HARO (Help a reporter out)

[Paul78]

Hi there,

I'm always trying to think of new ways of getting great links and thought HARO could be really beneficial to our SERPs, the only issue I think is that we are a UK website and mainly the reporters are based in the USA, writing for Chicago Tribune, NY magazines etc, is this an issue?, here are a few more questions:

1. Has anyone had success using HARO?

2. Anyone outside the USA had success with HARO?

Kind Regards

[mjtaylor]

I have never had success in getting a link from or even an idea picked up by/through HARO. And I do think that I have offered some useful tidbits, etc, but there are a lot of others offering useful info, too.  The service is probably more effective for journalists than for SEOs or webmasters. I  am US based.

[Paul78]

Hi there,

Thanks for the quick feedback.

That's unfortunate, I was thinking this could really work for us, may I should give it a go and see how things go.

What industry were you targeting?

You mentioned there a lot of others offering useful info too, can you be ever so kind in telling me what these are?

Thanks again

[RandyHT]

I signed up for HARO and received a flood of newspaper queries that weren't even related to my field (law).  It was too hard to keep up with all the topics, and so I quit it after a month.  Even if you are quoted as a source, I think it is rare that you would get a link.

[Harbor_Compliance]

I signed up and have been submitting 2-3 daily for the past week.  I've yet to see a link let alone a response from a reporter.  It may be too soon to fairly dismiss the service but with the many people on SEOMoz that have cited it as a useful resource, I would be surprised if it doesn't work out.

[Harbor_Compliance]

Just a follow up to my previous post - I ended up submitting 4 of these to HARO.  Contrary to what I said previously, I submitted direct to other press sources, not through HARO, so I only ended up submitting 4 to HARO.  Anyway, I got 2 published.  It took a week or so before they went through, but I got my company and photo listed along with a link.

So I think it takes some work to come up with quality information and send it out, but at a 50% (with limited statistics) conversion rate, I'm definitely going to continue using it.

Good luck all!