Backlink Outreach: What It is and Should You Do It?

With the rise in popularity of off-site SEO, backlinks have become highly valuable. When a website has quality backlinks, it will be more likely to have higher rankings on Google. However, it can be difficult to get the necessary number of backlinks it takes to benefit your off-site SEO. Thankfully, digital marketers came up with a method of getting more backlinks to benefit their off-site SEO. This method is called backlink outreach. In this blog post, we introduce you to this tactic and explain how to use it in your marketing strategy. But first, we need to define backlinks.

What Are Backlinks?

Backlinks are links from another website back to yours. When a website links to your website, it can be a quality indicator to search engines like Google. This is why quality backlinks are so valuable to website owners practicing SEO. But, as mentioned above, getting quality backlinks is very difficult. It is much easier to get low-quality backlinks, as sometimes these are spam and can be purchased. Google and other search engines know this, which is why they penalize websites that use low quality backlinks. But, quality backlinks are seen as highly valuable.

What is Backlink Outreach?

Backlink outreach is a practice that’s centered around getting high-quality backlinks to benefit a website’s off-site SEO. To do this, a website owner or a representative of a business reaches out to other website owners seeking a backlink. Typically, they will look for websites with high domain authority, as these websites are thought of highly by Google. This is because these websites’ backlinks will benefit their off-site SEO greatly. Sometimes, a website owner will request them to write a guest blog post in return for a backlink. Other times, website owners will request monetary compensation for a backlink. Depending on what you are comfortable with, you can work out a deal for a backlink.

When Should You Do Backlink Outreach?

If you are serious about your off-site SEO strategy, you should consider doing backlink outreach. A large part of off-site SEO is getting backlinks generated to your site. Although other websites may already be linking to your website organically, it may not be enough to boost your rankings. This is where backlink outreach can be so helpful.

When you contact website owners who have great domain authority, their backlinks will be very beneficial for your rankings. If you get backlinks from quality websites that relate to your own, search engines will rank you higher. They will see you have quality content as other quality websites refer their own readers to you. So, you should do backlink outreach whenever you are trying to improve your rankings.

How to Get Started With Backlink Outreach

The process of backlink outreach can take a long time. Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as it may seem. This is because it takes a significant amount of research and time. Then, once you find a website owner you want to work with, you have to wait on them to give you a backlink. However, the process of doing backlink outreach is worth it. When you successfully use backlink outreach as an off-site SEO tactic, your rankings will improve drastically. So, here’s how to do it.

1. Identify Websites to Work With

First, you should identify the websites you want to work with. These websites should be similar to yours, but they shouldn’t be your competitors. The perfect website to partner with will be one that compliments your website, but not one that you compete with. It also benefits the website who is providing you a link, assuming your website is good quality as well. So, you don’t want to work with sites that you are competing with for top search results.

2. Research Websites with Great Domain Authority

Once you identify websites you may want to work with, you need to figure out their domain authority. As mentioned above, the domain authority of a website is an indicator of what search engines think of them. The higher the domain authority, the better the website is for backlinks. To check the domain authority of a website, you will want to use a domain authority checker. There is an excellent one by Small SEO Tools that is completely free to use. Simply type in the URL of the website you are interested in, and see their domain authority. It’s best to work with websites that have a higher domain authority than your website. And try to avoid attracting links from website that have a very low domain authority, since this can damage your credibility with search engines.

 

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3. Come Up With an Offer

Based on the website you are considering to work with, you will want to come up with an offer. For many website owners, they will appreciate you writing them content to feature on their blog. This will give them free content, as well as give you a backlink. Make sure your offer is fair and reasonable, as the website owner is doing you a favor for your off-site SEO content.

Another tradeoff may be paying for a backlink, or giving them a backlink in return. This is a great example of a fair offer, as long as you have a website has a good domain authority. When you both provide backlinks to each other, you help each other’s off-site SEO efforts. At the end of the day, be sure you come up with a solid offer and be prepared before you contact a website owner.

4. Come Up with an Email List

Next, you will want to write down the website owners you’re interested in contacting. It’s best to do this in a Google Sheets document or in an Excel document. This way, you can create columns with their names, contact information, and their answer to your offer. Also, keep note of who you have already contacted, as it will ensure you don’t contact the same website owner twice. Once you do this, you’re ready to move on to the last step.

5. Contact Website Owners

Once you have a great offer for website owners, it’s time to reach out to them! See if there is a contact form on the website or if the website owner has contact information. Send them an email to see if they are interested in your offer and wait for a response. After that, it’s in their hands if they want to work with you or not. Hopefully, you will find a few website owners who will make for great partners in creating backlinks!

Start Practicing Backlink Outreach!

Now that you have a better understanding of backlink outreach, go out and do it! When you are trying to work hard on your off-site SEO efforts, backlink outreach is highly beneficial. So, use the process outlined above and start improving your website rankings. As always, feel free to contact us if you need any help or have questions.