Outreach in a Nutshell - A Reliable Way to Improve Google Rankings

When deciding to work with a chosen SEO agency, in most cases you will encounter an offer for comprehensive optimization of your website. We are talking here about so-called "on-site" and "off-site" SEO (or interchangeably "on-page" and "off-page"). These are two complementary strategies that are worth implementing in order to achieve high rankings in Google search results. In the post below, we will focus on the latter variant, which is inextricably linked with the concepts of link building and outreach. What is outreach, and how does it relate to the topics of website optimization and search engine ranking? In this series, we focus on translating often complicated SEO jargon into more accessible language. Therefore, while reading, you may come across deliberately simplified terms that explain the essence of the topic we are covering in a clearer way. Not all of our readers are fluent in SEO concepts, which is why we decided to accommodate them.

Link building outreach - how can it help your website?

Outreach, or more precisely SEO outreach marketing, is the process of finding relevant sources on the web (e.g., websites, blogs) that match the topic/business profile of your website, and then contacting them to promote content. Sounds complicated? In practice, it is not at all. Outreach is valued in the marketing community for its effectiveness and clear rules:

1. Our team looks for relevant topical connections. After analyzing your business profile, your business website, and its content, they develop tailored content and resource packages that point to your site as an authoritative source. Next, they contact bloggers and website owners matched to your specific needs. This phase focuses on email correspondence and negotiations.
2. After sending the initial outreach emails with collaboration proposals, we begin gathering positive responses. When there is a need to suggest content and topics, we create materials tailored to the specific requirements and guidelines of the blogger. Here, the content goes through several stages: from research and copywriting to editing and final proofreading. In an appropriate place within the article, we also include a link to your website, using an anchor/keywords optimized for SEO.
3. After sending all the content to the blogger/website owner, we wait for it to be placed in the editorial calendar. The moment the article is published, we are notified, and your website gains a link from a strong source.

Of course, a single link will not make your website outrank all the competition on Google. Outreach itself is a long-term and sometimes quite tedious process. It takes a lot of patience to see the first results of these efforts. The same rule applies to all optimization activities included in an SEO strategy. Sometimes weeks or even months must pass before the series of actions taken during an SEO campaign starts to bring the expected results.

Why is outreach so crucial in an SEO strategy?

At this point, doubts may arise: "Do I really need a list of websites linking to my domain?" The answer is unambiguous - definitely yes. On-page and off-page activities complement each other, and their importance for the optimized website is essentially very similar. Focusing more on one strategy or the other may vary depending on the campaign stage. The main goals of off-site SEO and outreach/link building campaigns are:

• acquiring high-quality backlinks from websites with strong technical metrics (determined, among other things, based on DR/UR metrics in Ahrefs or TF/CF in Majestic) and high referral traffic from other sites;
• building a strong backlink profile for your website;
• increasing brand/offer/product awareness among potential customers (who may be at different stages of the buyer journey).

In a nutshell and simplified: the more valuable links referring to your domain, the greater the chance that it will start appearing high in organic (i.e., free) search results. A natural link profile allows you to gain the trust of search engine crawlers, improve ratings from the Google algorithm, and ultimately achieve the intended goals - high rankings, more visits to the website, or an increased conversion rate.

Average price and duration of an outreach campaign

The price of a link building campaign, whose primary goal is to build a solid backlink foundation for the optimized website, is determined individually with the client. The following factors are taken into account:

• the market in which your website operates (prices for publishing articles on US blogs differ, for example, from those on sites with the ".de" suffix targeted at audiences in Germany);
• the topic of the website (it is worth noting that topics such as adult content or gambling are less commonly accepted, and as a result, publications on such portals are often much more expensive);
• the industry in which your website operates (it is worth noting that links are selected differently depending on the popularity of a given keyword/key phrase - so acquiring a backlink for a client focusing on window restoration in London will look different than for a large e-commerce store from Spain trying to increase sales of its products nationwide);
• the number of links acquired per month (the target number of links is selected based on a detailed analysis of your website's link profile and that of your competitors).

For an outreach campaign to bring satisfactory results, it should last at least 3 months. However, the optimal solution is a period of 6 months or more. Such a timeframe results primarily from the nature of the activities we undertake: manual link acquisition and establishing contact with other domain owners or bloggers. Just as importantly, Google algorithms may react poorly to a sudden, unnatural increase in websites linking to your domain. These are the primary factors to consider when determining the duration of a campaign. In addition to the off- site, such as link building and outreach, an equally important component of optimization efforts is content - not without reason referred to as king. You can read more here about why quality website content plays a key role in a long-term SEO strategy.