Outreach is a proven way to build links for your site, to get higher rankings from search engines, increase web traffic and improve conversion rates.
We’ve shared with you tips about how you can grow your local business online, with articles on how to use Google My Business, tricks to help with SEO, and a checklist of things you can do to strengthen your online presence.
While we talked about getting help to build your online presence briefly in the checklist, this article will take a more in-depth look at link building through outreach marketing and how it can open doors for your small business by helping you connect with local audiences effectively by using link-building services.
What is outreach marketing?
Outreach marketing is a way to build and maintain relationships with other establishments or individuals like journalists, bloggers, and influencers. Collaborating with these establishments and individuals will help you tap into their networks and audiences, spread the word about your brand and business offerings, and importantly, help with link building for your business website.
Outreach marketing might include identifying which businesses and individuals are most likely to be interested in the topic or niche of your business offerings, and then creating content that is relevant and will be of interest to their audiences.
You will also need a strategy for reaching out and contacting these businesses and influencers about ways to collaborate.
What is Link Building?
In simple terms, link building is the process of acquiring links from other websites to your website or landing page. This can be achieved through various means, including but not restricted to guest blog posts, social media posts, media coverage, and paid business directories.
The main purpose of link building is to improve website rankings on search results, increase web traffic, and boost conversions.
Link building is a powerful way to improve site authority — a major factor affecting search engine rankings. When Google and other search engines find, index, and rank a website, websites that exhibit expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness are preferred and rank higher. Link building is a tactic that improves website scores in all three of these categories.
However, the score will also depend on the quality of the websites that link to your site. Getting links from websites that have a good reputation is important, as search engines and users alike will trust these links more.
Links from magazine websites, industry authorities, news sites, influencers, or bloggers, are all great as long as they are related to the business. On the other hand, links coming from dubious sites or adult entertainment, gambling, and firearms websites will hurt your overall online reputation.
You will want to avoid links to your website from bad or questionable websites as these links will lower your ranking score and negate all the efforts you’ve put into improving your online presence.
The links to and from your site are both important, and while Google looks at a whole range of factors while ranking your website, here are two other things to pay special attention to.
Firstly, the quality of your content. Great, well-strategized content will elevate the value of your website and improve the ROI on all your digital marketing efforts. The content you create must be optimized for users as well as search engines.
Secondly, RankBrain and BERT. These are Google’s machine learning algorithms that work together to help search engines first understand user intent and then prioritize results that answer users’ questions. While creating content for any purpose, including link building, it’s important to think about what the end-user might be looking for, and how your content will help them.
Use outreach marketing to grow your local audience through link building
Outreach marketing will help you create demand, increase relevance, and get ahead of the competition. Smart businesses know that outreach marketing will
- Improve their brand reputation
- Create buzz for a growing business
- Boost traffic and in turn, sales of products or services
- Showcase their brand as a thought leader
- Improve conversion rates
- Discover new channels and audiences
There are many ways to use local link-building outreach to expand your local audience. Here are some of the most effective ways.
Using Google My Business for Outreach Marketing
Your Google My Business (GMB) page is a powerful way to bring in customers to your website or brick-and-mortar business. But with the GMB location proximity feature, you can use it to research and reach out to local businesses you can partner with. If their GMB profiles are complete, you’ll get all the information you need — websites, addresses, contact information, reviews, etc., to decide if they are the right partners for your business.
Using other Search Engines for Local Link Building
With the right search terms, Google and other search engines can be useful tools to help you find partner websites or blogs for your outreach campaign. Entering your location and your target keyword in the search bar will get the search engine to bring up suggestions for the most common searches by people in your area.
Reach out to the top results in the top search terms (if it’s a good match for your business) to collaborate, guest post, or share links to content that’s related to their business.
Reach out to Current Backlinks and Sources
Your existing backlink history will paint a clearer picture of where your outreach performance stands at the moment. You’ll also understand which websites and industries are interested in linking to you, and what topics or landing pages bring in the most attention.
You can get a list of these links from Google’s Search Console or let us do it for you, as part of your free SEO Audit.
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Use the websites on this list to find the ones in your target location. New opportunities for link building can come from similar businesses or more collaborations with the same websites.
Lead Generation Tools
Using a lead generation tool is a great way to discover potential link-building opportunities. Besides generating SEO leads, you can use the list to locate contacts with active websites from your target locations. With some research, you can find websites on the list you want to reach out to.
There are many free, and reasonably priced lead generation tools available, and you can find one that’s right for you. To find out more about how Mystique can help you with lead generation for link building, get in touch.
Local Email Outreach
Email is one of the most common tools for local outreach, and though seeing results with this method might take some time, it remains one of the most effective ways to drive local outreach.
Reach out to websites, with a well-crafted email, sharing a piece of content, product page, or landing page you want to promote. It’s that simple.
Keep in mind though, that popular websites might receive hundreds or thousands of emails every day from people and businesses who want to collaborate. What you need to do is stand out and establish how the collaboration you’re suggesting brings value to their website too.
Get started using outreach marketing to build your local audience
The first step clearly defining why you need link building and what you hope to achieve. Depending on what your goals are, you might need to work with SEO experts, link-building specialists, as well as content marketing experts for writing services. is on this list to find the ones in your target location. New opportunities for link building can come from similar businesses or more collaborations with the same websites.
When done right, local link building through outreach will amplify your messaging and multiply your local audience. And though it’s not complicated, it requires research, strategy, and dedication, as results won’t be seen overnight.
Local link building is a great way to strengthen your digital presence and get your business in front of more people when they’re actively looking.
If you have too many things on your plate, or you’re unsure of what you need to do, finding the right strategic partners can help you grow your local SEO efficiently and effectively.
We invite you to schedule a no-obligation, 15-minute conversation with us to understand how you can help your business do more, with an SEO and digital marketing plan that outreach marketing to build your local audience.
We’ll guarantee you’ll walk away with some great tips on how to maximize your digital marketing efforts.
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