When a company and its opponents optimize their websites as much as possible in the on-page SEO part, the winner must rely on off-page SEO. "The more people link to your website, the more important Google will regard your website and the higher it will be ranked." This sentence sounds simple and reasonable, but what should we do to make someone want to write an article or blog and put a link in it? We can't always wait for people to find out how good we are, and then naturally but slowly increase search rankings. Therefore, this article will introduce a platform, HARO, that allows you to increase your chances of being included in other people’s articles!
(This article is referenced from:How Press Requests Can Be A Link Building Gold Mine, by Matthew Barby )
What is HARO?
HAROThe full name is Help A Reporter Out, which is a link between "journalists/bloggers" and "people with professional knowledge/some knowledge of certain fields". It is a Press Request platform. Suppose a reporter wants to write about Google's latest Panda 4.0 update, but he is not an expert in this field and needs help with corrections. Or he has written a report but needs to quote one or two words from experts to make his article more informative. He can use the HARO platform to let others Help a reporter out.
What are the benefits of HARO?
There is mutual benefit between reporters and companies that need exposure. Journalists who have little connection with experts can still get expert opinions here, and small companies also have an extra chance to be exposed in media newspapers. If I answer a reporter’s question, and he thinks what I said is very constructive and is willing to include it in the article, usually the reporter will say when quoting you, "D.H. Digital Marketing NotesDarren of "N*&^@(&$!&." believes that in addition to exposure, you also get a backlink! Such a backlink is very valuable, because
- It is an editorial link. The other party has written an article seriously, and it may be very related to your company's products or services. This website will be reposted on FB, and will be seen by many people, which will increase a lot of traffic.
- The website of the article usually has a very high page/domain authority. If the reporter represents a major newspaper such as TIME or WSJ, the value of this backlink cannot be matched by any other.
- Establish a good relationship with the reporter. If the reporter wants to write articles on similar topics in the future, he may come to you directly instead of going through HARO.
Register as Source
The registration process of HARO is very simple. After entering some simple information, then select preferences, which area you know a little about or can contribute to. I think HARO's classification is a bit rough here and is not very detailed. However, I will teach you how to strengthen this link later.
Start receiving emails
After completing the above step, you will start to receive emails from HARO. You may receive about 3 emails a day. Each email contains about 15 queries from reporters. Examples are as follows:
This is one of the queries I received from a reporter today. He wanted to helpEntrepreneurWrite an article and discuss how face-to-face communication is more beneficial than email and phone calls. If I have insights on this issue, I can send a letter to his email. Entrepreneur is a large media, so if you are lucky enough to be selected as the best answer, it will be of great help to SEO.
Things to note when replying
When a reporter releases a request, he is mentally prepared to receive a lot of email replies, relevant or irrelevant, so when replying to questions, he should be simple, concise and direct, including who you are, your company, position, contact information, etc. You should be able to find many articles on the Internet to teach you how to pitch to reporters. If you are interested, just do your own research. Here is one of themtemplate。 (All credit goes to Matthew Barby)
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Subject: ResponseSource: [Insert the subject that the reporter has asked you to comment on]
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Body: Hi [First Name],
My name is [Your name], [Your job title and company]. I saw your request for input into your recent article via [Service name (i.e. HARO)] and thought I’d be able to help you out.
Here are my answers to your questions:
- One or two sentences (max) with a comment related directly to the reporter’s question.
- One or two sentences (max) with a comment related directly to the reporter’s question.
- One or two sentences (max) with a comment related directly to the reporter’s question.
- One or two sentences (max) with a comment related directly to the reporter’s question.
If you need anything else then just let me know via email or by phoning me (details below).
[Your name, company and job title]
[Your Twitter/LinkedIn URL]
[Contact phone number/email address]
###
Use IFTTT to find content that’s right for you
There is a picture before that HARO’s classification is a bit rough. You can use it at this time.IFTTTThis tool uses other methods to notify you when a Query you are interested in appears. This method is very helpful for busy people, because HARO sends several questions from reporters every day, and it takes some time to read them all.
The full name of IFTTT is If This Then That. It is a super powerful tool. After connecting to other platforms or mobile phones, you can create so-called recipes.
- You can connect the ESPN website to your mobile phone and set up a "IT The Golden State Warriors game is over, THEN mobile phone notifies me of the score"
- You can also connect FB and Google Drive and set one"IF you are tagged in someone else's uploaded photo, THEN back up the photo to Google Drive"
I will write a complete teaching article when I become more familiar with IFTTT and have time. But the concept is roughly like this. Companies or merchants can connect Gmail and SMS to create a Recipe and say:"IF you receive an email from HARO and it contains SEO or digital marketing, THEN send me a text message to notify me."
You can create a recipe by yourself. The SMS part is very simple, just connect the phone, but be careful in the Gmail place. In the Trigger place, enter from:HARO (A OR B OR C), A, B, C. Enter the keywords you want to be notified. If you want to know the advanced rules, you can refer to this article from Google.Advanced Search。
Conclusion:
This article is a half-translated article, and the idea is not mine, but when I saw it, I thought it was very interesting and practical, so I decided to translate it and put it in my blog. HARO is not the only platform that connects journalists and merchants who need exposure. Of course, there are other platforms, but he used it as an example because he is famous in the United States. I don’t know if there are similar websites in Taiwan that can be used.
It’s really smart to use Press Requests for backlink building. You don’t have to passively wait for people to write about you, and you won’t see articles in your field all day long that are interviews with competitors that are larger than you. Not to mention that these are all high-quality links. If you have time, you might as well think about other ways to increase such quality inbound links!
(I saw another smart method a few days ago, I will write it down again when I have time~)
Keep exploring