My First Backlink Using HARO SEO
A few weeks ago on my campaign to build some backlinks to my site (short lived) I went through the typical round of digital marketing videos and blog articles on building backlinks.
I did the research and I put in a good amount of time trying several different tactics to see what it was all about...
And it was hard....
Not necessarily hard, but took a bunch of time.
I tried getting in contact with blog writers, I tried contacting owners of sites that had blogs I wanted to be in, I tried finding broken backlinks, I tried the famous "moving man" method.
And none of those worked out for me too well... actually not at all....
But that wasn't too surprising given that most videos and articles I researched told me conversions would be terrible and I would have to reach out to hundreds of people just to get anyone to care.
Kinda disheartening....
But I did try one method that was recommended that actually got me a backlink (not official yet) that I'm going to share.
HARO stands for Help A Reporter Out and is a marketplace for reporters/journalist/bloggers/etc who need experts in any industry who can provide quotes about the material they are writing about.
The reporter puts out a general request for quotes that they will be able to use for their articles to the marketplace.
Then, experts get sent an email with all the requests and can send their quotes to be used for the article.
Depending on which quotes the reporter likes, experts get a response from the reporter letting them know that they will be included and when they can expect the article to be released.
This feels much less slimy than contacting hundreds of sites and blog writers asking to be included in their articles.
Instead, you are finding people who are actively looking for a quote and if you can beat out others who are giving responses, you can get a nice backlink from high quality sites.
One thing about backlinks is that you want to make sure they are coming from high quality sites.
A couple of high quality links are better than a handful of smaller quality links.
So if your backlink comes from Forbes.com instead of Joeandmarysaquaadventure.com, your backlink is going to have much more impact on your SEO.
One thing to remember when sending out your quotes is to make sure the article is going to be relevant to your industry and niche.
If you are running a home cleaning service then it is not necessarily the best strategy to send quotes for articles about rock climbing.
Backlinks are good but if they aren't relevant Google will start determining that it has nothing to do with your actual site.
The link will lose impact on your SEO.
I may have just gotten lucky with the few request I have put out so far, maybe 6, and getting a backlink from one of them but I found in almost every step of this digital marketing process that if I put in the time and the effort with complete sincerity; I usually see pretty good returns for my efforts.
The most powerful lesson I am continuing to learn is that in order to promote or market a product or service, I am making a connection of some kind.
A connection to the consumer, a connection to the brand, a connection to a platform....
The need to be connected is the drive behind the machine and the more I focus on connecting with people and ideas I appreciate and want to surround myself with; the more I get back.
HARO is a great opportunity to find articles that are aligned with your business and get backlinks from people who are looking to give them.
You get the requests sent directly to you three times a day and can reply to as many or as little as you want.
If you are in this stage of driving traffic to your business I highly recommend using this technique.
Backlinks are an SEO strategy that I recommend if you are trying to rank highly in Google and is considered to be a part of SEO marketing.
If you have any questions about SEO put them in the comments and I'll try to answer best I can.
I have free, 10-minute support sessions that you can sign up for to get some one-on-one direction and support to getting your site ranking high in Google.