Tag: backlinks

How to grow backlinks to boost your SEO using HARO

Quality backlinks support any strong SEO strategy, but have you used HARO yet?

SEO stands for search engine optimization. Simply put, it’s all about consistently showing search engines why your website should be shown above other websites when users search queries that are related to your content.

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.

In other words, by using HARO, you can grow your quality backlinks. HARO distributes more than 50,000 journalist queries from highly respected media outlets each year 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 process. When on the HARO website, click “I’m A Source,” review the “Rules for Sources” and then click the “Sign Up” button. There are multiple subscription plans available for Sources:

  • Basic, which gets you daily pitch opportunity emails for free
  • Standard, which includes everything in Basic plus keyword alerts for one keyword, a profile that automatically inserts into your pitches, text alerts and the ability to search through possible pitch opportunities online for $19 per month
  • Advanced, which includes everything in Standard plus keyword alerts for up to three keywords, up to three profiles that can automatically be inserted into your pitches and an advanced alert about upcoming media opportunities as soon as they’re approved by the editorial team (but before they’re released publicly) so that you can get a head start for $49 per month.
  • Premium, which includes everything in Advanced plus keyword alerts for unlimited keywords, unlimited profiles and phone/email support from the HARO team for $149 per month

Choose your plan based on your goals and budget. Then, enter your company information, and get ready to begin receiving three emails per day, one at 5:35 a.m., 12:35 p.m. and 5:35 p.m. (Eastern time).

Seek opportunities in your daily HARO emails

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

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

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.

When you do find a query that works for you, you’re doing to want to act on it as soon as possible. Time is of the essence. If you wait, someone else will beat you to it with a pitch that gets selected by that journalist.

Optimize your HARO pitches

We’ve been mentioning “pitches.” They are key to you obtaining media coverage and quality backlinks on HARO. 

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
  • 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 website
  • 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. 

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. 

In other words, don’t get discouraged. Consider HARO a long-term strategy that will benefit your SEO over time.

Check out our 12 SEO tips for beginners. In fact, you can level up your SEO skills with any of these 10 free courses online.

As you’re starting your journey on HARO to grow quality backlinks, consider leveling up your digital marketing with DailyStory and our 21-day free trial. Features include automating various marketing tasks, dynamic audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.

7 tips to grow quality backlinks and boost your SEO

Ask any SEO expert, and a top recommendation you’ll likely hear (after researching your keywords) is going to be building up your backlinks.

Backlinks are hyperlinks that point from one website to another. About 91 percent of all web pages never get any organic traffic from Google, and that’s mostly due to the fact that they don’t have backlinks.

Don’t be one of those pages.

We all want to improve the search engine ranking of our website, but when it comes to getting others to link to you, it’s easy to feel lost. Plus, you don’t want just any backlink for your site. Quality (meaning that the backlink is coming from a trusted website) is important as well.

Here are seven tips that can help you grow quality backlinks for your website and improve your ranking.

Submit a pitch to guest blog

Instead of reaching out to websites and publications to ask if they will backlink to you for any number of reasons, you can switch up your pitch to vie for a guest blog or article spot on their site.

Why? Because as part of your byline and/or author bio, a backlink can be included pointing to your website. You also could have the opportunity to include a handful of backlinks to your site within your content, depending.

But a successful pitch requires a bit more than offering free content.

First, you’ll want to do your homework on the website you’re pitching to. Who is their audience? How would your content address something that not only appeals to that audience but also isn’t already being covered by the website itself?

Know who you need to reach out to and how. Many websites actually have “how to pitch to us” directions available that include what email address you should send your pitch to, as well as any other expectations they have of pitches.

Regularly conduct backlink audits

You can find websites that others are getting links from by conducting regular backlink audits with tools, such as SEMrush.

These websites are the most likely to accept pitches and add backlinks to your site’s content.

Create more visual content

Quality backlinks truly stem from quality content on your end. One of the highest engaging types of content is visual, and of that, infographics easily draw in an audience (and backlinks).

People following directions with text and illustrations do 323 percent better than people following directions without illustrations.

In short, infographics are simply an effective method of visual communication.

Converting some of your blog/article information into a helpful infographic raises the value of what could have been a text-only post. Other websites will more likely share or refer to your infographic via social media or backlinks.

In addition, videos are a great form of engaging visual content.

About 54 percent of consumers want to see more video content from a brand or business they support.

Depending on the video, other sites could see a lot of value in adding backlinks to you.

Post more interactive content

Just like with visual content, interactive content is more engaging and more likely to generate backlinks.

Interactive content has a wide range from quizzes to slideshares.

Because interactive content is not used as often as you might think, its uniqueness can help draw backlinks.

However, beyond backlinks, interactive content can increase a user’s time on page, which is also a positive signal for your page’s search engine ranking.

Mention (and link to) industry experts

As you’re creating content, consider quoting (and linking to) what the experts are saying about your topic.

It might take a little research, but it will raise the quality and trustworthiness of your own content.

The better the content, the more likely others will link to it themselves.

This can also be done first hand by interviewing an expert for your blog or article. Again, a bit more effort is needed on your part, but the payoff is that the expert could then share and/or backlink to your article as well.

Update your evergreen content

Evergreen content is content that is not necessarily time bound and is relevant either on an ongoing basis or repeatedly (seasonal content, for example).

Types of evergreen content include (but are not limited to):

  • How-to guides
  • Suggested tool lists
  • History breakdowns (possible timeline formatting)
  • Industry term glossary
  • Infographics

While evergreen content is highly valuable for your website and the potential for backlinks, it’s all too easy to forget about it and not regularly update.

Freshening up your evergreen content is critical to keep up its relevance for others.

Offer a fix for broken backlinks

This method can be time-consuming and is not as commonly used. However, it can be incredibly effective.

Identify a few relevant, trusted websites in your industry and see if you can find any broken links. (These are more likely to happen the older the content.)

Then, contact that website to offer your own relevant link as a replacement.

While you can speed up the process of discovering broken backlinks by using a free tool, such as Dead Link Checker, you may have to invest time in content creation if you don’t already have a relevant page to offer.

While these tips can help you grow quality backlinks, remember that there’s much more to great SEO than backlinks. Check out these 13 SEO mistakes you could be making right now to ensure you’re doing everything you can to rank well in search results.

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