Establishing your business name among your competitors is not an easy task and demands plenty of effort, time, and dedication. But this is not only true for the startups only but also holds significance for the established ones.
There are plenty of ways using which you can make your business a widely known one. For instance, there is SEO, PPC, social media marketing and the list goes on. All these strategies can turn out to be super effective if you use them right.
Likewise, one such powerful and effective tactic is HARO. HARO stands for helping a reporter out. It helps you to showcase your expertise, build brand awareness and improve SEO via backlinks.
But not many businesses use HARO because of the lack of knowledge. Consequently, we have come up with this post to help you understand HARO, how it works, and tips for using it for backlinks and PR.
About HARO
HARO refers to a platform where businesses, journalists, and individuals post queries and ask for crucial information or statistics for writing articles. The experts can respond to these queries. Journalists can quote these in an article and provide a backlink to the site.
The popularity of the HARO is so great that so many link-building services have come asking for high-quality links from top media outlets.
Tips To Use HARO For Backlinks And PR
Despite being popular, not many businesses know how to use HARO for backlinks and PR. Consequently, here are some tips stated below to use HARO for backlinks and PR and respond to queries in such a way that paints your business in good light.
Check the media’s domain rating
The prominent tip to take note of is to check the media outlet’s domain rating. Domain rating is also known as domain authority. It indicates your website’s SEO value. The higher the DR, the better it will be.
Consequently, checking the DR of the media outlet helps you to figure out if pitching to the specific journalist is worth your time or not.
Respond to relevant queries
Responding to each query posted on HARO is a time waste and also irrelevant. So, make sure only to respond to the queries which are relevant to you. Figure out if you’ll be the perfect match for the requirements stated or not and respond accordingly.
Consequently, no need to respond to irrelevant queries and waste your precious time. Instead of this, respond to relevant queries.
Show your credentials
Another tip is to show your credentials. Showing your credentials makes it clear that you are a quality and credible resource for them. Also, do not delay. Share your credentials and relevant experience right away.
Besides this, never underestimate the power of your credibility. Always bear in mind that you don’t have to be as great as Elon Musk to get a link from the New York Times.
Respond early
When you respond to queries also matters a lot. By this, we mean being prompt with your responses is crucial. It becomes all the more essential because queries on HARO have tight deadlines.
Consequently, try to be the first one to respond. The journalists are always on the lookout for a quick quote to plug into the articles and press releases. Keep this thing in mind that they are looking for convenience and not a life story. So, make sure to respond to links within 30 minutes.
Don’t follow up
The next thing to bear in mind is not to follow up until you get a response. If you don’t get any response, it means that there are chances that the journalist might have deleted your pitch because he thinks you are not qualified.
Still, if you keep on chasing them, it will make you seem desperate for backlinks and they also might avoid you in the future.
Don’t expect
Expecting every pitch to succeed is not right. HARO only has a success rate of 5-10%. If you are a specialist, then you can take this higher but there are little chances of acquiring a strong backlink for every pitch.
The key is to stay positive and consistent with HARO pitches. Instead of focusing on the quantity of links, focus more on the quality of links and relationships.
Make it quantifiable
Instead of focusing on quantity, focus on quality. By this, we mean that journalists tend to take you more seriously if you give case studies and statistics to back your input. Also, make it quotable.
Quotable excerpts are intelligent and memorable but prefer to keep them short and to the point. If your copy is clear and concise, then it makes it easier for the journalists to choose your pitch over others.
Track success
Tracking your success is equally important. Not all links are created equally which in turn makes it significant for you to track your success. The website’s ranking power is determined by context, relevancy, and authority as these influence a search engine a lot.
The best way to track your success is by having a spreadsheet. Whether you want to make it simple or sophisticated depends on your discretion. Doing so will help you to measure, optimize and scale your link-building efforts.
Sign up for Google Alerts
You also need to sign up for Google Alerts so that you can get a notification every time you get a new link. Also, run site searches at regular intervals and keep on checking new SEO tools to find new backlinks.
Doing so will help you to identify trends and patterns in the kinds of backlinks you are getting for example topic, pitch style, and others.
Wrapping Up
By now, you must have come to know about HARO being the best alternative for businesses to increase brand awareness, generate traffic and build quality links. Follow the above-stated tips and tricks and experience the difference yourself.