Link Building Outreach: 13 Tips + Email Template Examples

Your mother has made the most mouth-watering meal. What do you do? Naturally, invite your friends over. 

The same applies to offering your outstanding service to potential users. You are in SEO, so when offering your link building partnership, outreach emails are like the invitation messages. 

With a clear and compelling message, you invite people to collaborate. Or, in daily situations, to treat themselves to a delicious dinner. 

The email outreach for backlinks is done to offer potential partners valuable linking collaborations:

• Get a backlink from a partner website
• Grow the target audience
• Increase search engine rankings
• Offer guest posting in their blog

Fingers crossed, your cold email gets the lucky spell of the open rate. In today’s hustle, getting people to read your emails is challenging. You must convince them that the content inside is worth opening for. 

Do you plan to send an unprofessional email and pray for it to get the click? Unfortunately, it isn’t going to work. 

Time is needed to compose a professional outreach email that will go a long way getting opened, read, and responded to. 

Your mailbox is probably full of awfully constructed emails packed with unnecessary background information because everyone else’s is. 

What do people think when sending these poor outreach emails? They have probably heard that outreach is beneficial but haven’t troubled themselves to learn the proper techniques when outreaching with an email.

An average office worker receiving around 121 emails daily will need more time to digest who you are and where you are coming from. The SEO link building specialists get double fold of these emails. Chances are these emails will be labeled “spammy”.

What is link building outreach?

Link building outreach is the process of reaching out to other websites to ask them to link to your website. 

This is a valuable SEO strategy because backlinks (links from other websites to your website) improve your website’s ranking on search engines, like Google. The purpose of link building is to establish a strong backlink profile for your website.

Link building outreach is done in many ways. Sending cold emails to potential link partners being the most common. In your email, you should introduce yourself, explain why you think your website is a good fit for linking to from theirs, and ask them to consider starting a link building collaboration with you.

It’s important to personalize your outreach emails as much as possible. Use the recipient’s name, mention something specific about their website or blog, and tailor your pitch to their interests. 

Other ways to conduct link building outreach include social media, guest blogging, and other channels. The best approach for you will depend on your specific goals and resources.

The role of email outreach in link building

Carrying out an email outreach for backlinks is the first and most important step you should take in link building. If you aim to find new partnerships and collaborations. With your email outreach for backlinks, you build relationships that increase your chances to earn backlinks.

The relationships are the core benefit from email outreach. What the relationships uphold as a future outcome is greatly impactful. By building relationships with content creators in your niche, you can encourage them to share your content, increasing its visibility and potential for backlinks.

On top of that, you may want to directly request links for your target websites right by sending an outreach email. This approach requires a well-crafted pitch that explains why your content is relevant and valuable to the recipients’ audience. Yet, don’t jump right into it; first, consider the market its competition, and conduct competitor backlink analysis. It will help you understand where your link building efforts should be concentrated. 

Link building outreach emails: the process 

With an answer to your question “what is link building outreach?” and understanding how it works, it’s time to discuss the link building outreach process. A smooth and successful outreach email process contains a few key layers you should go through – identifying the goals and targets, picking out the domains, wording your pitch in a nice template, sending the message out, and following up. 

Not to be the annoying email sender, you should spend time thinking, drafting, and planning. Here is the process you will go through as a link builder.

Step 1: Create a list of domains

Any campaign, action, and strategy must have a clearly defined purpose. On top of that, an exact roadmap to follow. When reaching out, first, be sure of the domain’s good metrics. It must be a well-performing SaaS website with strong metrics and have a blog page for linking.

It’s time to gather the domains in a spreadsheet to track the data and the outreach results. Let’s focus on one purpose, which is link building. In the spreadsheet, you should collect: 

• The X domain
• Your partner’s article you offer a link from 
• The anchor text
• The X domain’s target page you offer a link for
• The X domain’s article, you ask a link from
• The anchor text
• The target page you ask link for

To collect the target domains, here are a couple of techniques.

• Find a list of companies you want to collaborate with.
• Before adding the domain names to your list, check their DR (domain rating) with tools like Ahrefs. Aim for higher DR and strong link profiles.
• With the domain list, search the LinkedIn profiles of the employees’
• To build your list up, scraping Google will also benefit.

With the domains identified, make your spreadsheet look good, organized, and convenient to refer to when reaching out. An ideal spreadsheet will also include each domain’s “status” column to check which stage the email is at. 

Usually, outreach tools simplify the process by merging the tags you provide, personalizing each email by using name in the subject line and outreach email signature, sending automated follow-ups, tracking the email sequence, and automatically updating the “status” in the spreadsheet.

Step 2: Find email addresses

Having formed an idea of the websites you want to collaborate with, you need to identify the right people to talk to. As an SEO link building specialist, you cannot reach out to a company’s developer suggesting collaboration—instead, target specialists related to SEO such as link builders or SEO experts themselves. 

The ideal target will be the SEO link building specialist of the company. Yet, depending on your motives, you may send your emails to the company’s content, management, or communications team. 

At this stage, you are on the path of collecting the email addresses of relevant people at the companies. Collect the data and add it to the same spreadsheet. 

How to tackle this?

First, focus on including the name of real people in the email address examples. Here are a few ways to find the email addresses: 

• Let LinkedIn simplify your search։ Find the company’s LinkedIn page → X employees on LinkedIn based on the position you need for outreach→ scrap the profile with the help of automation for “name”, “surname”, “position”, “Profile URL”→collect the information.
• When you have the employees’ information, make guesses and different variations with the most common formats, such as “firstname.lastname@domain.com”; you might end up lucky after verifying with an email verifier.
• Use an email address finder tool to find a list of emails of a specific domain, as an alternative.

Kick off with the most appropriate technique to find the email addresses. Next, verify for relevance and ensure they are valid. You don’t want to outreach a robot. That’s why double-checking saves you effort.

Step 3: Create a good template

It’s time for spellwork.

Many prefer staying untroubled and auto-sending hundreds of emails starting with “Hello, dear Sir/Madam”, “I am X from company Y”, “Nice to meet you”, “I hope this email finds you well”. 

Only those receiving a cold email for the first time will continue reading after these sentences.

A well-constructed, intriguing, and attention-grabbing email secures an increase in the open rate. It all depends on your email content. Let’s discuss the perfect email outreach template.

A professional email outreach template is a ticket to win you a “not-spam” label. It is recommended to create personalized link building email templates as an easy path to follow and make your link building outreach management an easy one.

With the templates, you must show the thoughts you have put into making them unique. If you are unsure how to make your own templates, you can explore a link building outreach email example to gain a better understanding of the structure and tone.

Per your wish, the templates can have a sequence of “initial email, follow-up, second follow-up, goodbye”. 

A good template results in an organized outreach flow.

Tips for professional link building outreach emails

Who would want to avoid having a good traffic flow to their website? Hence, your link building outreach must be distinctive and outstanding. 

Aiming to gain links from another website, link builders start with outreach. Finding out advantageous link building partners is crucial. 

The most effective website type for link building is SaaS (software as a service), because these are legal business websites. Thus, doing business with them is safe and advantageous. Since the competition grows with the number of users increasing, companies need to find ways to drive traffic. What’s a more proven technique than acquiring backlinks from a reputable website?

Cold emails contribute to link building partnership kickoffs. And the way you compose your email has a huge influence on whether a SaaS website will link to yours or not. You must put in the effort to hit the ground running with outreach emails. If you want to get into SaaS link exchanges, in particular, you should first learn more about SaaS link building. 

The ideal email outreach template has the following checkpoints, these must go under your backlink request email template:

Compose a good subject line

The subject line gets you the clicks. It takes a long thought to compose the perfect subject line, which is inciting and grabbing. It gets more challenging to stick your message in the minds of busy recipients. 

Excitement = open rate boost. So here are tips for writing a good subject line:

• Keep the length between 36-50 characters
• Avoid spam-triggering words (e.g. #1, best price, etc.)
• Rise curiosity with open-ended questions
• Say something unexpected
• Use a deadline as an urgency alert
• Encourage action with a command

View your subject line as a limited place to fit maximum temptation. It is not much about shortness but the message your subject line transmits. You can give the recipient an idea of the email content in a moderate-length sentence. 

Personalize your message

A proven unbeaten subject line must include the person’s first name, which makes up the second must-have point. Keep the receiver hooked on reading the email content after the email is opened. The hack is personalization. 

By approaching them with a customized message, show your understanding of who they are and what they do. Instead of focusing on yourself, focus on the recipient. This way, you create a sense that you have spent time exploring their blog and forming an understanding of the person.  

You could say something like “I saw that you {something the receiver is up to}”, “I read that you published about {something they wrote about}”, “I also feel {a statement they’ve made}”.

In addition to this, you can also use an outreach email signature to add a professional touch and provide essential contact information.

State a clear pitch

A clear and concise message is the biggest trick in catching the reader’s attention. Experts in marketing are swamped with work and tight on time to read the long-composed emails detailing the purpose of the outreach. The goal is to get a response. Clarity provides you with this outcome. 

Be concise in telling what you want from the collaboration and, most importantly, what you provide. The few lines should state the pitch clearly, inciting lasting impressions. 

The ideal link building outreach email length is between 77 and 100 words. Clear pitch also comprises explicit language and reading. 

Do you have link insertion outreach? Suggest a good place.

Do you want to contribute with a guest post with backlinks? Suggest a fit title idea.

Do you have an irreparable offer? Suggest the exact collaboration details.

Add value to the content

Your catchy subject line incites the person to click with an expectation of a reward. The recipient is expecting value by opening your email. Instead of saying, “link back to me”, “high-quality site”, “great guest post sites”, “I am providing quality sites”, “amazing offer/stuff”, “free”, etc., be exact in your value proposition.

Jump a step further, 

“link back to me” can be replaced with “push your website up on search engines with link building”

“high-quality site” can be replaced with “an ideal blog found to link to”

“Great guest post sites” can be replaced with “your content writing partner is here”

“I am providing quality sites” can be replaced with “a non-promotional link building partnership in your inbox”

“amazing offer” can be replaced with “a juicy collaboration to rank your website”

“free” can be replaced with “ranking opportunities for “site”

By saying, “I am not spamming”, you already create an impression that “you are spamming”. No one can guarantee the site quality; however, based on case studies and trust elements, what you present as an offer will.

Include CTAs

Email is sent, opened, and read. What’s next? Action must be taken. For the action, you need call-to-actions – CTAs. Remember to be exact in what you ask. 

One email must have one purpose, make sure the recipients are clear with a few requests and options. One problem requires one solution: one CTA for each email. You can place it in two places. Yet, they must direct to the same place.

Understanding what is link building outreach and identifying your link building outreach goals must come before drafting the message. Know what you want to create a converting CTA for each message sent. It may be a link insertion outreach, an offer to have a partnership, a guest post outreach, etc.

An example CTA for link building email outreach for backlinks can be “Ready to jump on a call?” or “Schedule a call to start building your links.“

With an exact and clear CTA, you turn your link building outreach email into an interactive process. The CTA is the culmination of your email and guarantees a higher chance your outreach goals will be fulfilled. 

Follow up at some intervals

A busy workday might get your exceptional email lost in the recipient’s mailbox, opened, and not replied to. A follow-up is to ensure the email has got the message across, give you insights about the stage the receiver is at, or offer an alternative solution to the problem. 

Say, your initial email offered a link building opportunity; your follow-up can be a guest post proposal or another special service offer.

A follow-up is a must, yet, you must acknowledge the limits of bothering people with your offers. Give them time to think and reply to you back. A week is an ideal wait time after your initial email to send the first follow-up message. 

If the follow-up doesn’t get a reply either, check on them again to confirm they are uninterested. After the second follow-up, wait a little; no response? Say goodbye with a last email. 

It is essential to let them know you won’t contact them anymore. Give it a last chance. Maybe they’d been waiting to read all the benefits you have for them to react.

There is another side to the coin – getting a negative response. Next to the positive, delayed or no replies, you may also end up getting a negative reply. It is not a red flag; instead, it is a chance to review the people you reach out to, the needs behind using or not using your service, and common reasons behind the negative responses.

There is an important point to keep in mind for your link building outreach management. Ethics of communications:

• Don’t give in to emotional responses
• Don’t ignore the respondents
• Understand why they aren’t interested 
• Stay calm and improve your outreach practices

Include visuals

Seasoning makes the plain and dull salad interesting. Visuals have a seasoning effect on any readable material. Visuals spice up your content and make it attractive. 

With visuals, you can maximize the personalization of your link building outreach email. Visuals are a bonus point. The recipient will spend additional time on your email. The variety of visuals, illustrations, photos, gifs, charts, and graphics, let you experiment with the email and make it serve different purposes.

With the right chosen visuals, you communicate more and beyond words. Transmit messages and concepts with the power of visual content. 

For a successful email outreach for backlinks, statistics are your best friends. Strengthen what you suggest with proofs of previous collaborations. Add the metrics of a website from Ahrefs before and after the link building process was completed with your other partners.

After all, experts in the link building process and the experts in digital marketing are informal people who like good humor and appreciate a well-chosen visual effect. Most of the people you will outreach appreciate creativity, so don’t stick to a dull email, include visual effects to maximize your answer rates. 

Feature an email signature

The data shows that 48% of marketers turn to email signatures for more website traffic. 

Besides professionalism, signature increases the trust in recipients. A professional signature, especially a customized one for the company, is an effective way to create interest and make your email stand out. 

A signature added to the email is a way to recall your brand. A successful email signature will contain the following elements:

• Your name and position at the company 
• Your contact information
• The name of your company, the website, and a link to it
• Clickable social icons

You must never overload the signature part. The optimal length for an email signature is around 3-4 lines. Having an email signature is like handing out business cards through email.

Treat recipients like humans

Digital communication dismisses from our minds that we are talking to humans, although not face-to-face. It’s important to keep communication consistent face-to-face and in the digital space.

Talk like you would if it was a face-to-face conversation. You’ll establish connections and get responses more quickly this way. 

The emails starting with “dear Sir/Madam” usually give the impression of having been written by robots for robots. The unnatural and inhuman approach drives people miles away from collaboration. 

To attract them, a human approach is fundamental. Be respectful in your messages and how you present them. Treating the recipients like humans is close to personalization, like using their first name and the pronoun “you”. That trick gets people like you, even in real-life situations. 

Avoid unnecessary words/spam filters

Any SEO link building specialist’s most significant worry for outreach for link acquisition is avoiding the spam folder. Unnecessary details and spammy outlook doom your emails. Let alone the affected reputation and deliverability rate.

Spam filters are individual criteria for each company. When an email passes through these criteria and scores high, it arrives in the spam box. It is relatively different from company to company; however, there are general anti-spam rules to follow. It’s an essential part of a successful link building outreach management.

The must-have components for a non-spammy email are:

• Sender’s exact information
• A valid “Unsubscribe” button
• An email signature
• Avoiding ALL CAPS, exclamation marks, and link overloading
• No use of spam trigger words, such as “We hate spam”, “free”, “web traffic”, “win”.

Unnecessary information is also a trigger for the receiver to report spam. Stay out of detail talking about yourself. Be concise, sharp, and simply engaging.

Use your sense of humor

Marketing specialists who receive your email appreciate humor and a creative approach. Your sense of humor will come into play to fulfill the “engaging” part of your outreach for link acquisition process.

However, joking is a sensitive business. You must be wary so that the receiver of your message doesn’t feel “Russian hearing an English joke”. 

Account for the joking peculiarities among cultures. However, be aware that SEO and SEO link building specialists appreciate your good joke, gif, and friendly approach.

Humor hooks, and the gif retains attention. The worst email scenarios of email outreach for backlinks suggesting “quality” websites have made SEO pros skeptical about outreach emails. Thereby, the fun part breaks the negative associations with outreach emails. Meanwhile, your valuable content will not get lost or ignored.

Spice your email up with link building jokes and add the fun for a good payoff. 

Create a sense of urgency

The demand for your offer rises with its scarcity. Remember how you hurry to a store to be “one of the lucky five customers….”. It is called the scarcity principle in marketing and applies to outreach emails pretty well. 

People want to feel cooler by getting it when there is a limited amount of shortage of an item.

For instance, you could offer “Get backlinks from famous SaaS websites such as {mention some your SaaS partners}, raise your traffic in X amount of time” in your email outreach for backlinks, then sit back to answer the email flow. When a product or service is rare, people hustle to get it.

Add a DYK (Did you know?)

You should incite readers’ curiosity. The DYK is the best technique to boost interest. First, you educate; second, you provide value; and third, you make recipients stay with you. 

With the DYK, you can share a trend, ask a controversial question, or share statistics related to the field. People cannot answer or at least read. However, the DYK element must not necessarily start with “did you know…”. It might cause the opposite effect. Wrap your message in an affirmative sentence and let it go.

For instance, you could also use statements like:

X website has X% traffic increase rate after link building

Thanks to SaaS backlinks {your partner website} has {X Domain Rating score}

{Your partner website} appeared on the first SERP after A-B-C link exchange

Link building outreach mistakes to avoid

Since link building is so common, making mistakes is unavoidable. In order to avoid them, you should know and identify those common mistakes in your link building outreach management.

Here they are:

Sending generic emails: Don’t just send out a mass email to everyone you can find. Take the time to personalize each email and make it relevant to the recipient.

Not doing your research: Before you reach out to anyone, make sure you understand their audience, their goals, and their website’s authority.

Being too pushy: When you conduct email outreach for backlinks, don’t demand a backlink in your first email. Instead, build a relationship with the recipient and offer to provide them with something of value in exchange for a backlink.

Not following up: It may take some time to get a response, so don’t give up after sending one email. Follow up with potential link partners a few weeks later to see if they’ve had a chance to consider your content or link insertion outreach request.

Using spammy language: Avoid using words like “free” or “guaranteed” in your email. These words can trigger spam filters and prevent your email from being delivered.

Building links from low-quality websites: Backlinks from low-quality websites can actually hurt your website’s ranking in search engines. Make sure to only build links from websites that are relevant, authoritative, and have good content.

Professional link building email template examples

Your link building process success lies in the professional approach. The right email outreach for backlinks promises long-term collaborations and prosperous outcomes for both sides.

Here, familiarize yourself with examples of a backlink request email template composed for a promising link building partnership.

Link building template #1

Subject line {Name}, SaaS backlinks in your mailbox.

Body

SaaS backlinks are always necessary.

Hey {Name},

Here is a link exchange collaboration offer, which costs you nothing.

Need the details? 

My request is to add a link to {Domain}’s blog articles. 

Your interest in return?

Get backlinks from SaaS websites, such as {website examples}

These are the perfect spots I have found for link exchange by research.

{Your suggestions of domains and link placement offer}

Discussions on my suggestions are more than welcome.

Waiting to hear from you soon.

P.S. Am I writing to the wrong recipient? I’d appreciate it if you could send my message to the right person.

Click here to unsubscribe.

Regards, 

Your name

Link building template #2

Subject: Juicy backlinks from {website}

Hey, {Recipient Name}

{Recipient Website Name} has some great content.  

The visitors of {the website you suggest for link exchange} will love to check it out. 

Here is a win-win collaboration idea for you.

By link exchange, we will be able to provide our visitors with more value and increase our visibility in search engines.

Interested in this link exchange? Ping me to add your link to my website. I will also ensure that your link is prominently placed on my website for maximum visibility.

Best regards,

{Your Name}

Link building template #3

Subject: {Name}  Unlock the power of content

Hello {Name},

{Their domain} has impressive top-notch content. 

Another well-researched article wouldn’t harm your traffic. 

Here is a collaboration idea.

I would love to contribute to your website with an article. The title {an article title you will write} is a great fit.

In return, I’ll ask you to link to my website {your website name with metric details}

I’m sure this will be a win-win situation for us both.

If you’re interested, I’ll be happy to provide more details and writing samples.

Looking forward to writing for you.

Best regards,

{Your Name}

Should you outsource your link building outreach?

To outsource link building means hiring external individuals or agencies to handle various aspects of your link building: identifying potential link opportunities, conducting outreach, guest posting, broken link building, and other strategies to acquire high-quality backlinks for your website. Outsourcing link building can be a strategic decision for businesses and website owners who may not have the time, expertise, or resources to manage these tasks in-house. 

There are some scenarios that require that you outsource your link building outreach process. 

Here are some of those:

Limited Internal Resources: If your team lacks the time, skills, or manpower for effective link building outreach management, outsourcing can help fill this gap. Link building requires dedicated effort, so if your team is already stretched thin, outsourcing will mean the task is properly executed.

Lack of Expertise: Link building is a specialized skill with the knowledge of SEO, content creation, outreach, and relationship-building. If your team lacks expertise in these areas, outsourcing to professionals who specialize in link building can yield better results.

Inconsistent Results: If your current link building efforts have been inconsistent or don’t have the desired outcomes, outsourcing to experts can bring in fresh strategies and ideas to improve your success rate.

Scalability Needs: If you’re planning to scale your link building efforts rapidly, outsourcing can be a practical solution. Established link building agencies have the resources to handle larger campaigns and outreach initiatives.

A recap of link building outreach emails

This article provided a comprehensive overview of what outreach for link building is and how to write professional outreach emails with a backlink request email template. With the principles and examples at your fingertips, you can compose a killer outreach email for link building.

For epic results, you must put careful thought and time into writing your outreach emails. Copying a backlink request email template from the Internet will devalue the email-sending practice and your company’s reputation.

You must keep professionalism on top of your mind. Have a checklist of all the elements we discussed when making your own link building email templates. Don’t undervalue the invested time; your link building success hugely depends on your email quality.

What you should do next:

• Consult with email experts to check your email ethics. You are in link building, not in email marketing. You might face struggles. Ask experts for advice. They have tips at hand to guide your outreach for link building strategy. After consulting with experts you’ll be confident your email will get opened and read. Links? Links will get exchanged.
• Keep track of your progress as you send and receive emails. Composing a professional email and sending it doesn’t end your work. You have a lot to keep an eye on. Track your emails’ progress, record the open and bounce rates. With this data you can later fix your emailing bugs.
• Build good relationships with prospects and partners. It’s vital to be on good terms with the people you are reaching out to. At least, try to be. When they see a familiar name, your chances of getting a reply will rise. Your company’s credibility will awaken their trust.
• Don’t make your emails trashy. Here you need to employ all the tips we discussed. Avoid making your own emails trash-worthy. Read and re-read before you hit the “send” button. 
• People are busy, respect their time. It is not ethical to write a lengthy outreach email. Imagine you are in the recipients’ place. Would you worry about reading the unknown content? Shortness and sharpness are your winning tickets.

FAQ about link building outreach