Outreach is a method of promoting a business online. It involves establishing contacts with sites, exchanging content and links. This method is still gaining popularity in the RuNet, but in the American and European segments it has long been the main way to increase the link mass of sites. We will tell you what outreach is and how to conduct it for the best effect.
What is outreach?
Outreach in SEO is the establishment of agreements on external publications of the company in the “habitats” of the target audience . It is used to place links, articles or other content on authoritative sites.
Let’s imagine a situation: a car service offers a local publication an article about the importance of switching to winter tires. If the parties agree, it could be a win-win situation. The news portal will give readers interesting content that will increase audience loyalty and may attract new readers. The car dealership will get some link weight and, perhaps, readers of the article will go to the site and convert into leads. Agreements on such an exchange will be called “outreach”.
The term comes from the English word “outreach” , which describes social work in places where people in need live. This work is the subject of the English-language article on outreach, Wikipedia is a bit confusing when searching superficially.
In marketing, the term has been transformed and describes the company’s activities where the target audience is already located. Most often, the term is used for promotion in search results – SEO.
Why do you need outreach?
In terms of search engine optimization, the meaning of outreach is to obtain links to the promoted resource from sites with a regular audience. The specialist offers third-party sites to post information about the company with a link to it, which provides a number of advantages.
- Increasing trust rank — an indicator of trust from search engines. The more authoritative sources link to a site, the higher Google and other systems place it in search results.
- Increased company recognition among the donor site audience, increased brand traffic.
- Increasing organic traffic due to the previous two points.
- Attracting part of the donor site’s audience to your site.
Outreach SEO and link building
Outreach in SEO is very similar to link building , but some experts contrast these methods.
Link building is a technical promotion method that is designed to make a website attractive to search algorithms by increasing the number of links. In this case, the specialist does not care about the website design, the number of real visitors or the reputation among users.
Search engines are constantly waging war against link building, imposing sanctions against sites with a suspiciously large number of outgoing links. At the same time, those who purchased links are also subject to sanctions. But this often does not stop SEO specialists:
Unlike link building, outreach is aimed at readers. Specialists search for relevant sites with a real, engaged audience and negotiate publication on such sites.
How much does outreach cost?
Outreach can be a conditionally free way of promotion. If you do not use paid publications, it will cost you only the time spent on negotiations and content preparation. Outreach can be divided into two large groups.
- Free outreach. Links and materials can be posted for free if the resources have a similar audience, but they are not competitors. Often, it is a barter, and valuable content becomes the payment for posting a link. Such relationships are built by sites with approximately the same audience, so check the traffic volume of potential partners before asking for free publication. This can be done on the SimilarWeb resource or similar ones.
- Paid outreach . If the sites’ reach differs significantly, you will most likely have to pay for placing a link. And here the budget plays a big role. Some media offer journalists to prepare materials for a separate fee, others issue a technical specification for content that is acceptable for publication and charge only for placement.
Most blogs publish the terms of partner posting in advance, so look for such a manual before offering cooperation. For example, company blogs often refuse to publish posts for money. While media and bloggers, on the contrary, prefer paid posting to exchanging links to content.
How to conduct outreach?
- Gather a list of relevant sites for placement.
- Find the contacts of the editors or webmasters of these sites.
- Agree on publication.
How to implement these steps depends on the resources available to the outreach specialist. The work is long, but it brings direct transitions and growth of organic traffic, so SEO outreach is an important part of the promotion strategy.
This method is longer and more labor-intensive than sending out uniform offers, but it increases the chance of successful negotiations. In addition, by negotiating personally, we can control the outreach process and evenly distribute the workload among content makers.
What is effective outreach?
Below, the PrFlare outreach service team shares their experience .
For outreach promotion to be successful, it is not enough to collect a list of suitable sites and send letters to webmasters. For successful placement of publications of any topic, it is important not to get bogged down in promotion tactics – for example, more likes, more impressions, more links, etc. For publications on donor sites to be useful, it is important to think through two key points.
Develop a strategy for working with each site
Each new information campaign is not like any other. There are nuances, the framework of the given topic, the specifics of communication with webmasters of donor sites. Nevertheless, the outreach promotion strategy includes not only setting specific goals, but also an understanding of how to establish high-quality relationships with each specific publication.
To increase the response rate to your collaboration requests, there are a few things you need to keep in mind.
- Plan the optimal time to send letters. For example, it is worth considering the difference in time zones; days of the week when a person receives the most letters – usually Monday. Consider the time of day when your letter will not go unnoticed.
- Develop a consistent chain of emails. Initial emails to establish initial contact, follow-up emails to remind you if you don’t receive a response to your first request. You also need to think about how to communicate with site owners when they respond to your request. Personalization and subject-matter arguments that may be more interesting than a simple offer to “post articles” are extremely important here. Social networks, such as LinkedIn, are very good for personalizing emails, as they can provide many ideas for communication.
Working on relationships over the long term with social media
In addition to the classic mailing list about cooperation with webmasters of sites, there are other more effective methods of how to agree on the publication of materials.
- Communicate via Twitter. Everything is useful here: retweet tweets, join the discussion that has been started, or tag the editor in a conversation/tweet
- Interact in general communities on Facebook , comment on topic-related posts on Quora or on forums like Reddit;
- Friend the website editor on LinkedIn , comment on their feed posts, and send them a private message to start a conversation about their subject area.
Social media communication is a long process and the results may not be immediate. However, by building long-term and friendly communication, there will be a chance to publish promotional materials on influential platforms more than once or twice.
Remember that there is no such thing as a perfect information campaign. Each time, it is necessary to develop a personalized promotion strategy and think about how to make brand promotion effective in the long term.
Conclusion
- Outreach is a method of organically increasing link mass, which is used in SEO website promotion.
- The fundamental difference between outreach and other link-getting activities is the attraction of sites with a relevant audience. This is not about technical promotion in the eyes of algorithms, but about communication with real people on third-party sites.
- The donor site may request payment for the publication of the link, or agree to free placement. In the second case, as a rule, we are talking about exchanging the publication of the link for content interesting to the audience.
- To conduct outreach, you need to collect a database of potential partners and negotiate paid or free placement. It is important to focus on the content and requests of the potential partner’s audience in order to offer relevant content and increase the chances of publication.
Partnering with the best SEO company can enhance your outreach efforts by ensuring that your content aligns with the interests of the target audience and increases the likelihood of successful placements.
