Learn

Guides to link building outreach

Practical, sourced guides on finding link prospects, writing pitches, choosing outreach software and keeping links live. Start with the process guides, then use the comparisons to pick tools.

Start here

Guides by stage of a campaign

1 · Blogger outreach: the complete guide

What it is, the types, an 8-step process, templates, mistakes and metrics.

2 · Best link building tools

Prospecting, email finding, outreach platforms and monitoring, by budget.

3 · Email outreach software

Features to look for, AI tools, free plans, pricing and deliverability.

4 · HARO alternatives

What happened to HARO and how PR requests fit with outreach.

Choosing a tool

Comparisons and alternatives

BuzzStream alternative

Outreach CRM vs self-serve platform.

Pitchbox alternative

Enterprise pricing vs from $19.

Respona alternative

Done-for-you service vs doing it yourself.

Hunter alternative

Email finder vs outreach workflow.

Lemlist alternative

Sales multichannel vs link building.

Instantly alternative

High-volume cold email vs link deals.

Glossary

Link building outreach terms, explained

Guest post: An article you write for another site, usually with a link back to your site in the body or author bio.
Link insertion: Adding your link to an article that is already published and indexed, sometimes called a niche edit.
Broken link building: Finding dead outbound links on other sites and suggesting your page as a working replacement.
Resource page: A curated page of useful links on a topic; a common target for outreach.
Skyscraper technique: Publishing a better version of a well-linked page, then pitching the sites that link to the original.
Anchor text: The clickable words of a link. Natural profiles mix brand, URL and descriptive anchors.
Dofollow / nofollow / sponsored: Link attributes. Nofollow and sponsored tell search engines not to pass ranking credit; Google asks for sponsored on paid links.
Domain Rating (DR): Ahrefs' 0–100 score of a site's backlink strength; Moz's equivalent is Domain Authority (DA).
Sequence: A first email plus scheduled follow-ups that stop when the prospect replies.
Warm-up: Raising a new mailbox's daily volume gradually so providers learn to trust it.
SPF, DKIM, DMARC: DNS records that prove your emails are really from your domain and tell receivers what to do with fakes.
Cost per link: Everything you spent on a campaign (fees, tools, time) divided by the links that went live.