The Secret to Easy Backlinks? My 3-Step Email Outreach.

As anybody has tried, backlinking is a pretty laborious task. Even with all the how-to backlink guides that exist on the Internet, you probably have fallen back to one conclusion:

There’s no shortcuts to backlinking.

The only way is if you have $23,673,509 to spend on backlinking. BUT, I have a much more economical approach that will double, triple, or quadruple the chance of you getting backlinks. How? It’s simple — email outreach.

This doesn’t mean mass-spamming people with a dry, generic template. I tried that, and to be honest, I didn’t get as many results as I thought I would. In fact, I got a LOT of people flaming me for being a sneaky marketer for sending them the same email as I did to other people they knew.

I then started paying more attention to profiles and added a few personal touches to my generic email template. Wow! My email open rates bumped up to 46%, click rates to 31%, and that gave me the right lead-in to ask for a backlink. Personal touch for email outreaching definitely is the right way to go.

It does take a bit more time to craft a personal email to a stranger, but at the end of the day, the chances of getting a backlink from them is almost guaranteed.

All it takes is 3 simple steps. Let me walk you through it all.

The 3-Step Email Outreach For Solid Backlinks

1. Plump your blog up with more links

The easiest way to get backlinks follows this principle: you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. No one will give favors or respond if you have nothing to offer. Take your blog post and start linking to sites you believe will boost your content’s quality. Make sure they’re relevant to your field AND have a high PR rank (I’ll explain what you can use to check that soon), because that’ll give more backlink juice to your site. Plus, this makes it an easy gateway to email the person you’re reaching out to.

2. Note down the person’s details

Next up, create an Excel sheet or a database you prefer to use, and record these juicy details:

• person’s name
• person’s email address
• website name
• website link
• PR rank of their site
• date of emailing the person
• person’s response

Quick note: tracking PR rank

If you don’t know how to track PR rank, I highly recommend WebRank SEO (it’s a quick-to-install plugin). I absolutely love it, because you can easily see the PR # on the top right corner of your window (see image) while switching from site to site.

This will be your backlink list to run through when emailing bloggers.

3. Craft email template, then send

Extract the email addresses you’ve collected and start crafting a personalized email. This will require you to do a quick background check to familiarize yourself with the person you’ve backlinked to (best places to dig deep into their personal life are their “About Us” page, Facebook, and Twitter).

Here are some tips to get you started.

Email Crafting Tips

Write the subject title with lower case letters

“64% of people say they open an e-mail because of the subject line,” according to Mark Gottlieb, a marketing executive who helps startup to Fortune 500 companies with direct marketing.

And starting with capital letters in the subject line can feel pretty intimidating. Part of the underlying reason is because this is the standard for businesses — it’s professional. While that’s a good quality to have, it gives off a serious tone to readers and often the subject is nothing special (you’ll know it at first glance). Let’s compare the two, and you’ll see what I mean.

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When you start out with all lower case, it’s the equivalent as talking to a friend. It’ll immediately put their guard down and make them curious to know what the message is inside.

Strike out an engagement

Skip the dry, professional (robotic) talk. Most of us can immediately detect spam, a sales pitch, or a boring person. How you start off in your email can make a world’s difference between whether people read through your whole email or go on with their day.

Spark up a discussion about their latest post, talk about how cool you think their upbringing was, compliment on their work, anything to get them to scroll down and see what else you have to say.

Introduce yourself

It’d be weird to talk to someone and leave without even mentioning your name, right? Even if you’re one of the million fans they have, say so! Because the next time you email them, chances are they’ve already forgotten you and what you’ve wrote in your first email.

I’d recommend introducing yourself either in the beginning or at the end of the email. After all, first impression is as important as the last, and vice versa.

Give the reason why you’re reaching out

You probably have heard of this: there’s always an intention behind every action — emailing included. Tell bloggers why you’re reaching out to them. That could be introducing a new service or product, asking for their opinion for surveys, or simply just wanting to chat. You’ll look less suspicious, and they’ll be more understanding of what you’re trying to do.

Personalize

Always include the person’s name and their website link in the email, because when you do, you no longer sound like a bot. And what bots do is spam thousands of emails without a single mention of names or personal links — all of this done in a split second. By personalizing email content like this, you increase your open rates by 17.36%.

Also, when you say someone’s name or bring up something they deeply care about, you grab their immediate attention. And it’s often natural for us to drop what we’re doing when we hear our names and wait for a reply — this will be the limelight of your email. Use that as a leverage and follow up with the reason of why you’re reaching out to them or what you can offer them. They’ll remember it.

Offer something of value

A gift, a new service to try, broken link replacement, an opportunity to be interviewed, valuable content for their blog, a backlink, tips on how to improve — these are all things people want. Explicitly mention what you’re offering, and you’ll most definitely get an eager reply back.

Putting these tips into practice

Okay, I know. Emailing dozens or hundreds of potential backlink givers sounds like a giant headache, but here’s a trick: borrow a generic email outreach template and fluff it up with your own personal touch. Crack in some jokes, express your inner thoughts, be yourself.

I’ve gone through multiple examples from very smart influencers who know how to do backlinking right, like Neil Patel, Peter Attia, and Brian Dean. From their helpful tips and strategies, I’ve crafted my own email templates with the ultimate goal to indirectly ask for backlinks. Feel free to test them out — you’ll be surprised!