The Link-Building Strategy You Need to Know 🔗

Here's the problem with the classic content strategy: it's focused on your target audience, which is essential, but what if your target customer isn't someone who can help grow your SEO ranking?

💡 Overview

Today we're diving into an underutilized yet potent strategy for organic growth: Reverse Outreach for link building - a tactical game-changer that's all about optimizing your content to grab the attention of bloggers and journalists automatically. No more cold emails begging for backlinks.

Here's the problem with the classic content strategy: it's focused on your target audience, which is essential, but what if your target customer isn't someone who can help grow your SEO ranking? Take dentists, for example. Even if your SaaS product for dentists is groundbreaking, the likelihood that a dentist will link to your article from their blog is slim.

The strategy of Reverse Outreach turns that on its head. It’s about creating highly specific, SEO-optimized content that ranks for keywords these influencers are actively searching for. Instead of being the one to reach out, they find you. Think of it as setting up bait for high-quality backlinks.

For instance, you could write a blog post that answers a specific question commonly cited in articles, like "How Many SaaS Startups Are There?" Journalists looking to cite this statistic will find your content, and bingo—a backlink for you.

You might worry that these aren't keywords your target customer is searching for, but here's the deal: it doesn't matter. This is about building up your site's authority, and by proxy, boosting all your other content in the search rankings.

Let’s jump in!

⭐️ How to Master Reverse Outreach

Identify Journalist Keywords

  • Use SEO Tools: Use platforms like Ahrefs or SEMrush to identify what "journalist keywords" are ranking. These are search terms journalists commonly use when looking for data or stats.

  • Monitor Trending Topics: Keep an eye on news aggregators and social platforms to see what topics journalists are currently covering.

  • Analyze Competitor Backlinks: Check out where your competitors are getting their backlinks. These could be potential outlets for you as well.

Craft The Content

  • Solve a Question: Your content should answer a specific question that journalists are asking. Make it data-heavy, and use visuals.

  • SEO-Optimize: Use the journalist keywords in your title, headings, and metadata.

  • Create a Content Calendar: Plan to regularly release content that targets different journalist keywords to keep the inbound links flowing.

Make It Shareable

  • Visual Assets: Use infographics, data visualizations, or video snippets that are easily shareable.

  • Cite Your Sources: Build credibility by showing where you got your data, but make it so valuable that they’d rather link to you than to your sources.

  • Make Embed Codes: For charts or infographics, provide HTML embed codes to make it easy for a journalist to include your visual in their story.

Passive Outreach

  • Newsletter Mention: Occasionally mention these resourceful posts in your newsletter but target a segment of your list that's most likely to share this type of content.

  • Social Media Sniping: Whenever someone asks a relevant question on social media platforms like Twitter, share your content as the answer.

Measure and Tweak

  • Track Backlinks: Use backlink tracking tools to monitor the effectiveness of your strategy.

  • Engage: If someone links to your content, a quick thank-you can go a long way and may lead to further opportunities.

  • Iterate: Regularly update your content to keep it fresh and relevant, encouraging more backlinks over time.

👇 Examples

Exploding Topics

Exploding Topics is a platform that curates rapidly growing topics before they take off. They regularly publish well-researched articles and blog posts targeting journalists looking for new and trending topics.

  • Crafted Content: They create comprehensive reports about trends before they go mainstream, providing invaluable data for journalists.

  • Shareable Assets: They offer easily digestible infographics and charts.

  • SEO: Their blog posts are often optimized for journalist-centric keywords like "emerging trends" or "growing markets."

HubSpot

HubSpot is renowned for its inbound marketing, and it applies the same principle for Reverse Outreach.

  • Crafted Content: HubSpot’s State of Marketing Report is a treasure trove for journalists seeking data-driven insights.

  • Visual Assets: Their reports come with downloadable assets that are easy for journalists to include in their pieces.

  • Measuring: HubSpot closely monitors inbound links and regularly updates its content to keep it relevant.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs, an SEO tool, uses its own data to create insightful reports and case studies that journalists love to cite.

  • Data-Heavy Posts: They produce content like "How long does it take to rank on Google?" which are both keyword-targeted and data-heavy.

  • Passive Outreach: They share these posts on SEO and digital marketing forums, reaching both industry professionals and journalists indirectly.

Buffer

Buffer has been an advocate for radical transparency, sharing even their revenue numbers openly.

  • Crafted Content: Their transparency reports, touching on sensitive data like revenue and diversity, attract attention from business and tech journalists.

  • Iterate: They keep these reports updated, ensuring that they continue to receive backlinks over time.

📚 Resources

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