There is a trick to writing outreach emails for backlinks, but once you start practicing, you can personalize your messages and successfully build new backlinks that can help you move your website to the top of the search engine results pages.
What is Outreach?
Outreach is the process by which digital marketers get backlinks directly through other websites by reaching out to relevant parties. Typically, the outreach process is performed through email or by Twitter.
When you build relationships with these other website owners, bloggers and influencers, it gives higher exposure to your links and helps you access a wider number of audience than you otherwise could on your own.
As such, cold outreach link building strategies have been very successful in getting the desired results.
Let’s take a look at some tips that can help you send the best outreach emails for backlinks.
What Are Backlinks And Why Are They Important?
Backlinks are hyperlinks from a website that links to another website. These links play a crucial role in the success of your SEO strategy, which is the reason why sending backlink requests via email plays a big role in any company’s digital marketing strategy.
Creating backlinks, also known as inbound link building, involves pitching your content to other websites or online resources that might be interested in sharing your content with other audiences. A backlink can help redirect traffic to your website from other websites.
Backlinks are intended to be valuable for the readers, and to improve ranking in search engines. These links are essential for gaining traction on search engine results pages and helping people find what the offerings of your business.
However, keep in mind that there is a way to pursue this link building strategy.
It is always a bad idea to try to fool the search engine with unscrupulous black hat practices. Google will block unethical linking schemes — those that attempt to manipulate page rankings — or other complex algorithms.
The most effective method for link building is to leverage websites with a similar audience, with an outlook on quality content.
Posting Content on Other Websites
The best way to generate high-quality backlinks for search engine optimization is to create and post content on other websites that the publishers cite organically. A link building outreach strategy can be useful if you want to promote specific content.
The more quality content you produce with backlinks in high quality sites, the higher will be the likelihood of your website ranking in the search engine.
Offering Value
Only use backlinks that offer value to the site owner or audience. Instead of asking the publisher to randomly link your site anywhere on their website, you can request to provide valuable material or contribute new ideas. You can offer these in return for being allowed to add backlinks to your content.
Sending Personalized Emails
Send personalized emails to publishers. Make sure you do not send the exact same email to all publishers as it seems very impersonal and can appear like spam. In addition, it probably won’t endear the publishers to you either. You can definitely use a basic template to create your link building outreach emails but make sure the content is crafted specifically for the publisher you want to work with.
What is the Importance of Email Outreach?
Everyone has gotten bad outreach emails. The spam folder is chock full of these kinds of emails. When you take a look at these emails, you probably wonder whether email outreach tactics actually work.
The answer is that yes, backlink outreach email absolutely works – if done the right way.
To make sure as many people as possible reply to your link building email requests, you need to send them specific types of emails.
This means that your emails should appear like they were sent by a real person or a legitimate source, not a spammer. Plus, they should also offer value to the people they are being mailed to.
Once you start sending link building emails, you will instantly notice great benefits.
Backlink outreach emails remain among the best ways to create links on authority sites.
Email outreach also helps you to create relations with various players in your industry which can lead to lucrative partnerships, publications of guest blog posts, exclusive interviews, and so much more.
One of the best benefits of backlink outreach emails is that they can lead to press coverage, particularly if you are sending your link request to journalists that cover your field of interest.
How to Start Creating Link Building Requests
Before you start with your link building efforts, you need to do your homework and ensure you are sending out outreach emails to the appropriate people.
Here is how you should create a list of your email outreach recipients.
Identify Your Goals
Your outreach target will be different depending on your goals. If you want press coverage for your website, it is a good idea to find journalists who cover topics in the industry you are operating in.
When building links, you need to reach out to people and sites that offer similar subject matter to their audience. You need to make sure you understand exactly what the object of your outreach is before you start blasting emails left and right.
Create a Recipient List
An effective way to create a list of recipients is to make a spreadsheet with each target’s name, your goal in reaching out to them, and the URL of their relevant web pages you would like them to add your link.
It is also a good idea to add the status of your backlink outreach email campaign, which shows if you have already emailed your targets and if they have responded.
If you use an email outreach tool, you will get the benefit of knowing whether the recipient has opened or clicked on your message.
Find Email Addresses
Once you have made a nice spreadsheet template, you should start filling it up with email addresses.
Keep in mind that it is better to create an outreach list that contains email addresses with names in them rather than generic words. For example, it is better to email to katie@domain.com rather than contact@domain.com.
To create your contact list, here are 3 steps to follow:
In LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you will search for prospects using the different filters offered by the tool based on your target customer. You will also be able to segment your list to have a personalized approach in your email sequence. For example, you can target an industry sector, or companies that have recently raised funds.
Once your list of prospects is ready, you use a scraper tool to retrieve all the contacts on the list and the information available on LinkedIn.
You have thus obtained a CSV file that you will now enrich with enrichment software such as Enrow. This will allow you to have a complete file with verified emails.
Use Email Templates
People think that using templates is not the best tactic. They think it spells spam and contains generic wordings that are sent to thousands of people.
However, templates can be extremely helpful – provided you make the right use of them.
In fact, you will probably need to use email templates if you want to scale your outreach campaign.
You do not need to find a generic template online and use that. You can easily create your own email template. In fact, we recommend it since you know best what kind of info and details you will need to add to your email.
You can start by getting inspiration from some sample email templates. But do not send the exact same one to your targets. You need to stand out from everyone else.
You can then tweak it to make it your own. Make sure you add all the elements you need, but keep the email template short and interesting. To personalize a cold email, use variables directly into the emails the information of the contacts such as their first name, the company or the sector of activity.
The spintext, variants of formulation within the email, makes it possible to never send the same email and thus preserve a good deliverability.
Personalize Your Emails
Once the template is finished, you need to create the content for the outreach email.
Keep in mind that you will be reaching out to a person who does not know you. This means it will pay for you to personalize your emails.
Make sure that you make the subject line very engaging.
The content needs to be brief but should contain all the essential information you need to get your point across persuasively.
Every email should also contain a clear and obvious call-to-action that would make it easy for your prospect to reach out to you and start a conversation.
It is also a great idea to create two different versions of the outreach emails so that you can do some split testing to see which version performs better.
Send Your Emails
If you want your link building campaign to perform quickly, you need to scale it up. Depending on the outreach email campaign, you can expect anywhere between a 1% to 10% conversion rate. Keep in mind, however, that the quality of your target recipient list also plays a big role in conversion, so make sure you do your research well.
To send out personalized emails, use Emelia’s cold emailing platform.
Upload your recipient list and schedule your outreach campaign. You also have the option of adding follow-up emails if any of your recipients do not reply to your first mail.
Ways to Send the Best Outreach Emails for Backlinks
Let’s take a look at some ways that have proven to be successful when it comes to sending the best outreach emails for backlinks.
Offering Preview Content
This is an effective tactic if you are sending a request for backlinks to a new website owner. With this outreach email, you can ask the recipient if they would like to take a look at a piece of content that you would like the publisher to link to.
Make sure that the message is highly personalized and contains enough information to entice the readers so that they are compelled to get back to you.
Providing Exclusive Content
If you have created a research report that involves high-impact results or if you have created a blog post about an innovative product that is not offered by anyone else, you might consider asking the publisher to post it as exclusive content.
A backlink from a top-ranking, high-authority publication can get you a tremendous amount of traffic from a single source, so it might be a good idea to delay publishing the content on your own blog or website and give first rights to someone else.
Make sure to make your subject line detailed and keep the body of the email short and try to communicate the main points in as few words as possible.
Offering New Insight
One of the most effective ways that can intrigue your potential publisher is to let them know about fun and innovative products. Tailor your pitch to invoke curiosity so that they might start wondering what you are on about.
If you are able to teach your recipients something new and fun, they might want to add your content to their site's backlink profile in order to provide fresh new information to their own readers.
Personalizing the Pitch
The most important part of an outreach email is to personalize it. This goes beyond just addressing the person by their name and making sure there are no typos. It is about letting the recipient know that you know all about them.
By doing this, your outreach email sounds genuine, and it will make the recipient realize that you could be a good potential marketing partner.
Make sure that your message clearly shows that you understand what the recipient is all about and what kind of content they cover.
Offering a Guest Post
One of the very best ways to make a publisher say “yes” to your content is to offer to write a guest post for them.
Everybody loves great new content, but make sure that the guest post you are pitching is not already covered from multiple angles by the publisher.
Make sure that you are pitching a new angle so that the publisher does not ignore your email.
Providing Social Proof
Social proof is the idea that people are influenced by others and copy what they do.
For example, if you have posted a piece of content that has thousands of readers and likes, you can leverage this and add this piece of information in your outreach email to prove to the recipient that you produce engaging content.
This way, the recipient will be more inclined to work with you when they see your work gets a lot of traffic.
Offering a Counterpoint
If you are not averse to taking some risks, then offering a counterpoint to content published on the recipient site can also effectively pique intrigue about your research.
You can do this by offering an opinion that is divergent from the publisher’s.
Alternatively, you can also take their advice and create a case study out of it to apply to your own brand.
Best Practices for Creating Outreach Emails for Backlinks
Here are some of the best practices for creating successful emails for backlinking.
Make Sure to Edit
Nothing is a bigger turn-off than seeing a typo or grammatical error in the subject line -- or your name spelled incorrectly.
Before sending out your emails, check if all the emails are spelled correctly and that punctuation and capitalization are perfect.
If the email appears a tad too long, it is a good idea to pare it down wherever you can.
You have a higher chance of your message being read if your email is short and sweet, so make sure you delete any words that are unnecessary.
Keep Subject Lines Short
It is important to add as much information as you possibly can in your subject line but also keep them brief. A good way to do that is to not make complete sentences in the subject line.
Stick to important details to make your message more enticing and intriguing in a few words.
If you belong to a recognizable brand, it is a good idea to name-drop since that carries influence as well.
Don’t Fake It
It is easy to tell if someone’s compliments are fake. Do not give fake praises just because you are desperate for them to place your hyperlink on their website.
Always give genuine opinions about their work and achievements and then leverage them in a way that would add value to your own content.
Do Your Homework
It is a good idea to show that you have done the appropriate research before you send out your message. Once you have found the appropriate pitch, you can take some time to find out what your potential publisher has written in the past and what kind of stuff they talk about on social media.
Make sure you do not write about content that has already been covered but instead try to bring fresh new ideas or related pitches.
Avoid Repeated Follow Ups
Even if the outreach email for backlinks is perfect and intriguing, it can still easily get lost in the clutter of the inbox. If you don’t hear from the publisher in a few days, you should feel free to follow up about once or twice. You can schedule it directly in the Emelia cold mailing tool.
However, if you do not get a reply, it is not a good idea to keep pestering them.
If, after a couple of follow-ups you still don’t hear from them, let the pitch go. You can then wait a while and pitch them again with something else at a later date.
Backlinks on high-authority sites are an important ranking factor and play a vital role in the success of your SEO. Some people believe that outreach emailing for backlinks requires a lot of work, but it is truly worth it.
If you need help with your cold outreach emails for backlinks, Emelia can help you get the results you need. Visit us today.