

Sometimes you can negotiate using what position you’ll place them in your top X lists as a bargaining chip.

When you’ve developed a confident process, try to get samples of the product, links on juicy pages, and free content.

BONUS: FREE Guide on How to Acquire High-Quality Links​

After the negotiations are done, your next step is to complete the content and publish it. Contact them when you’re done so that they know the beneficial content is out there. Then, just wait for them to link.

Our results

So, how well does this strategy work? So far, like a dream. After a series of tests, we achieved…

A 42.5% open rate

Nearly half of all the niche-specific targets we mailed opened our offer. It’s an impressive percentage for an outreach campaign.

13.03% conversion rate

For every seven or so people we made contact with, we got one high-powered link. That’s an amazing exchange rate even before you consider the fact that we weren’t paying for the links.

Wall of Fame

I’ve attached a bunch of screenshots of some examples of the best links that we’ve gotten with this technique.

Homepage Testimonial Link

Inner Page

Inner Page

Start Leveraging the need for Social Proof

With the knowledge of how the strategy works, how to find prospects and how to reach them, you’re ready to start leveraging their desire for social proof to land some juicy links.

Our advice will help you start extracting some of the benefits we’ve learned, benefits that typically only come with experience.

And again, make sure to sign up, so I can let you know when my E-A-T strategy gets released.