Link Building Outreach With SEO Emails

Link building outreach, or a backlink outreach, is a process to acquire links from other websites to your target URLs through outreach campaigns. Need link outreach services? Let’s speak! Explore the nuances of backlink outreach.

Before you start your link building outreach campaign via email, let me show tools you may need with their pricing.

🔍 Email Finders or Verifiers

Hunter.io – from 25 free searches monthly to 120,000 with 2,508€ yearly.

Voila Norbert – from free 50 verifications in a month to Counselor status 399$ per month.

Snov.io –  from free 25 credits monthly to 100,000 credits monthly with 554$. This one is not only an email finder but also an outreach tool.

📨 Outreach software tools

• BuzzStream: Link-building outreach platform with email tracking.
  Pricing: $24–$999/month | Free Tier: 14-day free trial.
• Pitchbox: Outreach automation tool for agencies, specializing in link-building field.
  Pricing: $195–$995/month | Free Tier: Demo available.
• Mailshake: Email and LinkedIn outreach software with automation and response tracking.
  Pricing: $59–$99/month | Free Tier: No free plan (7-day trial).
• Saleshandy: Email outreach and sales outreach platform with mail analytics.
  Pricing: $9–$99/month | Free Tier: Free plan (limited emails).
• Lemlist: Cold email personalization online tool with automated follow-ups.
  Pricing: $59–$99/month | Free Tier: 14-day free trial.
• Mailmeteor: Sending personalized cold emails and mail merges directly from your inbox. Very easy to use.
  Pricing: $9.99–$49/month | Free Tier: Free plan (50 emails/day).

🔗 Backlink Monitoring Tools

Backlink monitoring tools will help you check whether the link is live or not. Here I will mention only the most used tools from our agency.

• Ahrefs: Starts from 108$ monthly to 14999$ annually. From one user to unlimited users in your account.
• Semrush: Starts from 139$ to custom plans, monthly 499$. Give opportunities for 14 trials.

Here are the steps to do link outreach via email:

#Step 1: Niche and keyword targeting

Before everything in the outreach process, we should identify the project’s niche and the industry we work in. As you know your niche, you can definitely say which companies are your competitors. This is the first thing you do before every marketing campaign. In the first process, I am always separating around 7 competitors and checking the keywords they have already ranked. This is guiding me and my project to understand which keywords competitors can earn money with and how I can do it. To do the research on the niche keywords, I am using Ahrefs’ keyword explorer. When we search for something in it, the system automatically generates traffic potential, keyword difficulty, the intent of the keyword, global search volume divided into countries, and top position holders. For SEO and backlinks managers, the most important part is the ideas in the “terms match” and “questions” categorization, where we can all find keywords that are not so difficult to target, which are the ones you think will be harder.

#Step 2: Data Scraping

Again, I use Ahrefs for data scraping using keywords. When we enter the tool category, we see the search bar where we can type the keywords. Near the search bar, there is an opportunity for finding the keyword in URL, content, and title. Sometimes, when the keyword data is not expanded to the whole theme, I use the sections of the URL and title. Let’s say my anchor should be “link building in Egypt”, instead of it, I can search link building in Africa, so after that, try to have my link in the URL or title “Link building in Africa” as everything connected with Egypt theoretically can be a part of Africa.

Let’s say the metrics we can separate for download. In the SEO sphere, some people say it is mandatory to always look at the metrics above yours and try to get links from those websites. However, in my opinion, it is a theme for discussion. I am not against the websites with higher metrics than yours, but you should know that it cannot be the focus, as the metrics can misinform you about the quality. Why? I have checked and screened one of the PBN’s metrics via Ahrefs and you can see it below that the website has traffic and a high Domain Rating, however, if someone from my client will request to add a link in that website I will reject them as I am afraid I can harm their website SEO. However, to avoid finding PBNs, I have my own automations with regulations that can identify which is a PBN and which is not. And after clearing the data from bad websites, we do outreach.

#Step 3: Email list creation

Email list creation in the first expression is an easy thing. However, there are some nuances here, too. Honestly, I am using my own automations for finding relevant people in the company and trying to find their business emails, not personal ones. When Google updated the feature of the people chip, it was very easy; I just inserted the names and surnames of the people, creating possible formulas that may exist, and after the function worked, the right one stood out. Nowadays, I can say that it is not as accurate as it was, and I will update this part of the article when something changes. So, I am using the same system but using email verifiers. After I noticed that some of not found so in that case, I am just trying to find any email related to my application. These can be emails like seo@example.com, marketing@example.com, editor@example.com, communication@example.com, and pr@example.com. If there is no one like them, I just scrape anything I can find, except emails like support@example.com.

#Step 4: Email templates brainstorming

This is the process when we compare the last campaign results with their previous ones. We try to understand what exactly helped us to increase the click rate and positive answer rate. Of course, these expressions seem to be philosophical, which is why, to make them suitable for data checking and analyzing, sometimes we do polls within SEO communities or our LinkedIn friends. For specific tricks, we are following people who are professionals in that field and check the results after testing.

#Step 5: Email outreach campaign

Okay, let’s say we have an email list, tools, and templates. We start sending emails. But we are not sending emails immediately. We are planning an email outreach campaign dividing the number of emails into small parts with the principle of arithmetic progression.  For not using the same email address, we are sending emails via different ones. When I say different ones, it means that, or it is the same domain email changed with another name, or it is another domain email.

#Step 6: Monitoring Results of the first email list

This step is about A/B testing. An important component of each marketing campaign. We can send around 100 emails and understand the quality of the data prepared for the email outreach. To check and monitor the quality of the data, I recommend being careful with the email addresses and website types you need to find. In each link building agency, domains’ outreach data can vary as the minimum metric requirement differs. Some agencies scrape the data according to DA, some DR, some traffic requests are higher than 500, some 1000, and some measure the traffic via Ahrefs and SEMrush, which are different data providers.

#Step 7: Follow-up emails

According to our link outreach statistics, follow-ups increase the positive responses by around 300%. There are many reasons why it is so. The main reasons I noticed are:

• Missing your email because of the time zones between you and the receiver: However, nowadays we solve this by taking into account the information on the LinkedIn of the person to whom the outreach will reach, or checking the domain IP address.
• The receiver gets many emails during the day, so your email can decrease in inbox position: Here is why follow-ups can help you increase the position in the inbox.
• The receiver opened your email, did not reply immediately with any reason, and forgot about you: People can forget about your email, and just a friendly reminder without any new information will help you to get a response.
• The receiver was waiting for more detailed information: Sometimes people expect more from you. However, as we can not include all in one email, we do it step by step. For example, in the first follow-up for backlink outreach, we can say the strategy we would like to proceed and in the second follow-up, we can show a case study on how easy it is to work with us. For some, the strategy will be enough to answer, and for some, you should speak about the details of your approach.

#Step 8: Checking Final Results

This is the last thing we do. After checking the results, we try to find issues and their solutions for better backlink outreach.

Looking at the metrics

To monitor the final results of our link building outreach, I prioritize 3 metrics:

1. Open Rate – Percent of the recipients who opened the email I sent.
2. Reply Rate – Percent of the recipients who replied to me.
3. Positive Reply Rate – Percent of recipients interested in our offer.

However, there are some interesting things I can emphasize here. To track the results, of course, I need to use external tools, and I noticed that it can hurt the metric that I named the Trust Score in the email. People understand that the process is monitored, feel controlled, and answer emails more slowly. I was using email trackers, and the reply rate was lower. After testing, I just sent a campaign without tracking, and I was satisfied. And then I should understand how I can monitor results, but not to hurt the reply rate. The solution is easy. First, I should focus on the open rates of my email campaigns. After testing, I switched off the tracking, and now the focus is on reply rate. This is the only way to track the campaign results and avoid the trust problem.

Looking at the key problems of the low reply rate

• Not relevant emails: Always check who is going to receive the outreach.
• Long or irrelevant subject lines: Always check the picture of sent emails via the mobile version, too.
• Email content is thin or very long: The Gold average is the key if you want people to reply. Receivers do not read long emails, and at the same time, emails with a lack of information will not force them to ask a question.
• Not a friendly attitude: This is about the etiquette in email conversations.

• Always personalize your texts. People who should open your messages should know that you are not a robot; you are human. Use the name, not Sir/Madam.
• Your open rate is about your subject line. Optimize it and check the results not only on the desktop but also on the mobile.
• Make a list of the right people you should find and reach out to them. If the company has a link building specialist, do not reach out to the marketing manager.
• Always do A/B testing for your big campaigns. This will help you understand which strategy you should use in the long term.
• For your email outreach, always use DKIM, DMARC, and SPF to protect against email fraud. This will help you to show that you are not a spammer.
• Use warm-up services for your email natural activity and trust score.
• Do not use spam words.

SEO emails are optimized email outreach templates for SEO purposes.

The connection between emails and SEO

1. Skyscraper tactics

First, you scrape the data of the topics (you are interested in) linked by other websites. When you create high-quality content (better than the linked one) on your side and email them to add a link from a relevant page to your content. Here is the template example. 👇

2. Organic traffic

In case you write great informative content and you have a list of relevant email addresses, you can reach out to them to bring attention and natural traffic to your platform. Some from the list will open your email, and some will click the links that appear in the email. Here is the template example. 👇

3. Launching a new product or service

When you launch a new product or a service, you need time to rank on search engines. So, before working on your positioning on SERP, the first thing you can do is an outreach campaign to your audience. This will help to have an activity on a new page, plus information sharing can help find new customers. Here is the template example. 👇

4. Mutual partnerships

Let’s say you scraped the data from websites that are relevant to your niche. So, one of the best methods to have a contextual link (what is a contextual link) on those platforms is a guest post. You can reach out to them to have an opportunity to share your thoughts on the topic, approved by the editor of the site, and add a link in a guest post. Here is the template example. 👇

Another version to have a contextual link is link exchanges. But let me be honest, I am not about direct exchanges that are against Google policies. There are other natural ways to do free link exchanges, like ABCD exchanges. Here is the template example. 👇

5. Brand Awareness

SEO emails can help you to be noticed by industry leaders. Each time you share some news regarding your website or a company, once they hear about your company, they will remember your emails. This will help you to have a strong brand name and trust. Here is the template example. 👇

In many articles I researched before, the pages where companies separated some trigger words that they called spammy. Honestly, I would like to say that words themselves are not spammy; they can be named as spammy when the context is spammy.

Principles I stick to

In my opinion, there are 3 important principles you should know to avoid appearing in spam:

Context

Here, I can say that context is king. Let’s say you want to use the word “Earn per month” which was mentioned in many articles as a spammy word. Below you can see the sentence that is spammy for me, and the second one is not.

Spammy sentence: Earn $10.000 per month guaranteed by our Team. Click and see the new opportunity for financial freedom.

Not spammy sentence: After our link building approach, our clients’ positions increased on SERP, and now the client is earning $10.000 per month.

Subject Line

This is the most important thing you do correctly, as subject lines are about your email open rates. The more your subject lines are attractive and at the same time not spammy, the more chances you have to reach your audience. We all know that sometimes we get messages that are not real. You can not believe that this can happen, so you send those messages to the spam folder. So,

Unsubscribe option

If you do not include a place for unsubscribing, people can manually send your message to the spam folder. It is better to add that option in your email rather than appear in the spam folder.

Types of spammy words to avoid in your email

• Jargon words
• Shady words
• Unethical words
• Words that create pressure
• Words that create an urgency
• Words that make promises

Spam word examples

I said that I follow the principles, but for a good understanding, I want to share some examples of spam words. Sometimes, examples are better teachers than guides.

• Must read
• 100% free
• 100% satisfied
• Additional income
• Apply immediately
• Apply now
• Be amazed
• Be your own boss
• Best price
• Call now
• Cash bonus
• Cheap meds
• Congratulations! You’ve been selected
• Earn $
• Exclusive access
• For Only
• Free consultation
• Get rich quick
• New customers only
• Slots jackpot
• Zero cost

How do I use tools for spam checking?

Interactive spam checking

One of the examples I can show you is via Mailmeteor spam checker. The tool is easy to use. When I type something in the platform, it automatically identifies trigger words (underlined with red color) that can lead to spam, so while typing, I can notice them and change them accordingly.

Testing before sending

The second tool that I use is Mail-Tester.com. With the help of this tool, I copied the provided email address and sent the email for a test. After clicking “check your score”, I get a spam analysis that can help me identify problems and solve them.

LinkedIn is a great platform where you can find thousands of specialists in your industry. Here we can use tools created only for LinkedIn outreaches or email management tools that have a feature for LinkedIn, too. However, as you know, the first tool that you can not ignore is LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator. However, there are other alternatives too, as I like to use lemlist.com. Things can be organized manually, too. You just need to use the search bar of LinkedIn and select the people category, where you will find professionals in your field. Plus, it is better to select the country. It will help find the website link builders who manage your desired language-based sites.

Link building outreach with human-written SEO emails is a great solution for link builders to hunt for new opportunities. This will help to enhance your relationships and diversify your backlink portfolio with different backlink strategies.