Automate Your Linkbuilding Outreach With Expandi

As search engine algorithms have evolved over the last few decades, SEO has significantly changed. But backlinks are still useful for ranking well in SERPs and attracting organic visitors.

And the process of creating, enhancing, and sharing links to a website is known as “link building.”

Link building is one of the most successful and effective methods of SEO optimization. That is because creating high-quality backlinks greatly influences organic search traffic. And in today’s blog post, we’re going to talk about the marketing strategy that helps with this process—Link Building Outreach—and how to automate the outreach process with Expandi.

Before we dive in, let’s understand what link building outreach means.

What is link building outreach?

Link building outreach is process of outreaching the third party platforms and offer them to link back your website (this is called link building). Link building is a marketing strategy that helps improve your website’s organic ranking in search engines. It will eventually attract more traffic to your website. Link building outreach is typically done through social media (Facebook or LinkedIn) and cold emails. The objectives of the outreach link building process include:

• Increasing brand awareness.
• Expanding your target market
• Boost your ranking in search engines
• Generate organic and referral traffic.
• Improve sales

Link building Outreach promotes content by bringing it to the attention of potential linkers. Outreach link building is the single most effective method of getting high-value links and climbing the ranking scales of search engines.

Whatever outreach-based link building strategy you decide to pursue, you need to take it step-by-step, with an emphasis on how to run an email campaign that gets you the desired ‘Yes’ from your link prospects.

Along with LinkedIn and email outreach, link-building groups are a great way to connect with other link-builders and to quickly build links for your website.

Since manually putting together a successful link building outreach strategy takes a lot of time and effort, using a link building outreach tool to automate this process is a great option.

The link building outreach procedure is divided into five steps in general:

1. Prospecting
2. Acquiring the contact details of your prospects
3. Personalizing your pitches
4. Setting up your cold outreach campaign
5. Follow-ups

Once you press the “send button,” the outreach process doesn’t actually come to an end.

Naturally, one-off collaborations will yield a respectable number of responses and backlinks. Still, if you want to build as many inbound links as you can, the ultimate goal of your link-building outreach should be to build long-lasting relationships with other bloggers rather than merely obtaining a single backlink from them.

In the sections below, we’ll explain exactly how you can build relationships and boost link-building opportunities. But first, let’s understand the link-building outreach process.

Link-building outreach process

There are two ways to approach the link-building outreach process we want to tell you about.

Case #1 Outreach acting Link Building Managers

Never squander time trying to find link building partners. Start looking for people who are engaged in link building on LinkedIn and import your leads however you’d like.

1. The first thing to do is to find on LinkedIn people who are engaged in link-building activities.

Whether you’re using a free LinkedIn account or a paid account, you will get a list of people whose current or previous position is related to link building.

To scrape this list, you should:

1. Copy the URL of your search in Linkedin and go to Expandi to create the “New search”
   
   
2. Choose the “Basic Search” type and past the URL you copied at the previous step.
   
   
3. When the search is finished, you can use this list for your automated outreach campaigns.

2. Send a connection campaign with a link swap offer

So, you have a defined target audience or an executive you’d like to connect with.

The key is to treat them like an actual person.

Don’t start selling or pitching straight away (because they don’t care), don’t lie about how you went through their profile (it’s super obvious when this isn’t the case), and don’t tell your whole life story in the small connection box either.

Start with a connection message, proceed with the follow up message after the connection request has been accepted and do several more follow ups to get a positive reply.

We have prepared a sequence template that you can use right away! 

The connection message

“Hi {first_name},

I noticed your profile and wanted to reach out as I see we are both responsible for a link-building partnership.

I guess we have growth in common.

Let’s connect,

Olga”

Follow up 1 (after connection)

“Thank you for the connection!

Olga here, CEO and founder at Quoleady, a marketing agency helping SaaS businesses grow and thrive with evergreen content.

For the past six months, we've contributed to over 200 high-quality blogs like yours and now would love to have a collaboration with you.

My offer is the following:

We can provide you with a backlink to you or your partner from a high-authority domain (we’re only collaborating with platforms with DA 40+, traffic from 1.5K, not content mills) and will put a backlink to your website in exchange.

Please let me know if you’re interested.”

Adding personalized photos and animated GIFs makes you stand out in your prospect’s inbox. The better your offer is – the more chances are to get the link swap.

Hyperise and Expandi direct integration will allow you to add such personalized images directly to your Linkedin outreach messages. How it will look in your Expandi campaign:

Follow-up 2:

“Hey {{firstName}},

It’s Olga from Quoleady :)

I forgot to include examples of articles written and published by our team. So you can find a few of them below:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2022/01/10/using-ai-and-machine-learning-to-improve-the-health-insurance-process/

https://www.jeffbullas.com/collect-customer-data/

Let me know if you’re interested in the backlinks to similar articles.

Thank you”

Follow-up 3:

“ {{firstName}},

I was just wondering if you had time to check my collaboration offer?

Let me know if you need more information; I’ll be glad to share it with you. 

Look forward to hearing from you”

Case #2 Find Link Building Opportunities

1. Find people likely to link to your content

Finding the right people to contact is the first stage in any outreach campaign, not just in link building. 

You can accomplish this in several ways:

• Leverage your current connections
• Use the competitors’ backlinks list
• Manually search for the websites to backlink 

The prospecting stage of your outreach campaign might span anywhere from a few minutes to many hours, depending on the link development approach and link prospecting technique you select.

• Leverage your current connections

Before investing time in prospecting for new contacts, getting in touch with any existing partners or acquaintances, you may have in your field might be worthwhile. Even if you don’t need links from them, they could be able to introduce you to their own link building partners or welcome you to link building groups you might not have been aware of.

If there is a website that meets your requirements and you already have a contact person that you know from that company –  send them a message assign for the help with your link building efforts.

• Competitor backlinks strategy

One of our favorite tactics is the competitor backlinks strategy because, virtually, all of the prospectings have already been done for you. All you have to do is identify the backlinks linking to your competitor’s content and encourage those people to link to you instead. You can do that using Ahrefs. Simply type in the website of your competitor and click on the backlinks tab:

• Manually search for the websites to backlink

You can use a boolean search on Google to find relevant websites and articles to get a backlink from and manually collect all such websites to a spreadsheet.

Another way is to use a SEO tool to collect the sites semi-automatically. Here’s how we do that with Ahrefs:

1. Go to the ‘Content Explorer” tab.
2. Type your keyword.
3. Add the filters.
4. And you will get the list of sites.
   
   
5. Now you only need to export them as a CSV file and you’re good to go.

2. List Segmentation 

Segmenting your list is another crucial step in the outreach phase of any link-building strategy. Separate your prospects according to a certain factor, such as DR or organic traffic. 

Run distinct campaigns for low-DR and high-DR websites to maximize efficiency. Since low-quality websites often don’t require as much customization as high-quality ones, you may spend less time creating tailored pitches for them. Although segmenting is manual work to do and requires some time, it totally pays off!

Automated Outreach Campaign

Once you have collected a list of target websites, you can search for the relevant contacts on LinkedIn.

1. Use one of the automation tools to help you find company pages on LinkedIn. We use TexAu

You simply need to upload the list of websites you have, and the tool will do the rest!

2. After you’d have the list of companies’ LinkedIn pages – it’s easy to find the relevant people responsible for content creation. We have already described the process in detail here. You can upload the CSV list with URLs. You wil get a list that looks like this:
   
   
3. Import your CSV list to Expandi and automate the outreach process.

3. Create smart sequences with email and Linkedin follow-ups

The next stage of planning your outreach campaign for link building is to create your smart sequence that can include email and linkedin followups at the same time.

For your 1st, 2nd, or 3rd-degree connections, you can create smart sequences in Expandi. 

This type of campaign allows you to:

• Make automatic profile visits, post likes, and other activity actions that can warm up your campaign before sending a connection request
• Send personalized linkedin and email follow ups
• Send InMail messages

Add as many more touch sites as you like, and place intervals of time between each one. Watch the leads come to you as you relax.

You can use message examples that we showed you at the case #1 or you can create your own sequence, based on the recommendations bellow.

Keep in mind that your message must be short enough for recipients to read it all without becoming bored or deleting it, yet informative enough to illustrate why they should care.

Keep these ideas in mind while you create your message:

• Tell them why they should be interested in you: Have a unique or relevant hook that makes them click on your message.
• Inform them of the action you want them to take: The desired action to be taken by them has different levels and comes with different barriers.
• Prove you’re a real person and not just a spammer: Personalize the message with their name, a good subject line, something about their work, and a genuine email address.

The initial pitch and one or two follow-ups often make up a sequence. A good sequence for link building includes a variety of components:

1. A compelling subject line that makes people open your mail (for email step in sequence)
2. A good initial link building pitch that is about your prospect and has an enticing value proposition at the beginning itself to not waste their time.
3. A strong follow-up tactic that creates a sense of urgency. Limit your follow-ups to one or two, and space them out by at least three business days.
4. Check for spam trigger words that might make your link building pitches end up in the spam folder
5. Authenticate yourself in the eyes of your prospect by adding an email signature.

The most common areas where your link building campaign can go wrong are:

• Not conducting proper research
• Writing poor and lengthy subject lines
• Failing to personalize the outreach messages
• Lack of relevance to the target audience

These pitfalls can be avoided, and the success rate of your outreach emails can be improved by following these 5 tips discussed in the next section.

5 tips to improve outreach success

1. Choose prospects carefully

It’s worth mentioning again how crucial it is to find top-notch, suitable prospects. Compared to numerous low-quality links, one high-quality link from an authority domain is far more valuable. So carefully assess the influencers and their websites, paying attention to the following:

1. How many followers do they have?
2. What is their audience engagement rate?
3. Their page and domain authority
4. The caliber of their content.

2. Find the right contact

If you want to tap into LinkedIn’s network, increase the pipeline of relevant inbound and cold leads, and close more deals, then LinkedIn Sales Navigator is the right fit for you. 

Finding the right person to contact in an organization increases the success rate of opening a cold email. With the LinkedIn Sales Navigator, finding your target audience is as easy as pie.

• Use a search engine that produces more relevant leads to find the right people and businesses.

• Find the ideal connections with recommendations made just for you.

One of the terrific features of LinkedIn Sales Navigator is that it recommends prospects similar to the ones you already have. And the best part – It’s easier than ever!

There are over 20+ LinkedIn advance search filters that you can use to perform a Boolean search.

Here’s a list of the best-suited filters to generate leads:

• Keywords—relevant keywords found in your prospects’ profiles

• Geography—when you’re looking for prospects in the desired location (e.g. where you’re based).

• Title—position, whether you’re looking for CEOs or HRs (or both!).

• Company size—is it a startup or a corporation? Knowing your target market will be helpful in this case.

You may make your search as specific or as general as you’d like. 

3. Warm up your campaigns

Another crucial component of doing outreach campaigns at scale is Email and account warmups.

Why is that important?

When you start sending bulk messages from your accounts (and you’ve never done that before and/or use a newly created account), the email provider or LinkedIn can consider your actions suspicious and ban your account.

To avoid that – warm up your account. Start sending messages slowly with a lower number at the beginning and gradually increase the number of outreach messages. That way it will look natural and keep your accounts safe.

4. Interact Regularly

A fantastic strategy to increase interaction is to connect on social media before contacting high-value prospects. Using social media to connect adds a layer of customization by putting a face to your approach. This enables you to pique the recipients’ interest before sending them a cold email.

Keep communicating regularly so that when they get your messages, they will immediately recognize you.

5. Personalizing your pitches

If you want your prospect to respond while pitching, always remember that it’s not about you—it’s about them! Here’s how you can do it:

• Use personalized messages instead of generic, boring ones guaranteed to doom your link-building outreach campaigns.
• Make the greeting distinctive and start with a crisp, relevant subject line.
• Tell people what you want them to do in a brief, specific manner. Give them the link’s location and the exact text to link to if you want it fixed or added to an existing piece of text.
• Be clear, and feel free to use humor or a shared experience.
• Aim to limit the email to no more than 80 words.

Conclusion

Any business’s effective growth depends on outreach for link building. Understanding the target audience, analyzing competitors’ work, selecting credible platforms and resources, and developing a step-by-step approach are necessary for successful link building.

Following the steps mentioned in this blog post and using tools like Expandi, you can effectively build an outreach link-building campaign for your business.

But, if you wish to learn more about LinkedIn outreach, check out The top 3 LinkedIn Outreach Strategies

To get an insider look at our best templates, tips, tricks, and growth hacks, you can join The LinkedIn Outreach Family.