Link Building Outreach From A To Z With Snov.io

You have astounding content but months go by and it still attracts low traffic. Or there’s no traffic at all… The thing is, writing a good piece of content doesn’t mean it will automatically blow up. Link building is what will always win the game as it’s about building relationships and exposing your name to the public. 

So how to make people aware and interested? The first and the biggest thing you can do is to 

Simply…

Reach…

Out…

to them.

In this post, we’ll show you how to create an effective link building outreach campaign using Snov.io tools, tips, and templates. 

What is link building outreach in general?

Link building outreach is about researching a person or a company that’ll be eager to link to your content and contacting them with the corresponding message. Its goal is to get backlinks and traffic from other quality websites, which in turn will give your content better visibility and improve your SEO rankings.

10 best link building outreach strategies

There exist dozens of link building strategies that you can use for your outreach. We’ll list the ten most popular ones, loved by top managers:

Source: Semrush

Broken link building

This strategy consists in finding a relevant broken, or dead, link (the one that doesn’t work anymore) in the content and asking the owner to replace it with your working source. 

Link reclamation

Link reclamation is based on detecting the links you’ve lost because the website that previously linked to you has removed them due to some reasons and asking the owner to add your links back.

Claiming unlinked mentions

Similar to link reclamation, this strategy is all about finding where your brand wasn’t mentioned, although was meant to be, and asking the content owner to fix it by linking to you.

Link roundups

It’s based on finding the list of other blog posts relevant to your topic, e.g., “Top Email Marketing Posts of the Week,” and contacting their owners with a proposition to link to your content in their next update. 

Resource pages

A bit similar to link roundups, the resource page is also about asking the website or blog owner to add you to their list and link to your content, though, not before they create the post, but after the content has been published.

Skyscraper method

This link building outreach strategy is based on finding the content that has many links, creating an improved version of it, and informing those who linked to that piece of content that you’ve got something better than the original.

Guest posting

This is probably the most popular link building strategy in the B2B world of content. You just need to find a trusted platform with many readers and contact the owner with the proposition to write a post for them. 

Infographics

You don’t need a blog post to pitch it. Why not pitch your astounding infographics instead? Such content combines useful data and visual representation so that it becomes reusable and more valuable. 

Cold blogger outreach

This is a worthy link building strategy to reach out to people who are writing similar content and letting them know about your great post. Even if they don’t rush adding your link at once, they will consider your resource for the forthcoming content.

Link exchange

You may simply contact a person or a company you consider influential with the suggestion: you’ll link to their content, and they will link to yours. What you should beware of is that your link exchange should not be too excessive, as it may negatively impact your ranking in search results.

Link building outreach campaign steps

Choosing the right link building strategy, backlink prospecting, creating linkable content — all this takes time. Let alone the fact you should come up with the targeted email message, analyze reactions, and lead your link-building outreach campaign till the logical end when you see your guest post published/link inserted and understand what made your campaign successful. 

That’s a tough job, but we’ll show you how to do it with no pain using a clear step-by-step approach and relying on Snov.io tools.

To make your link building outreach easier and more effective, we advise that you split it into six steps: 

1. Identify your link opportunities
2. Gather data for link building outreach
3. Find contacts
4. Reach out to contacts via email
5. Manage your outreach email campaign
6. Track the data for further link building outreach campaigns

Let’s go through each step in detail. 

Step 1. Identify your link opportunities

Start your link building outreach campaign with identifying your link opportunities and thinking over a link building strategy you’ll put in action. 

If you have link-worthy content, you may сhoose to request being added to already published resource pages or ask bloggers who create roundups to include you in their upcoming posts. 

Alternatively, you can use a tool for finding broken links (Google Search Console, SEMrush, Ahrefs) and discover the page that had many links that have now gone out of date or don’t exist. All you need to do next is to prepare updated content and reach out to people or companies that linked to the original or similar post. 

If your tools or products are mentioned but not linked to, claim the unlinked mentions further. Tools like Majestic SEO or Brand 24 can help you with that.

Or else, think of topics for guest-posting you may write expertly about if you are planning to build links with this strategy. 

Step 2. Find qualified link prospects

Finding qualified prospects for your link building outreach is not a one-minute business: 

1. Searching for relevant websites

First, you should concentrate on looking for relevant websites. How can you do it?

• Think of what niche you are focusing your outreach on and google top blogs and influencers in your industry. 
• Analyze the backlinks of your competitors as you may find a pretty big list of link targets there. 
• Use Google’s advanced search operations such as ‘inrul,’ ‘intitle,’ or ‘intext.’

Say, if you are planning a broken-link outreach campaign to get your sales CRM mentioned, your relevant websites will be those containing pages with the “sales CRM” related keywords in the title tag, the body, and inside the anchors. 

To get relevant results, you may simply type in the following queries in Google:

• Sales CRM intitle:”sales CRM” – To get websites containing your keywords in the title tags.
• Sales CRM intext:”sales CRM” – To get websites containing your keywords somewhere in the body.

You may further scrape the list of URLs using free tools such as Google Link Grabber.

2. Finding contacts of your link prospects

Now that you’ve collected a list of websites, you need to contact an editor, a content marketer, or a content manager. You may look through Contact us/Write for us/About us and similar website pages. But in most cases, you’ll find only a general contact (like info@ and contact@). So, what you’ll have to do further is some manual data mining to find the necessary email. 

There is a good alternative, which will automate your efforts — an email finder tool. Snov.io offers one for free. Let’s take a look at how you may find the contact you are targeting using Snov.io Email Finder. 

Say, you would like to contact a person in charge of the HubSpot blog about their mentioning you in their future roundups. What if you can’t find their contact details on their website? To get the email of a content-related manager, you may go to Snov.io Email Finder and use its Domain Search feature:

1. Type in the domain name: hubspot.com
2. The tool automatically provides you with information about the company and the list of its employees. Filter it by the position related to content marketing. 
3. Choose the link prospect and add it to the list. You’ll automatically get their email address that will be verified. 

If you need emails in bulk, you may try the Snov.io Email Finder extension for Google or use LI Prospect Finder to get a list of content managers’ emails from LinkedIn. 

Step 3. Gather data for link building outreach

To ensure the effectiveness of your link building outreach, you should be well-prepared. That’s why it’s important to gather all necessary data in one place. We recommend you create a worksheet and fill it in with the appropriate information such as:

• Potential offers for link-building — brainstorm as much content as possible you may offer in your link building outreach: information about your product, tools and features, blog posts, podcasts, videos, whatnot. 
• URLs you’ll be requesting links to — gather a list of the URLs you are going to get links to in one place, whether that’s a link to your post, product page, or any other piece of content.
• Keywords for anchor text — you should know your anchor text and use it in your link building outreach. But make sure it corresponds to your content, i.e., the one that will be linked to, and the content on the prospect’s page. 
• Qualified link prospects — add websites of people or companies that you expect to link to you or publish your guest post. 

Step 4. Reach out to contacts via email

Now that you have a clear link-building strategy in mind, have found ideal prospects, and gathered all necessary information, it’s high time you step into the main stage of your link building outreach — email campaign. 

Let’s discuss what you should keep in mind at this point and how Snov.io may help you from the very beginning till the end.

How to craft your email outreach message

Use a good subject line

What’s a good subject line for link building outreach? The one that provokes a reader to open your email, first of all! You don’t need to be super-creative: just make your subject line brief, up to the point, and ensure it reflects the main benefit of your offer. 

Here are some subject-line ideas for the most popular link building outreach strategies in case you need some inspiration:

Guest-posting	I’d like to write for [Prospect name]. Here are [X] ideas for a post Content partnership with [Prospect name]
Resource link-building	Are you accepting new resources for [Resource page name]? Let me share [Your niche] article for your resource list
Round-up inclusion	Tip for [Round-up name]: [Title of your post] An invitation to a roundup collaboration
Link reclamation	Thanks for mentioning [Your company name] Your article mentioned my company — [Your company name]
Broken link building	I found a broken link on your site One of the links on your website is broken

You’ll find more ideas on how to craft a good subject line in one of our posts. 

Set the goal and create a call-to-action

You should be super-specific in your email body about why you are contacting a link prospect and what you expect from them. Depending on your link building strategy, you’ll make different requests in your email outreach. 

Just keep in mind: the more you ask, the more compelling your content must be. 

Personalize

You don’t want your prospect to immediately mark your email as spam or delete it at all, right? So, ensure a person who’s going to read your message is genuinely interested in cooperation. In a scenario where your prospect gets tons of emails every day, you should make yours particularly personalized to stay different from the rest. How?

• Use their name.
• Mention something specific about their work, something that will show them you’ve done some kind of research or follow their content.
• Use a proper email ending.

Peep into this post to find more insights into how you can personalize your emails.

Now let’s look at one of the templates you may use for your guest-posting outreach: 

Subject: Content partnership with {{company_name}} Hi {{first_name:there}}, I’ve noticed that you’re linking to our competitor [COMPETITOR’S NAME] in [Article’s topic] and thought that [YOUR COMPANY NAME] can be interesting for you too. I’d be happy to collaborate and offer you [YOUR OFFER] for giving us a try! P.S. I saw that you share great articles on [TOPIC]. If you publish posts from guest authors, I would love to share our experience. Let me know your thoughts on my offer. Thanks! Stay safe! [YOUR NAME],  [YOUR POSITION AT COMPANY] at [YOUR COMPANY]

What is good about this template is that it has a clear subject line and is highly personalized: you are showing you’ve done your homework and learned something about the prospect’s previous posts and competitors. 

Using another link building strategy? No worries. Snov.io has got a variety of templates for your easy start in link building. 

Tip from Snov.io: remember, no matter how tempting it is to use templates, you should tailor your email outreach to each new prospect and each new campaign.

How to create a link building outreach email with Snov.io

There’s nothing as effortless as using an email automation tool to streamline your email outreach. 

With Snov.io Email Drip Campaigns, you’ll be able to create a super-personalized email message. This tool allows you to add custom variables to the subject line and message body, play with fonts, add trackable links, attach up to 3MB files, and test your email before sending.

To crown it all, you’ll be able to schedule your email campaign to improve the open rate. 

Tip from Snov.io: we advise you to send link building outreach emails to people during their working hours — ideally at 10-11 am, the optimal time range being between 8 am and 4 pm.

And don’t forget you may always A/B test such parameters as sending time, subject line, or email opening line using the Snov.io A/B testing feature. 

Step 5. Manage your outreach email campaign

Any link request results in four possible outcomes: 

1. Your offer is accepted 
2. Your offer is declined  
3. Your offer is countered
4. Your offer is ignored   

Without analyzing the responses and adjusting your follow-up strategy accordingly, you won’t be able to make your link building outreach to the top. So, you should be well-prepared for each outcome. Let’s find out how. 

Your offer is accepted 🙂

The most desired result is to see your link building outreach email getting a ‘Yes’ response. You’ve done a good job, but there’s something you should still do — sending them an email where you’ll thank your prospect for accepting your offer. Consider the template you may use in case your brand has been mentioned per your request:

Hi {{first_name:there}}, Thanks for mentioning [YOUR COMPANY NAME] in your blog post. I’ll be glad to continue our cooperation. Have a great day ahead, [YOUR NAME],  [YOUR POSITION AT COMPANY] at [YOUR COMPANY]

If your prospect has agreed to change the broken link with the link to your resource, thank them for the opportunity and provide the necessary link. 

In case your prospect has approved your guest post topic, be ready to discuss the details (outline, date of submission, publication date, and so on) in a thank you email. 

Your offer is declined ☹️

Although getting a straightforward ‘No’ is a rather rare case for link building outreach, you may get it once. Don’t get upset — your email has been read and considered. It’s probably that your prospect isn’t ready to accept your offer at the moment. At this point, it’s important to learn how to change this ‘No’ into a ‘Yes’ in the future. 

Identify their objection and find out what content they would gladly link to. Next time you’ll reach their Inbox with the irresistible offer. 

Consider the template you may use as a crutch:

Hello {{first_name:there}! Thank you for getting back to me, I really appreciate it! 🙂 I would like to ask you for a couple of extra minutes to understand why you are not interested. Your feedback would be important for us. Thanks in advance. Regards, [YOUR NAME],  [YOUR POSITION AT COMPANY] at [YOUR COMPANY]

Your offer is countered 🤨

Counters are also rare, but they are more informative than declines, which you should take into consideration. As a rule, your prospect will state what they need to link to your content. So, if it fits your goals, just prepare the offer they’ll want to accept. 

For example, what if your link prospect has countered your offer saying they aren’t accepting guest posts at the moment? Don’t stop here. Ask whether you may reach out to them later. Consider the template you may use:

Hello {{first_name:there}! Thank you for getting back to me, I really appreciate it! 🙂  Should I follow up in six months? Would it be a preferable time for you? Thanks in advance! Regards, [YOUR NAME],  [YOUR POSITION AT COMPANY] at [YOUR COMPANY]

Your offer is ignored 😑

Cases when your offers are ignored come here and there. Link-building isn’t about giving up, so be prepared to go till the end and follow up. Don’t forget that follow-up emails increase your chances to get a response by 2x. 

Consider the follow-up template you may use for link reclamation goals:

Hi {{first_name:there}}, Thanks again for having mentioned the company I work at, [YOUR COMPANY NAME], in your blog post [POST URL]. I just wanted to circle back to my offer from the previous email: do you think you could backlink to the domain [YOUR COMPANY WEBSITE]? Let me know what you think. Have a great day ahead, [YOUR NAME], [YOUR POSITION AT COMPANY] at [YOUR COMPANY]

If after sending a follow-up email, you still get no response, there’s still a chance to reach out to them, so take it. You may send them an email based on this template: 

Hi {{first_name:there}}, I don’t want to take your time, so it will be my last follow-up. I just wanted to ask if you’re still considering a possibility for a collaboration. If your answer is yes, then I’d really appreciate it if you could check my previous emails in this chain and link back to [YOUR COMPANY NAME] in your blog post [POST URL]. If you’re not interested, that’s okay. I won’t bother you anymore. Take care and have a great day, [YOUR NAME],  [YOUR POSITION AT COMPANY] at [YOUR COMPANY]

With Snov.io Email Drip Campaigns, creating follow-up emails won’t be a problem. You’ll be able to make a chain of messages that will be automatically sent to your prospects based on their behavior in the previous email.

Learn more about how to get the most out of this tool in A Complete Guide To Snov.io Drip Campaigns.

Step 6. Track the data for further link building outreach campaigns

You’ll most likely want to repeat your link building outreach, and not once. So be prepared to track the results of your campaign to ensure each successive campaign is easier to launch and brings you better results.

You may track all or some of the following data points:

1. Link building strategy
2. Link target (prospect) URL
3. Prospect’s name
4. Prospect’s email address
5. Date of 1st contact
6. Dates of follow-ups
7. Outcome (A-accepted; D-declined; C-countered; I-ignored)
8. Link placed (or Guest post published)? Yes/No 
9. Date of link placement/guest-post publishing
10. Linked URL
11. Anchor text used
12. Thank you email sent? Yes/No
13. Email subject line
14. Sending time
15. Notes

Besides, feel free to use a worksheet from Snov.io as a template. We provide you with a simplified version as you’ll be able to track some of the metrics right in your Snov.io account, so you won’t have to waste much time on manual worksheet filling.

Tracking information about your campaigns will help you analyze any bottlenecks and improve your link building outreach tactics. 

Wrapping up

Link building outreach remains the most effective way to get valuable links and climb the Google ranking ladder, so no matter what outreach-based link-building strategy you choose, you should move through it step by step, focusing particularly on how to launch the email campaign that will bring you a desirable ‘Yes’ from your link prospect. 

We believe this post will help you to organize your link-building outreach from scratch and get most of it with our tips, tools, and email templates. And don’t forget that there’s much more Snov.io can do for you.