How Link Outreach Will Help Your Website Build Authority

How Link Outreach Will Help Your Website Build Authority
Is domain authority (DA) a worthwhile metric or a meaningless waste of time?

The answer to this depends entirely on which SEO you’re talking to. Some swear by DA while others consider it a pointless vanity metric.

The confusion perhaps arises because domain authority is not used by Google when establishing search rankings. DA has no impact on the SERPs. Instead, domain authority is a 100-point scale used by Moz to measure the predictive ranking strength of a domain.

Whatever stance you take on the importance of domain authority as a metric, it’s difficult to deny that a site with a high volume of relevant external links is highly likely to outrank a site with a weaker backlink profile. Search engines judge websites partly in terms of the company they keep. If your health site has an abundance of links to Healthline, CDC, and Mayo Clinic, it will appear more authoritative than a new health site with no link profile in place.

So, a more pertinent question for business owners is this: “How can I increase the overall authority of my brand?”

We’re here today to outline the power of link outreach if you want to enhance authority and to potentially grow your sales.

Before anything else, a snapshot of some link building basics…
Link building at a glance
Link building is the process of obtaining links from other websites across the internet.

In general terms, link building provides three powerful signals for your site:

Authority
Trustworthiness
Relevancy

You can buy links, exchange links, and acquire links through writing guest posts. For the purposes of today, we’ll be focusing primarily on guest posting. This is an affordable and actionable way to start building links right now.

Why practice link building?
If authority, trustworthiness, and relevancy are not enough reasons to start link building, there’s more…

When you start building a profile of backlinks to your site, you can bring in more referral traffic and potentially rank for more keywords. Both of these elements could lead to more sales, the end goal of any business.

By increasing your perceived authority, you could become a thought leader in your industry. This will open up a wealth of public relations opportunities like appearing on podcasts and at conferences or masterminds.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. Let’s get back to how you can start winning links for your site through guest posting.
Guest posting: lay the foundations on your own site
Guest posting is one more thing some SEOs claim is dead.

Even if you share this view, reframe it and consider the increased opportunity for you as more companies heed this questionable advice and stop guest posting.

The first thing you need in place is high-quality content on your site. Google wants to reward searchers with an enjoyable experience that addresses their query usefully. Make sure your content is entertaining, informative, formatted for skimming, and contains plenty of outbound links to relevant sources. Keep it simple, too. You don’t want to confuse your readers.

Your underlying goal of content is super-simple: make it so good that people want to share it and are eager to be associated with that content and your brand.

Assuming you have this bedrock of authoritative content live, it’s time to put a three-pronged strategy in place:

Prospecting
Outreach
Relationship-building

Prospecting
Prospecting is one of the most tedious and time-consuming parts of the equation. To this end, it’s an ideal task to outsource.

You need to get creative here, though. Generic cold email templates tend to turn most people off. Ask yourself when was the last time you responded to this type of cookie-cutter email.

Use LinkedIn and social media to find information about the editor that will help you craft a personalized message when you’re ready to strike.

Ideally, you should be searching only for relevant and authoritative blogs so take your time at this stage or pay someone to do the job for you. Finding appropriate sites to target will streamline outreach, the next step of your link building strategy.

Outreach
With a list of prospects compiled in an Excel sheet, it’s time to start sending some emails.

Don’t be afraid to stand out here. Indeed, that’s what you should be striving to do. Differentiate yourself from the scores of other daily emails filling the inbox of the recipient.

Avoid generic approaches that betray the fact you haven’t read any of the content on the site in question. Do your due diligence.

Bottom line, the person you are contacting wants great content and they want high-quality links. If you can provide that, deliver this message as concisely as possible while including some personality.

Remember, outreach might be time-consuming, but it saves you from buying links or taking a chance on PBNs.
Relationship-building
You should approach all attempts at link building as a long game.

Instead of sending a single email expecting one guest post and one link as a result, view this email as the start of a potentially ongoing relationship. Take the time to build a relationship from the get-go with your point of contact. Underpromise and overdeliver.

Final Thoughts
Well, we hope this overview has shown you that building a strategic link profile can increase your perceived authority within your industry.

Now, if you’re planning to undertake a link building campaign, remember that it takes time. This time could be very well spent, though. You might take months to reap dividends, but as those do-follow links start mounting up, and your domain authority score starts rising, you could even see a direct increase in sales.

If you’re still not sure how you can get started – and getting started is often the hardest part – get in touch and we’ll be more than happy to help out.

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