Is blogger outreach dead?

[RicharCampbell]

Hi All,

I am a fairly new user of Moz Pro and so far so good! However, after identifying that my link metrics and domain authority have dropped behind my competitors I've started trying to acquire links quite aggressively. I'm currently finding bloggers on Socialix to write about my Firewood business in the UK and currently doing about 5 posts per week. However many are insisting upon including upon a disclaimer (e.g. "sponsored by Firewood Centre") and I had a few questions about best practices.

1. Are the disclaimer rules different in the UK vs the US? There seems to be stricter policy in the US.
2. In some cases I am providing free product, does this still mean that bloggers should include a disclaimer? The idea was to get original photography and proof of concept for the post.
3. Is the non-follow link worthless? Again, another point argued by the bloggers.
4. Is blogger outreach dead? Should I focus my efforts elsewhere?

Please share your best link acquisition tips here!

Thanks.

[donsilvernail]

I was looking for an answer to this same question. I came across this article by Neil Patel http://neilpatel.com/2014/12/30/how-to-build-high-quality-backlinks-in-a-scalable-way/

There are many actionable tips in this article from competitor research and using social signals to identify good back link sources.

Then I found this article in the Moz newsletter it on search engine land. http://searchengineland.com/learn-competitors-without-copying-223192

It discusses competitor research of back links but not copying their profiles.

I am no expert on link building but these articles are good resources to start.

[rjonesx. 0]

These are all great questions.

1. You should definitely provide a disclaimer and nofollow if you are providing products for free to the blogger. This is generally a requirement for compliance in the US and with Google's Webmaster Guidelines respectively.

2. The no-follow link isn't going to give you any real SEO value, but it could certainly give you valuable traffic if you are doing blogger outreach to the correct audience. To make blogger outreach valuable, you should be looking at your prospects for more than just a link. A good enough blog post could itself rank for valuable keywords!

Finally, you ask the question "is blogger outreach dead". It certainly is not, but there is more to it that just getting sponsored posts up. You need strong pitches that actually provide value to the audience of the blog you are doing outreach to. That being said, I find blogger outreach to be difficult, time-consuming, and and low ROI. Chances are, there are some more scalable link building opportunities out there.

• You could mine your competitors backlinks - for example, you should have a link on this page too.
  - You could do a piece on fire safety, especially related to wood fireplaces, and resource page link building.
• You could try building an audience by sponsoring lumberjack competitions

There are a tons of opportunities which might be easier pickings, at least at the beginning.

[Matt-Williamson]

Hi Richard

Google has recently issued guidelines in relation to posts in return for products. They advise that bloggers should no follow links to the company that has given them a free product in return for a post and they should also disclose any such relationship. Here is a good write up on this - https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/03/11/google-issues-guidelines-on-bloggers-and-links-for-freebies/

Again no follow links are definitely not worthless as you must remember they can be a great source of referral traffic, If you get placed on a blog that has a lot of traffic and a highly engaged audience you can gain a lot of exposure from this in the form of referral traffic, social shares and even other links in some cases. Don't purely think of links value in terms of whether they can directly pass authority and help rankings.

If I were working on your project here are some tactics that I would follow:

I would look at identifying influencers in your niche and start to form a relationship with them. Then I would look to get them to write some relevant content on your site, with the aim of giving it exposure to their audience. This is a tactic that I have always found pays off, as it builds traffic and exposure for your site. Ultimately this will lead to lots of opportunities apart from having some good content created for your site that people will see.

I would also look at what your competition are up to that are ranking top for the keys terms you are after. What is there link profile like? What is the content that is ranking like? And what are the social likes and shares to their site and ranking content. This leads nicely into the skyscrapper technique - http://backlinko.com/skyscraper-technique. I would also then look at going a step further with your analysis and evaluate this content very deeply as Rand speaks about in his excellent White Board Friday last week - https://moz.com/blog/category/whiteboard-friday

When you ask whether blogger outreach is dead I don't believe it is - it all just depends the angle you approach it from. I would look to create my own content that can be placed on their sites rather than the quick win of a free product for review. I would still look to get some product reviews but for the reason I mention above. Again I would also look to entice influencers, which quite often are bloggers, to place content on your site to build the authority of your site.

My final note as why I mentioned above, forgetting blogger outreach I would be creating link worthy content and I would be spending a significant amount of time (at least as long as it took to create if not more) to get it placed in different communities on social networks and other sites remembering this is for exposure and not for links. If you create great content that people want then they will share it and they will link to it - it just takes time and commitment (this is why I highlighted the skyscrapper technique above).

Hope this helps!

Matt

[GlobeRunner]

While the UK's laws are different the US FTC laws and guidelines, Google doesn't change their rules or guidelines based on where a website or company is based. So, generally speaking if you are going to provide products or services in exchange for a blogger writing about your product or service they need to disclose their relationship with you.

Blogger outreach isn't dead--many are using it successfully, even with disclosures. What's important is that you not worry about whether or not the links you get are going to help your site's search engine rankings. Get links from bloggers who will send you traffic to your website and help you get more business. Then, when there's more traffic, more mentions of your brand, and more social media engagement with you, the search engine rankings will happen.

[Njnbiure45r4]

To deliver the 10x idea to a macro degree, it is approximately being higher page than you were and looking at others to learn about what you could do to be better.