Outreach is an important part of numerous SEO services and packages. The need to improve your standings on search engine results pages (SERPs) drives a need for more links – but these only work if you’re getting the right links.
Over the years, we’ve seen Google’s internal algorithms assess various sorts of links, penalising or rewarding them accordingly. As such, the sheer quantity of links is not the only thing that matters any more, it’s also important to offer the right quality of links.
So, what does this mean for outreach SEO campaigns? Here are a few important factors to consider
Is It Relevant?
One of the oldest tricks in the book is to get as many links out there as possible. You might see services that offer to get you 1,000 links, but where are those 1,000 links going? If those pieces of anchor text aren’t relevant links, then they’re not as powerful as you would think.
Let’s use an example. If you’re trying to link back to your real estate business, why would your links be appearing on car blogs or food websites? While you can argue an overlap of possible interests, the relevancy of the link is questionable – and Google may notice this. Remember that the algorithm behind Google is a sophisticated piece of software that is always being updated. It can crawl websites and learn the words and language being used. It notices when the websites on either side of the link have little in common.
Is It Paid?
One of the biggest changes in recent years has been the push to legally enforce the disclosure of sponsored content in various areas. Of course, this has big implications on outreach. Paid content will now likely say so, as bloggers will want to play it safe, regardless of which country there in. While this still gets you you’re link, there are a number of things to consider:
- Do bloggers see and react to the disclosure? If it’s at the top of the post, one could argue it influences their decision to even read it, changing the click-through-rate as a result.
- Does Google take it into account? Paid links, that are purely for improving page ranking, have been in long standing conflict with Google’s quality guidelines. One of the best ways to prevent this – from a bloggers perspective – is to simply use no-follow tags on the respective links. As we’ve discussed before, this isn’t always a bad thing, as no-follow tags can still enhance your outreach campaign greatly.
Is It Natural?
Ultimately, the best way to use outreach is to provide natural content. If it’s relevant to the hosting site in question, and it appeals to the respective readers, then there shouldn’t be a problem. Content should first and foremost entertain, inform or otherwise appeal to online audiences. As long as its great content, many of these issues can be worked around.
This is true, even with sponsored content. As long as its relevant and well-written, why wouldn’t someone want to read it? Great content doesn’t get punished for having substance, after all.