3 Link Outreach Approaches

Today, we’ll cover 3 link outreach approaches, the one that I recommend for the prospecting approach we’ve already covered, and how to write these emails for a link-building campaign. Let’s get this lesson started and talk about the different link outreach approaches and their pros and cons.

Link Outreach Approaches

Now, there are traditionally two approaches to outreach. The first is the shotgun approach. This is when real state seo expert send the exact same email to all prospects and the only personalization field might be the prospect’s name. Now, the main pro of this method is that it’s fast because it basically removes the vetting stage of the link-building process.

As for cons, you’ll naturally spam people, burn bridges or taint your brand’s reputation, risk building links on sites you wouldn’t typically want them on, and you’ll likely burn email addresses which can be a real problem if you’re building links at scale. The shotgun approach is a pure numbers game and it’s worked effectively for a lot of people. But personally, it’s not for me because the potential negative impacts on the brand far outweigh any “quick wins” you might get from it.

Sniper Outreach

Now, this is literally the opposite of the shotgun approach. The sniper approach is when you carefully pick pages and websites you want to get a link from. And rather than using cookie-cutter email templates, you’ll send personalized emails where your first contact may be to start a conversation rather than to get a link.

Now, the pros are that you’ll get better links, potentially start relationships that go beyond the one off link, and your link acquisition rates will probably be higher. As for the cons: it’s not scalable at all; it can potentially take months to get a link; and it requires above average skills in negotiation, persuasion, and actually understanding people’s desires. For my personal taste, pure sniper outreach is too slow to grow in a popular industry where links are a requirement.

Relationship Is More Important Than The Link

I’ll still do it for links that are tough to get or where the relationship is more important than the link itself. Now, you don’t have to use either of these approaches exclusively – or any of them for that matter. If you think back to the previous modules in this course, I taught you how to find link prospects in a very specific way which was essentially to find and segment prospects by linkable points.

If you followed along with this method, then you’ll see that neither of these outreach approaches are optimal. For example, if you were to use the shotgun approach for these prospects, it wouldn’t make much sense because then all the upfront research and segmentation work would be for nothing. Similarly, the sniper approach doesn’t really make sense either because each segment of prospects has a lot in common.

100% Bespoke Outreach

You don’t really need to do 100% bespoke outreach for each and every prospect. And this brings us nicely to the link outreach approach I recommend in most situations, which is the hybrid approach. Much like the shotgun approach, you send emails to a large group of prospects. And similar to the sniper approach, the emails are personalized to a degree.

Personalization is usually based on commonality among a segment. Otherwise known as a linkable point. Hence, it’s kind of a hybrid approach to link outreach. The pros of this method are that you’re able to send personalized emails at scale and link acquisition rates from my experience are typically in the 5 to 12% range.

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As for the cons, it can be quite difficult to consistently find seed prospects that are actually good. This means you need to be able to analyze data and creatively come up with angles that sometimes won’t work. Now, regardless of the approach you use, the anatomy of the emails should more or less be the same. It’s about finding a good reason for contact and providing a value proposition that will resonate with a cold audience.