What I learned from landing 80k backlinks with cold emails
Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2024 3:31 am
Link building outreach with cold email isn’t easy. But if you get it right, the results can be amazing.
This website, for example, landed over 80,000 backlinks with cold email outreach.
generate backlinks
And it’s traffic flew up around the same time too:
backlinks and traffic
But is it possible to get backlinks from cold email outreach in 2020? And isn’t everyone just paying for backlinks these days?
The truth is, yes it’s possible! So in this article, you’ll learn:
How to quickly automate and scale your link building outreach
The BIGGEST mistake most link builders make
The exact email I used to land thousands of backlinks
5 quick ways to improve your email copy
The tweaks you NEED to make to boost your results with link building outreach
How does it work?
The link building outreach technique that I use works in 3 simple steps that you can rinse and repeat. Apart from content creation, of course, as you need to make sure the content you’re pitching is valuable and authentic.
Research: Analyze your competitors and build up a bank of armenia phone number list topics that are landing links/are ideal for outreach
Prospect: Create a list of the websites that have linked to your competitors
Cold email outreach: Reach out to everyone from step 2, promoting your content and building links as a result
Here’s my step-by-step blueprint for landing 000s of free backlinks to your website with cold email.
Step 1: Topic research
When it comes to outreach, some topics convert far better than others. And that’s why the first step is research. This is crucial because if you get this wrong, your outreach campaign is destined to fail.
But the good news is that it’s very easy.
In fact, most of the trial and error has been done for you by your competitors. So all you need to do is find topics in your industry that are landing a lot of backlinks already.
Wondering how to get started? Here’s how…
First, I’d recommend plugging in your keywords into Ahref’s content explorer.
Let’s say you’re looking for SEO ideas. Go to Ahrefs > Content Explorer & type your keyword.
generating backlinks
Change the dropdown from ‘Everything’ to ‘Title’ and hit search.
generating backlinks
You’ll get a bunch of topic ideas. Now sort by referring domains.
generating backlinks
Cherry pick the topics that appeal to you. Aim for topics/pages that already have over 200 links or more:
generating backlinks
Want to see this process in action? Check out the video below…
Then just build up a list of topics that you know are going to land backlinks.
NOTE: Your content is the linkable asset. If it sucks, no-one will link to it.
So you have to get this right. Overall, better content = more links.
A few more tips:
When you’re picking the topic, don’t write anything commercial. Webmasters hate commercial content e.g. “Everything You Need To Know About SEO” is miles better than “The Top 10 SEO Tools Reviewed” for outreach
If you can’t beat the content, move onto something else. It’s important to make your content better than everyone else’s
Try to take a unique angle on the topic you’re writing about – to make your content stand out
Step 2: Prospecting
Next up, it’s time to look at everyone who linked to the articles in step 1 and build up a list of websites you can contact for a link.
But tread carefully!
Because not all backlinks were made equal. You need to have a filtering process to prevent low quality websites linking to you.
Plus, if you prospect the wrong websites, and they’re not interested in your content, your reply rates will be lower and the chances of you being marked as spam rise.
So ultimately, that means your deliverability will get burned.
There’s a few different ways you can prospect. Here’s what I’d say:
As your website grows in authority, the stricter you need to be in terms of which websites you approach.
Why? Because as you grow in authority, most links won’t move the needle.
So how can you filter out the best websites to land a link from?
Here’s a few metrics to check:
Ahrefs Domain Rating: This is a way of measuring a website’s authority
Organic Traffic: If the website doesn’t get any organic traffic, chances are Google doesn’t like it. So I’d avoid low traffic websites.
Penalty History: Check the website’s organic search traffic. If the website took a HUGE penalty – losing 90% or more of it’s traffic overnight – that’s a red flag
Relevance: How relevant is the website to your content? Does their blog page fit with the content you’re promoting?
A little word of warning:
Link building outreach is challenging. Sadly, not everyone wants to link to your website!
So there has to be a compromise between the websites you filter VS how many links you can realistically get.
Finally, when you’re building up a prospect list for cold email outreach, here’s 3 useful tips:
Find email addresses in bulk or just do a manual search
It’s important to clean your emails before you send them. Why?
A lot of emails on the web aren’t deliverable. They might be spam traps, outdated or fake, so they’re going to bounce. Email validators like Clearout or Neverbounce are useful for this.
If you can reduce your bounce rates, you’ll improve your deliverability.
This website, for example, landed over 80,000 backlinks with cold email outreach.
generate backlinks
And it’s traffic flew up around the same time too:
backlinks and traffic
But is it possible to get backlinks from cold email outreach in 2020? And isn’t everyone just paying for backlinks these days?
The truth is, yes it’s possible! So in this article, you’ll learn:
How to quickly automate and scale your link building outreach
The BIGGEST mistake most link builders make
The exact email I used to land thousands of backlinks
5 quick ways to improve your email copy
The tweaks you NEED to make to boost your results with link building outreach
How does it work?
The link building outreach technique that I use works in 3 simple steps that you can rinse and repeat. Apart from content creation, of course, as you need to make sure the content you’re pitching is valuable and authentic.
Research: Analyze your competitors and build up a bank of armenia phone number list topics that are landing links/are ideal for outreach
Prospect: Create a list of the websites that have linked to your competitors
Cold email outreach: Reach out to everyone from step 2, promoting your content and building links as a result
Here’s my step-by-step blueprint for landing 000s of free backlinks to your website with cold email.
Step 1: Topic research
When it comes to outreach, some topics convert far better than others. And that’s why the first step is research. This is crucial because if you get this wrong, your outreach campaign is destined to fail.
But the good news is that it’s very easy.
In fact, most of the trial and error has been done for you by your competitors. So all you need to do is find topics in your industry that are landing a lot of backlinks already.
Wondering how to get started? Here’s how…
First, I’d recommend plugging in your keywords into Ahref’s content explorer.
Let’s say you’re looking for SEO ideas. Go to Ahrefs > Content Explorer & type your keyword.
generating backlinks
Change the dropdown from ‘Everything’ to ‘Title’ and hit search.
generating backlinks
You’ll get a bunch of topic ideas. Now sort by referring domains.
generating backlinks
Cherry pick the topics that appeal to you. Aim for topics/pages that already have over 200 links or more:
generating backlinks
Want to see this process in action? Check out the video below…
Then just build up a list of topics that you know are going to land backlinks.
NOTE: Your content is the linkable asset. If it sucks, no-one will link to it.
So you have to get this right. Overall, better content = more links.
A few more tips:
When you’re picking the topic, don’t write anything commercial. Webmasters hate commercial content e.g. “Everything You Need To Know About SEO” is miles better than “The Top 10 SEO Tools Reviewed” for outreach
If you can’t beat the content, move onto something else. It’s important to make your content better than everyone else’s
Try to take a unique angle on the topic you’re writing about – to make your content stand out
Step 2: Prospecting
Next up, it’s time to look at everyone who linked to the articles in step 1 and build up a list of websites you can contact for a link.
But tread carefully!
Because not all backlinks were made equal. You need to have a filtering process to prevent low quality websites linking to you.
Plus, if you prospect the wrong websites, and they’re not interested in your content, your reply rates will be lower and the chances of you being marked as spam rise.
So ultimately, that means your deliverability will get burned.
There’s a few different ways you can prospect. Here’s what I’d say:
As your website grows in authority, the stricter you need to be in terms of which websites you approach.
Why? Because as you grow in authority, most links won’t move the needle.
So how can you filter out the best websites to land a link from?
Here’s a few metrics to check:
Ahrefs Domain Rating: This is a way of measuring a website’s authority
Organic Traffic: If the website doesn’t get any organic traffic, chances are Google doesn’t like it. So I’d avoid low traffic websites.
Penalty History: Check the website’s organic search traffic. If the website took a HUGE penalty – losing 90% or more of it’s traffic overnight – that’s a red flag
Relevance: How relevant is the website to your content? Does their blog page fit with the content you’re promoting?
A little word of warning:
Link building outreach is challenging. Sadly, not everyone wants to link to your website!
So there has to be a compromise between the websites you filter VS how many links you can realistically get.
Finally, when you’re building up a prospect list for cold email outreach, here’s 3 useful tips:
Find email addresses in bulk or just do a manual search
It’s important to clean your emails before you send them. Why?
A lot of emails on the web aren’t deliverable. They might be spam traps, outdated or fake, so they’re going to bounce. Email validators like Clearout or Neverbounce are useful for this.
If you can reduce your bounce rates, you’ll improve your deliverability.