Write Email Outreach For Link Building
What is Link Building?
Link building is the process of acquiring links from other websites and including them in your content. By doing so, your visitors will be able to navigate around your webpage and other valuable websites.
While link building sounds simple, there’s more to it than just writing content and dumping links. If you do it that way, it only comes off as spammy. Search engines will know whether you’re adding something valuable or not on the web.
The best link-building strategies will tell you how important content is. Your visitors go to your website to find information and insights into their questions. You have to write it engagingly as well so they don’t just drop your blog to read on another website.
This method also increases your SEO rating. It will garner more visitors and traffic to your website. Even with SEO link building, success doesn’t come overnight. The effects will be gradual but the hard work will be worthwhile!
What is Email Outreach?
Email outreach is the process of contacting people via email. In the realm of business and marketing, it aims to promote products or request a backlink. You can also offer a kind of collaboration with an influential figure. In this case, we’ll be teaching you how to request backlinks used in link building.
Typically, there are two kinds of emails used for outreach. You have the warm email and the cold email. A warm email is sent to those who already know you. In other words, it’s for clients you’ve worked with before.
Meanwhile, a cold email is sent to people who do not know you. This makes it very challenging to receive a response. Chances are that your email will be dismissed as spam instead. But not being able to receive an immediate response is no cause of concern. Backlinko analyzed that only 8.5% of cold emails get a response.
If you have difficulty getting responses, you can seek advice from outsourcing link building or SEO link building services. But before you resort to that, let’s get started on how to write your email outreach!
1. Research is Key
The first step to writing an email outreach is to do research. You might be tempted to just draft an email for site linking and send it to everyone you know who manages a website. But there has to be a strategy to everything! To create a strategy, sufficient information is needed.
Ask yourself: What kind of content do you market? That way, you can narrow down the number of factors to determine your recipients. Look up the publications and people who might take an interest in your content. After which, list them down and take some time to review their works.
You might think that an impersonal email is enough, but think again. If you were to receive that kind of email, you’ll probably brush it off as spam too, right? Building links is like building relations with other people.
Looking over their pages can help you understand what they’re looking for in a business partner. You might even find their link-building strategies along the way.
As visiting us is also part of your research, please keep on reading to see the different ways to ask for a link.
2. Be an Attention Grabber!
Keep in mind that you are just one of the hundreds of emails they receive in one day. You can’t afford to bland subject titles. Think of something that will immediately catch their attention, even while skimming.
It doesn’t need to be fancy or grandiose either. A concise subject line that summarizes the purpose of your email should suffice. For example, Guest Blogging: Topic Suggestion – “Top 10 Efficient eCommerce Link Building Strategies”. Feel free to experiment on different subject titles!
You can track the email outreach metrics with apps and extensions like Mailtrack. For example, you can send two different subject title templates and see which one was opened and read the most.
Don’t be too discouraged if your recipients didn’t spare your email a glance. Try to be more creative and compelling next time!
3. Be Creative, Keep Their Eyes on You!
Let’s say that they did open your email. While that is commendable, it’s no reason to celebrate yet. Keep in mind that this is still one of your link-building strategies. You already piqued their interest. The next step is to keep their eyes on you!
In any written work, they always advise you to start with a bang. Whether it’s a poem, essay, or blog, it has to catch the reader’s attention at the beginning. With that in mind, how do you write a compelling introduction to an email?
- Keep it concise. Your readers have a busy day. They don’t have time for highfalutin introductions. Every sentence in your email needs to have a purpose. For this email, our goal is link building.
- Think of it from their perspective as well. When you open the email, you’d also be asking who they are. This is why establishing your credibility is important in the introduction. What kind of content do you write? What sort of website are you?
- You need to establish trust between you and your recipient since you’re ultimately asking them for permission to use their link. The process of white hat link building also needs solid trust between potential business partners.
What Kind of Email Should You Write?
We’ve discussed subject titles and introductions, but what about content?
There are different kinds of approaches to cold emails. “Cold email” doesn’t mean we approach them coldly. It’s always best to make the email more personalized. Hence, why research is an important prelude to the link-building outreach process.
Let’s go over them one by one:
- Offer Them a Preview
It’s tough to convince someone to work with you if you have no connections with them at all. That’s why offering to show them a sample of the work you do can be a big help. Especially if you’re confident of your content, it will portray your value as a partner for link-building opportunities.
Make sure to ask your recipient politely about previewing your work. You can be confident but not arrogant. As potential business partners, both you and the recipient want to be treated and viewed as equals.
- Give Them Exclusive Offers
Thinking of publishing new content? Hold that thought! If you intend to send out cold emails, why not give some of the top publications an exclusive offer to it?
We’re talking about top journalists with inboxes flooded daily. You’re not the only SEO link builder they’ll encounter for the day. Some of them may even be link-building resellers. Keep the email concise yet personal.
We need to tell them what we can offer in just the right amount of words. You can tell your recipients what kind of content you planned to publish. For example, you have unique insights on new link-building software and how to utilize it with social media.
Then you can ask if they’d be interested to have the first look or to publish it first. This technique can net you so much traffic if it succeeds.
- Fun Facts: Did You Know?
You can set a friendly mood using fun facts while simultaneously doing your pitch. This is one way to pique your recipient’s interest and perhaps get a reply to your link-building request.
Of course, your trivia needs to be interesting in the first place. For example, did you know that Instagram has about 95 million active bots?
In that statement, you have the claim and statistics that sound interesting. Follow it up with some of your insight on the matter. Do you think this information will be beneficial to their blog? Keep the digital conversation compelling enough for them to keep reading through the email.
- Be Genuine: Personalize your Email
We cannot stress enough how important it is to personalize your outreach email. Programs like link building software can help you in the whole link building process, but not necessarily for emails.
Earlier, we advised that you research your recipients. This is where it comes in handy. Your recipients must believe that you’ve taken the time to know them. That way, they feel compelled to reciprocate the effort.
Not to mention, being genuine takes you a long way instead of being cold and too professional. A warm message is always a welcome read. You not only build links but also relationships with your recipients.
- Lend a Hand
A helping hand can be a welcome sight for some employees. What do I mean by this? Offer to guest post for them. But don’t send that email out too readily without doing your research.
You can’t just offer to contribute a piece on a topic that they’ve done numerous times already. Figure out if what you’re planning to contribute is unique and valuable to add to their website.
While the goal is ultimately link building, you can’t afford to do a sloppy job under the guise of helping others. Besides, if you do a great job, your prospects will surely contact you again for your link-building services!
- Crack a Joke
Humor is a double-edged blade. Sometimes, it lands marvelously and other times, it falls flat on its face. Let’s try to avoid the latter as much as possible.
You might ask yourself: how do I know if the recipient can take a good joke? The answer is research. Check their social media. Study their website. Are they open to humor? What jokes have they made or posted about?
This is a good way to capture the recipient’s interest. But remember, be aware of their humor rules. Some workplaces don’t appreciate jokes about religion or politics. Maybe it would be safer to joke about link building. Give it a try!
- Respond to Their Work
Here is another risky strategy: email them a response to something they wrote. While you’ve probably grown tired of hearing this, we once more emphasize the importance of researching your recipients. It’s especially critical for this method.
This link-building strategy will portray you as an avid reader of their content. In your email, you can share with them your opinion on the work itself. You can also tell them how applying their advice and insights can help your brand.
Another way to do this is to share with them your content that’s related to theirs, but in a different format, like a vlog.
When Do You Send Out the Emails?
Now that we’ve gone over how and what to write, you should keep in mind when to send out those emails. According to Investdigital, they receive the most responses on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Tuesdays have the highest response rate while Mondays and Fridays have the lowest.
Another factor is the time of day. As part of the link-building strategies, it’s best to make it a habit to send outreach emails in the morning until noon. These are the times that they’re most frequently opened. Meanwhile, the afternoons are when they’re hardly spared a glance.
An important reminder is to remember the timezones of your recipients. You can’t send them out at 9 AM in your local time but it’s already 6 PM in your recipient’s timezone.
Finally, mark on your calendar when you intend to follow up with your recipients. It’s easy to overlook emails in a full inbox. We’re sure a lot of SEO link builders are reaching out to them as well.
Conclusion
Link-building SEO is a long-term process. The results aren’t immediate either. But gradually, you’ll find yourself improving as an SEO link builder if you keep up the consistent reach outs. Over time, you’ll also find how constant practice can help your writing.
You’ve put your time and effort into this. If you haven’t received any response in one to two weeks, try sending a follow-up email. The follow-up email should be concise. The goal is to emphasize your prior link-building request.
With this, we’ve covered just about everything concerning email outreach for link building. Perhaps one day, you’ll experience one-way link building. Your high-value content will be linked by other websites without asking you to link theirs!
Mustafa Al Mahmud is the Founder of Gizmo Concept and also a professional Blogger, SEO Professional as well as Entrepreneur. He loves to travel and enjoy his free moment with family members and friends.
Link building is such an important part of any website! And here’s the thing, popular creators have big websites with lots of domain authority.