HARO Link Building 101: How to Use HARO for Backlinks

Interested in HARO link building? In this guide, you’ll learn how to use Help a Reporter Out for backlinks to get the exposure that your website needs.

There are a lot of websites on the internet, which means it can be hard to know how to make yours stand out and make its mark. This can be a real struggle for many businesses, but the answer doesn’t have to be complicated.

In order to get a good ranking, you need to build a strong reputation and establish your website as a credible source. Backlinks are an effective way to do this.

Your SEO strategy is not complete without creating quality backlinks, but this is also the most challenging and time-consuming part of the process. 

SEO is competitive, so waiting for others to discover your website isn’t going to be an effective backlink building strategy. You need to be more proactive about it which can minimize the outreach effort and increase the likelihood of getting authority links.

HARO is a backlink outreach service that connects journalists to sources and provides you with the opportunity to get high-quality media coverage.

Read this guide on HARO link building to leverage this powerful tool. You can use professional services to help you too, like FATJOE.

Getting Started With HARO Link Building

Before you get started, you need to understand what HARO actually is.

Help A Reporter Out, more commonly known as HARO, is a service that connects journalists with a wide range of sources and gives your business the chance to get useful media coverage. HARO makes your outreach efforts a lot easier by bringing a lot of opportunities your way instead of you having to search for them. 

HARO sends out a number of queries by journalists three times a day. These queries are divided up into multiple categories that span a lot of different industries. So no matter which industry your business operates in, HARO can help you to get relevant backlinks for good publicity.

Here is how you can get started with using Help A Reporter Out and secure your first backlink. 

Register as a Source

The first step to being able to secure your first backlink is to go onto the HARO website (they now rebranded to Connectively) and get your business registered.

Once you have chosen the best plan for you and what you want, you can fill in your company information and register to receive emails.

Find Opportunities

After you have registered with HARO, you will get three emails every day from Monday to Friday. These emails will contain queries that are organized into different categories, such as business, technology, healthcare, and so on.

You need to monitor these queries on a daily basis (or hire an agency to do it for you), to find the ones that are the most relevant to your business and expertise.

Your success rate of finding a quality backlink through HARO depends on how quickly you are able to respond to a lead, so make you know what time the HARO emails come and check them as soon as you get them.

There are some other things that you should also keep in mind before you choose an opportunity. 

Choose The Best Leads

Once you have started to find relevant queries, you might want to answer all of them.

Keep in mind that all backlinks are quality and valuable, and you need to be able to filter out the ones which are guaranteed to give you the best results. Instead of responding to the first relevant lead that you see, only choose the ones that actually match your goals and establish what you want to be known for. 

Do Some Research

Not all media outlets will be desirable for getting publicity for your business. You should do some research to find out the credibility and relevancy of the media outlet before you respond to their query.

A good strategy is to go for publications that you know your potential customers would be interested in. 

Make Your Pitch

Responding to a query is like making a pitch. Journalists get a lot of pitches, and yours needs to stand out if it’s going to be noticed.

The best HARO link building strategy is to keep it short without compromising on quality and completeness. Use these tips to create the perfect pitch:

• Provide a bio. Provide your author bio that should include your full name and a short introduction to your field and expertise. Your bio should be exactly how you want it to be in the article if you get featured. 
• Add the important details. While it’s important to be concise in your pitch, it is also important to provide all the details that are listed in the query. Make sure you address every point in the query in an original and quotable manner that can easily be published. Follow all the instructions that are given in the query to create an ideal response. 
• End with a call to action. End your response with a clear CTA with your contact information that encourages the report to contact you with more queries. 
• Make it easy to backlink. Make the journalist’s job easier by providing downloadable versions of your headshot, company logo, and bio to feature on the website. Attachments are removed from HARO emails to protect reports from viruses, so make sure you use downloadable links instead of attachments. 

Look Out For Your Placement

Now that you have made a pitch that you are happy with, you should be eagerly waiting to get a placement.

Usually, a reporter will get back to you once they have selected your pitch. In case they forget, you can set up a Google Alert for your company name to get notified when it is mentioned. You can also keep to date by following the media outlet’s feed to look out for your placement. 

So that’s what HARO link building is all about. Ready to start pitching?