Outreach: The 7 Deadly Sins

Link building is still an important part of SEO, even if the dark days of manipulative tactics have been largely eliminated.
In fact some see link building as being very difficult to get right in the modern era. But with the right outreach strategy, earning links from reputable sites should be straightforward.

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To get the best results you must unlearn bad habits, with the following seven mistakes most often resulting in damaging outreach blunders.

Failed First Contact

If you are attempting to make an SEO offer to a third party site, you are unlikely to win any new friends if the person or team you contact is already taking care of this task. It reeks of an organisation taking a copy-paste approach to outreach.

Content Duplication

Offering a site some high quality content within which a backlink can be embedded is a good idea, but not if they already have an almost identical article available already. If you do not check beforehand, then the initial outreach could feel impersonal and rushed.

Naming Mix-up

Getting the name of the recipient of an outreach email wrong makes an awful first impression. So if you cannot find the specific identity of the recipient, opting for a generic mode of address will cause fewer upsets than taking a guess.

Power Problems

Make sure that any correspondence is addressed to someone in a way that makes them feel valued. Suggesting that they are low down the food chain can cause perturbation and embarrassment, especially if it turns out that they are in fact the boss.

Email Issues

Overlong or blunt emails can result in the early death of an outreach project. So make sure that everything from the subject line to the length of the body of the message is optimised, if necessary seeking advice from an SEO agency in Northern Ireland like http://www.rycomarketing.co.uk/search-engine-optimisation-seo.html to get the best results.

Dead Site Dilemmas

There is no point trying to get a link from a site that has not been touched by its owner for some time, but that does not stop many firms from making fruitless attempts of this kind.

Contact Overkill

If an outreach email is ignored, following up on it to make sure it did not get overlooked is fine. But persistent contact after this point can make a very bad impression and should be avoided.