Joshua Hardwick, Head of Content, Ahrefs Joshua walks through how to implement a link acquisition campaign (without spamming!) using a mixture of handy tips and best use of industry-leading software.

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How to start a link building
campaign in 15 minutes
(without spamming)
Joshua Hardwick // Ahrefs
@JoshuaCHardwick

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Joshua Hardwick
Head of Content @ Ahrefs
9 years SEO experience

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Outreach can be broken down into
three tasks:

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1. Prospecting
2. Finding contact information
3. Sending emails

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1. Prospecting
2. Finding contact information
3. Sending emails

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1. Prospecting
2. Finding contact information
3. Sending emails

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Aim: Make these things more
efficient—so we can get a campaign
off the ground ASAP.

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Let's start with guest posting.

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🙋♀️🙋♂️

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The key to good guest post
prospecting is NOT to limit yourself
to "write for us" pages.

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Websites WITHOUT "write for us"
pages often get fewer guest post
pitches, so there’s less noise to cut
through.

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Everyone wants free, well-written
content—even if they don't
advertise that fact.

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Let's forget "write for us" pages.

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Instead, let's just pitch sites that are
already blogging about relevant
topics.

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How to do that?

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Let's say I have a site that sells
health supplements.

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From there: Scrape, qualify, etc.

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But as we're focused on speed here,
let's scratch Google and use Ahrefs
Content Explorer instead.

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Basic prospecting. Done.

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Now we need to find some contact
information.

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This is where things start to come
together.

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=IFERROR(ARRAYFORMULA(LEFT(C
2:C,FIND(" ",C2:C)-1)),"")

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=IFERROR(ARRAYFORMULA(IF(len(D2
:D)<1,"",TRIM(RIGHT(SUBSTITUTE(
C2:C," ",REPT(" ",100)),100))
)),"")

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Install the Google Sheets addon
from Hunter.io.

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Final step...

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(Quick note: Neverbounce isn't free.
Cost is minimal: £2-£7 per 1K emails)

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You should now have some
outreach prospects pretty much
ready to pitch.

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Obligatory advice: PERSONALISE.

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If this takes 3 minutes per email, you
can send 20 emails an hour.

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If your conversion rate is 25%, that's
5 potential links an hour.

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8 hour day = 40 links.

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Nice. But what about other link
building tactics?

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Let's talk "skyscraper."

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🙋♀️🙋♂️

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Biggest bottleneck: You have to
spend a lot of time/money creating
a new piece of content before you
can do anything.

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Solution: Leverage your existing
content.

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Repeat this process for the rest of
the similar top-ranking pages with
lots of backlinks.

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Paste/merge everything into one
Google Sheet.

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Problem: no author names

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Solution: URL Profiler

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Any questions? :)
Get the presentation →
bit.ly/benchmark-ahrefs