HARO is back: How to use it to grow website backlinks and boost SEO

What is Help A Reporter Out (HARO)?

HARO is a website that stands for Help A Reporter Out. It's a service that connects journalists with a variety of sources but also gives you the opportunity to get useful media coverage for your business.

If you used HARO a few years ago and haven't been back, it's worth knowing what changed. Cision, which owned HARO for nearly a decade, rebranded it as "Connectively" in late 2023 and then shut the platform down entirely on December 9, 2024. In April 2025, Featured.com acquired the HARO name and assets and relaunched it, restoring the classic free, email-based format that longtime users remember. It's active and growing again today, connecting a community of more than 800,000 sources with more than 75,000 journalists.

How HARO can help your backlink strategy

Quality backlinks are a critical part of SEO strategy, and using HARO is one of our recommended strategies to grow backlinks and boost SEO.

There's also a newer reason HARO placements matter beyond the backlink itself. Being quoted by a real, credible publication is a strong signal for what Google calls E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness), and publications with genuine editorial standards are increasingly the sources cited by AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews. A HARO placement can help your brand show up in those AI-generated answers, not just traditional search results.

Pitch your expertise

HARO distributes journalist queries from respected media outlets every day seeking experts just like you, and you can pitch your expertise in hopes of being a source for any one of them (as it relates to your industry).

The following are five tips to use HARO and submit the best possible pitch as you aim to grow your backlinks.

Sign up on HARO to be a Source

To start using HARO, you must register. Fortunately, it's an easy, and entirely free, process.

Sign up as a source

At helpareporter.com, click "I'm A Source," review the rules for sources and then create your free account. No credit card is required, and there are no paid tiers to choose between anymore.

It's completely free today

Under the old Cision ownership, HARO sold paid subscription tiers with features like keyword alerts and early access to queries. That pricing structure is gone. Since the April 2025 relaunch, HARO is free for every source, with no subscriptions, per-pitch fees, or paid tiers. Featured.com funds the platform through newsletter sponsorships instead of charging users, so everyone gets the same access to queries.

Receive daily HARO opportunities via email

Once you're signed up, enter your company information and choose the topics you can credibly speak to. You'll begin receiving up to three query digest emails a day, covering categories like business, tech, health, and lifestyle.

Configure your HARO email alerts to focus on the topics you can genuinely contribute to. This matters more than it used to: the relaunched platform actively screens for off-topic or low-effort responses, including AI-generated pitches, and can ban sources who don't have real, first-hand expertise in what they're answering.

Seek opportunities in your daily HARO emails

The daily HARO emails you receive are only valuable opportunities if you open and review them.

Review the email when it arrives

Make sure you monitor available queries on a daily basis to find the best ones that relate to your expertise and business. Spoiler: They're not all going to make sense for you.

Reply when it's a good fit

Open these emails as soon as you get them if you're serious about finding a media coverage opportunity. Keep in mind that quality backlinks are your goal, so as you're reviewing queries, do your research on the media outlets. Are they the type of backlink you're looking for? Do they make sense to cover your business in any sort of way? It's OK to be picky.

Timing is everything

When you do find a query that works for you, you're going to want to act on it as soon as possible. Time is of the essence. Journalists sift through hundreds of pitches for a single query, and if you wait, someone else will beat you to it.

Optimize your HARO pitches

We've been mentioning "pitches." They are key to you obtaining media coverage and quality backlinks on HARO.

Best practices for a HARO pitch

Keep in mind that journalists receive a large number of pitches, so you want to stand out. Aim to:

• Keep it short and sweet
• Offer quality, first-hand expertise rather than generic or AI-written commentary
• Cover all the requested details that are in the query you're pitching for (and don't veer off-topic)
• Include an author bio that has your full name and a short introduction about your expertise and field
• Follow the stated HARO rules for Sources because if you don't, not only will your pitch get rejected, but you may also get entirely banned from the platform
• Take the opportunity to personalize your pitch to stand out (which can vary depending on the pitch)
• End your pitch with a call-to-action that's directed to the journalist to contact you or even connect with you on social media (so that you can help that journalist find additional sources)
• Make life easy on the journalist by sharing downloadable versions of your headshot, company logo and bio that can be featured

Watch out for your placement

It's entirely possible that if your pitch is selected, the journalist will contact you directly. But it's also possible that he or she won't.

Set up a Google alert for your brand

To make sure you're aware of any placements you're not directly notified about, set up a Google Alert for your brand name. That way, you'll always be in the loop.

Be patient when using HARO

The success of generating quality backlinks through HARO is not a sprint. It's a marathon, and it's a low-control channel: you're limited to whatever queries journalists happen to post.

In other words, don't get discouraged, and don't rely on it as your only source of backlinks. Consider HARO one piece of a broader, long-term SEO strategy alongside other backlink-building tactics and general SEO best practices.