For most people, website SEO is a routine mechanical job. Indeed, many processes in it have to be performed over and over again, which can seem boring. However, there is room for creativity in website promotion. You can realize your creative potential in such an area as outreach. Let’s find out what it is, what techniques are used in it, and what aspects you should pay attention to.
What is SEO outreach?
In SEO, outreach is the promotion of your website, brand, or product on external resources. Its key difference from traditional link building is communication with the owners of such platforms. It allows you to manually select the best sites for publishing content, negotiate favorable conditions for placing content, and work directly with your target audience.
Outreach requires more creativity compared to traditional link building. It is aimed not so much at building link volume and increasing the authority of the site in the eyes of search engine crawlers but rather at strengthening the brand’s reputation. In addition, outreach often involves long-term cooperation with the owners or administrators of external resources. Finding the ideal site for posting content takes a lot of effort and time, so SEO specialists try to get the most out of such partnerships.
Outreach is usually considered one of the ways of placing backlinks. But in fact, it is possible to agree on the publication of other business promotion tools — reviews of goods and services, mentions of the company and its products, infographics, and so on. Anything that helps spread the word about a brand and strengthen its reputation is suitable.
How to work in the outreach sphere?
The easiest way is to register on a guest blogging marketplace. Such services work with affiliate networks that include thousands of verified sites. They allow you to select resources for publications according to the following criteria:
- Content topic;
- Traffic volume;
- Frequency of publications;
- Terms of posting content.
Working in a marketplace is especially convenient for beginners. They do not need to delve into the intricacies of communications, haggle, and deal with the whims of the owners of popular resources. They can plan their marketing budgets in advance. The advantages of most marketplaces should also include quality technical support and the availability of reference materials.
An alternative option is the manual selection of sites for content placement. The algorithm is quite simple:
- Make a list of the top information and news resources in your area of business. Select the most popular blogs and influencers with the largest number of subscribers.
- Start with the most popular sites for posting content. Contact their owners or administrators.
- Offer to post quality, useful content. Compose personalized emails for each resource and choose interesting topics for publications.
- After receiving a reply, be sure to clarify all the conditions of placement — terms, location, promotion on the platform, and cost, if it is a paid service.
You can often hear that beginners work on marketplaces, while professionals choose sites for outreach manually. But in reality, experienced SEO specialists combine both techniques. They combine mass publications on marketplaces with point placement of selected content on mega-popular sites. This approach allows you to get the maximum effect, optimizing the size of the company’s marketing budget.
Basic rules of outreach
The main thing to remember is that outreach works with live people, not search engine robots. Therefore, each publication should contain useful content that can be applied to a real situation. People should read such articles with pleasure, share them with friends, and give them high marks.
Experienced SEO specialists say that in outreach, 90% of success depends on the correct selection of the site for content posting. It should correspond to the topic of the material and the sphere of activity of the business. Bad product placement does not just irritate readers. It attracts the attention of search engines, which consider it spam and reduce the rating of the site to which the link leads. To avoid such problems, you can entrust the selection of sites to marketing agencies that specialize in blog outreach.
Although articles are posted on external resources, they are usually optimized and promoted by the authors. For outreach content to be as effective as possible, focus on these recommendations:
- Write bright and attractive headlines, but do not degrade to clickbait and manipulation of the truth.
- Try to time new articles to interesting news events. For example, news about the sharp cold snap in the U.S. will help to promote the material on the selection of winter tires or autonomous heating systems.
- Select keywords and add relevant queries to your texts. Be sure to take into account the intent — if the user is looking for a manual on the use of equipment, the offer to buy such a product will not be too appropriate.
- Take care of the natural placement of links — they should not catch the eye and attract too much attention. If you cannot fit them into the text, it is better to do without them and focus on strengthening the brand.
Another rule is that you should maintain content for a long time after posting it. To do this, you need to track traffic volume and work with comments. Answer customer questions, provide additional information, and expand the article as needed.
What techniques are used in outreach at AltSEO?
A true classic is guest posting. The author writes to the site owner and offers to post quality material for a fee or for a favor in return. It is relatively easy to find sites for such publications — you can even use specialized link-building services.
There are other outreach methods that allow you to establish closer contact with the target audience and post materials without blatant advertising:
- Updating broken links. Analyzing the site with SEO tools, you can find broken links in articles with suitable topics. Offer the administrator to replace them with your own for a small fee. This will benefit everyone involved in the process because broken links negatively affect the site’s ranking.
- Adding infographics. Some articles contain useful information but are hard to perceive because of the lack of visual elements. Offer to add a high-quality infographic with your company logo and/or a link to your website. This will increase the quality of the material and attract more traffic.
- Tracking mentions. Bloggers often talk about different brands and products. One of the easiest outreach strategies is to track such mentions on popular sites. Influencers will often agree to add a link or expand on company information in exchange for a product sample or discount.
- Providing a database. Many sites publish important news, guidelines, and reviews but find it difficult to provide a link to the source. You can do your own research or simply summarize existing information. The site owner increases the authority of their resource, and the company gets links on favorable terms.
Conclusion: why is outreach so important?
Search engines are constantly improving their algorithms. They try to address all types of spam, whether it is excessive use of keywords or inflating the link volume. Less and less attention is paid to purely technical aspects and more and more — to the meaningfulness of the content.
From this point of view, outreach will be an ideal promotional tool. It spreads information about the brand, creates a positive reputation, and increases the website’s authority level. Proper placement of content on external resources allows you to generate a large volume of organic traffic without the risk of search engine penalties.
