How To Scale Linkbuilding Program (A Complete Guide)

Shane Dutka

Trying to build links but going too slow?

Want to scale things up to drive traffic and increase revenue?

You’re going to enjoy this…

Given the current SEO climate and Google’s continued reliance on links as a signal in its algorithm, building a scalable linkbuilding process IS CRITICAL to off-page SEO and a successful inbound marketing strategy.

In addition to marketing, I have a background in information systems, information technology, and process improvement, so when I see a process that needs improving (like linkbuilding and email outreach), I get excited…

That’s why I’m excited to go over some of the main ways I’ve built my own scalable linkbuilding process.

There are a few key things I include to make it successful, so stay tuned.

Why Build Links?

Before I break down some of my best scalable linkbuilding tactics, let me first take a step back and point out why you should build links in the first place.

The main reason for this is that some folks get lost in this endless crusade to acquire links without understanding the WHY.

Most people I talk to just know that they know they SHOULD build links because someone told them to at one point or another.

I’ll just say it, links in a vacuum are worthless.

Links only START becoming valuable when they influence Google to push key pages to the top of the search results.

But who cares if your page is #1?

You can’t pay the rent with Google rankings, right?

The thing is… if you don’t have some kind of offer, #1 rankings mean nothing.

And that’s just it, you need to have an offer, whether it’s an email opt-in, a product, or something else.

This makes it a “key page” as I mentioned.

So, why do I link build?

Because I’ve first developed a product that will add value to someone else’s businesses or life. Then I’ve developed content that ties into the product in some way.

The content begins to build trust and credibility.

Once my content and products are in place I need to drive awareness, which will come in the form of site traffic.

I can either buy it through paid traffic (PPC), which could work depending on how my funnel is setup/converting, or I can leverage Google search and the rest of the search engines (SEO).

The thing about PPC is you need to be on top of your metrics, constantly tweaking, and build a funnel that can offset the cost of your traffic. This can be difficult for some online businesses (affiliate based, etc) with low lifetime customer value (LCV) and a leaky funnel.

If I decide to go the Google route (and I usually do) then this is finally when links come into play. With links being a major ranking factor, it can help drive my pages higher in the search results and get my offer in front of more potential customers.

The point I’m trying to make here is to start at the end with the goal in mind then work backwards building out a strategy and understanding WHY you are doing something, rather than just doing it because someone else told you to.

For example…

One of my websites (Bethebowtieguy.com) sells bow ties.

If I just started building links to the site without any content strategy, sure maybe some product pages will rank, maybe also the homepage, but what good is that if I have nowhere to direct the traffic?

Do I just hope people “get it” and navigate to the products pages, add to cart, and checkout?

What I DID DO, is build a couple pages targeting keywords like “bow ties with suits”, “bow ties with shirts, and “bow tie outfit ideas”.

Without going into too much detail about the SEO, these are all phrases with relatively low buying intent, but the people asking these questions are definitely people interested in bow ties, which is my target market.

I then built a couple links in the men’s fashion space, and now all of those pages rank #1 for their respective keywords, which was my goal. I then embedded various offers in the content, in the sidebar, and added an popup to begin drive traffic through email marketing as well.

All of these little bits add up and allow for the content to demonstrate my credibility about bow ties and bow tie style, which helps conversion rates across the board.

The email marketing nurtures people that opted in and then I can send them additional offers later on.

This is a complete strategy that will only be enhanced through successful linkbuilding campaigns.

Only when a strategy like this is complete THEN should you focus on scaling your linkbuilding.

Do you have this setup or you think you’re ready to scale up?

Great, let’s talk about what comes next!

But What Does It Mean To Scale?

Now that I’ve broken down the WHY, let’s help you scale up your linkbuilding shall we?

First off, what does it mean to “scale” your link building.

Depending on who you talk to, you’ll get different definitions of this.

But from my perspective, a successfully scaled linkbuilding process has 2 main attributes:

1. Limited by dollars (aka cash), not by time
2. Minimal bottlenecks in your process

Minimal Bottlenecks In Your Process

When it comes to scaling anything (linkbuilding or whatever), bottlenecks are a nightmare.

They slow down progress and frustrate teams.

I define a bottleneck as a point in which the actions of a few people halt the actions of many people.

A good example I see in BAD link building processes is when the business owner/outreach manager wants to be included in every decision. What websites to outreach too, what scripts to use, how to respond to a message, etc.

This is usually because the manager thinks they can do it better and faster, which is probably true, but DOING is not the role of a manager. If a manager is compelled to inject them self into a process then trust becomes the bottleneck. If there’s a lack of trust between the manager and the staff, there’s going to be issues.

Another example I see quite often is where the business lacks a good system to provide quick and actionable feedback for their staff. The manager might be managing correctly but then time becomes the bottleneck.

This creates a nasty delay because the doers have stopped doing and are waiting for managers to answer their questions.

How to avoid? Two main ways…

  • Better training & standard operating procedures (I use videos for everything)
  • Better communication channels (I use Slack)

Stay with me, let me unpack each of these a bit more by breaking down what I do and tools I use.

Using Better Training & SOPs

One of the biggest things wrong with most workplaces (from what I’ve seen) is how little process documentation there is.

Seriously, ask anyone you work with if there’s a standard operating procedure for a specific role and/or task.

This might be the single best thing I did to remove myself from most processes within my businesses.

For traditional companies with low staff turnover, SOPs might not be as valuable, but for an internet marketing company with virtual assistants from around the world coming and going, SOPs have the potential to save countless hours of time.

For me…

Once I feel comfortable with a specific process to accomplish a thing (e.g., researching, writing, and publishing content, linkprospecting, etc) I write down every single thing I do in excruciating detail as if I was going to train my mom to do it.

Every. single. thing.

And then… I group up related tasks and create videos for each grouping to further communicate WHAT to do and WHY I am doing it to my staff.

Based on the grouping, I assign a role in my business to those tasks (if you’re reading this I explain this a bit better in the video above).

What you don’t want to do is train a bunch of monkey robots on only WHAT to do and leave out WHY they are doing it.

Even if you are training virtual assistants that live on the other side of the globe, treat them like you would any other in-house staff.

One of the biggest reasons managers are unhappy with their staff is because the MANAGER fails to properly set expectations of EXACTLY what they want. When the manager only tells their staff what to do over a phone and/or over an email, it creates a crap ton of risk the staff will produce less than what the manager wants or expects.

A difference in expectations…

What you DO want to do is teach your staff what to do, why they are doing it, AND how what they are doing is valuable to the business.

To take it even one a step further, you should also try to teach your staff their role in your business is making their skills more valuable.

Doing the above accomplishes a bunch of things…

  • It sub-communicates you give a crap about your staff, which results in better work
  • It empowers them to help you make the process better since they know the end goal
  • It reduces the chance expectations won’t be met by the manager
  • It saves you time when it comes to employee turnover as you won’t have to re-teach everything to a new person
  • And it makes your employees actually like you and appreciate you as a boss cause you are teaching them valuable skills

I can go on and on about all the benefits that come with properly creating operating procedures for your employees to follow, but I think you get the point…

Now I know you’re probably already overloaded with a million tasks to do, so how do you get SOPs done quickly?

Here’s how…

YouTube unlisted/private videos.

Right now I have about 20 different internal videos totaling at least 20+ hours of training videos on various processes within my businesses.

From keyword selection to content research and production, linkprospecting and review, and the list goes on.

You name a task that needs doing, I have a video on it and someone responsible for completing that task.

I host all the videos on YouTube and embed them on private pages on my site. When someone new comes aboard, I give them access to this training area and instruct them to watch all the videos before beginning any work.

Needless to say, this has helped remove me from the process and decreased any sort of bottleneck risk that could occur in my operation.

Using Better Communication Channels

Regardless of how many SOPs or videos you have described your process, your staff will ALWAYS have questions and you as the business owner should have dedicated communication channels to answer them.

And let me just say, email is NOT a good communication channel.

There’s too much friction and distraction in most email inboxes.

Instead, I use Slack to manage communication.

Slack is MUCH better at facilitating communication within teams.

If there’s a question, I get a notification sent to my phone, I answer it, and the issue is done.

Because I am more likely to be responsive, my staff are more likely to ask questions and because my SOPs and training materials are good, the questions they ask tend to be GOOD questions.

Here’s an example of one of my staff helping update a script.

Slack is good, but one more tool I use to help with communication is CloudApp.

There’s a number of apps that can do what CloudApp does, but I’ve found their version to be more polished and more intuitive.

It’s literally changed the way I communicate and provide feedback to my staff.

Slack is great for easy questions, but when you need to dig into something and provide detailed feedback about a submission, then CloudApp shines.

For example, if I hire a new writer and send them to my training center, they’re ready to go. They have a base understanding as to what I am looking for when they produce content.

But…

When they create their first pieces, they WILL need detailed feedback. To do this, email won’t cut it, nor will a Google Doc filled with edits.

The better feedback I can give them initially will get them going in the right direction MUCH sooner, and they’ll soon be creating high-quality content with little to no direction from me because they know EXACTLY what I want.

CloudApp allows me to rapidly create video feedback sessions reviewing their content seamlessly.

This is mainly due to the way CloudApp hosts the videos you create.

Once you’re done recording, the file is saved on their servers and you get a shareable link. I just send that link to my writer over Slack and have them make the corrections based on the feedback and they can get going.

Better yet, I then upload ALL of those feedback sessions to the learning center for future writers to see how I’ve reviewed content OTHER writers have written.

My staff all have accounts of their own, so if they have detailed questions, they can record those and send them to me.

This concept can apply to any role in your business (including roles within the linkbuilding process) to help annihilate any bottle necking going on!

A Process Limited By Dollars (aka cash), Not By Time

A scalable process by definition should only be limited by the amount money you can afford to spend NOT the amount of time in the day.

You should be able to build a system where there are defined roles that staff can be moved in and out of.

If business is going well and you have additional cash to spend, great, time to scale up and add bodies. Business not going so well? No problem, time to scale down and unplug a few resources.

For example, my team consists of a content team, a linkprospecting team, and an outreach team.

If I want to scale my link building up or down all I need to do is hire more people within each team, send them through my training modules, and let them loose. With a little feedback in the early stages, I’ll have additional members on my team actively contributing in no time!

I am not limited by the amount of time in the day, but only the amount of free cash I can dedicate to hiring more in each role.

Of course, having these fluid teams requires infrastructure within your business. More specifically, you should have training materials specific to defined roles (e.g., linkprospector, writers, etc), and a system to quickly intake questions and provide feedback to your staff to get them back to work asap.

How to build out the infrastructure? See the section above on bottlenecks.

The Inherent Difficulty With Linkbuilding…

Now that I’ve covered some of the basics, let’s have a look at the inherent difficulty with scaling link building in the first place.

Four main things come to mind when people tell me linkbuilding is hard…

Linkbuilding is Emotional

Let’s face it, no one likes to be rejected…

But if you’ve ever built a link in your life, you KNOW linkbuilding requires A LOT of rejection, which scares away lots of people who hate when prospects tell them “no”.

This fear of rejection slows down most people and they fail to scale their linkbuilding efforts.

How to fix?

Turn an emotional process into a logical one.

In order to do this you need to define a process (starting to see a theme here right?). Within the process are logical tasks that need to be completed. Think, “If this, then that”

For example, in my outreach process, if someone doesn’t respond we have a follow-up email que’d automatically. If they respond to one of our messages asking for money we have canned email response. If someone says no, we have a canned response for that. If someone tells us to “fuck off”, we have a canned response to that.

I’ve removed the emotion in favor of logic.

If this, then that.

Here’s an example of a recent email I received during one of my campaigns. Obviously, you’ll want to limit the number of emails you get like this, but they WILL happen eventually.

Here’s an example of an angry response you’ll inevitably get when scaling things up.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t endorse turning yourself into a robot, but there needs to be more logic added to the equation if you ever want to turn up the gas on your outreach efforts.

Also if your team is big enough, you can insulate yourself completely from the responses and never have to see a nastygram again. I know a few folks who do that and it works for them.

Linkbuilding Is Time Consuming

No doubt about it, building links to your website is time-consuming.

Between figuring out what content to write, finding websites to outreach to, gathering their content details, writing emails, managing the numerous responses, following up on people who don’t respond (or say yes but then go silent).

It is time-consuming.

How to fix?

Again, processes, systems, and tools are your friend here.

As I’ve mentioned, you need to define roles in your process.

Who writes the content?

Who finds websites that may be interested in linking to the content?

Who gathers the emails/contact information?

Who sends the emails and manages the responses?

If you’re small, all of these roles may be the same person, if you’re larger all of these roles may be filled with individual staff members.

Once you’ve defined the roles, it’s time to start leveraging tools to speed up the work.

Which tools?

Continue on to the next section… 🙂

How To Scale Linkbuilding?

So you want to scale your linkbuilding efforts huh?

Well great, so does everyone else in the world.

It’s no secret that links influence Google rankings.

Linkbuilding services typically charge $150+/link and the fees are only getting higher as competition becomes more fierce. Plus the links they acquire can sometimes be a tad… sketchy…

And to be more specific, the TYPE of links I’m talking about acquiring are editorial links (links embedded in content) and guest post links.

The general idea behind my approach is you find people who have written about a topic, you write an article that could expand on or complement their article with additional useful information, and then you reach out to let them when you publish hoping to be included as a resource on their website.

That’s it.

It’s super straightforward but highly effective when done right.

If you’re capable of building out an internal system as I’ve outlined above, you can reliably build links for as low as $30, $20, sometimes even under $10/link.

But do you have what it takes to ACTUALLY do it?

And by scaling linkbuilding, I don’t just mean hiring more people and having them just go figure it out.

And I’ll be honest, building out a process takes hard work.

I mean building out the infrastructure in your business to allow for lots of throughput with minimal input.

I know some folks who hire 10 people and only can get maybe 1-2 links per WEEK via a very inefficient process.

My team consists of 4 people and I’ve hit 1-2 links per day on average over a month span.

These are genuine, non-black hat, non-grey hat, non-paid for links.

I’ve been able to scale a white hat linkbuilding process.

How?

As I’ve been mentioning… tools and defined processes.

I see white hat linkbuilding broken up into three distinct phases. Those phases are:

  • Content Creation
  • Linkprospecting
  • Outreach

Let’s have a look at each phase in more detail.

Scaling Content Creation

Ah yes, content.

The internet literally runs on content.

There’s so much content, more than you or I can comprehend.

It’s probably safe to say that anything worth saying, has already been said DOZENS (if not hundreds… thousands?) of times somewhere else by some other person.

Even the most obscure fact you can imagine has been beaten to death with multiple articles picking apart every nuance imaginable.

The thing about building white hat links is that you NEED good content to stand a chance.

But given the vast amounts of articles, guides, and blog posts that already exist, how on earth will you stand a chance?

2 main reasons…

Reason #1: Websites And People (on average) Tend To Post Lots Of Low-Quality Content. This Creates A Thirst For GOOD Content.

If a business publishes enough content on a subject, Google will rank something right?

By the law of averages, this is probably true. Blind nuts do occasionally catch squirrels.

While this creates a shit ton of noise on the internet, it also presents an opportunity for savvy content marketers and linkbuilders. Personally, I believe this low-quality content creates a thirst for equally high-quality content.

And real quick…

I define “low-quality content” as a piece with little to no images, no video, no research, no sources, with lots of ads and affiliates link but nothing of practical use.

on the other end of the spectrum…

I define “high-quality content” as a piece based on research, first-hand experience, and actionable advice that can be taken away and used after consuming the content. Other high-quality pieces can include visual infographics and unique videos… you get the picture.

I think it’s safe to say people know when they read a solid piece of content.

All this being said, it creates an OPPORTUNITY for linkbuilders to capitalize on.

Reason #2: Good Content Creators Leverage “Angles”

This one is a little bit more nuanced so stick with me.

Even though there are thousands of blogs and articles produced every day about the same or similar topics, the one thing that can ALWAYS be introduced to a piece to make it different is a unique angle.

If this sounds complicated, it’s definitely not!

A unique angle is just another perspective and or point of view about a given topic.

There are three main angles that can make your articles different and help with link conversion.

They are…

  • “The Expert Angle”
  • “The Critical or Controversial Angle”
  • “The Most Comprehensive Angle”

The highest performing pieces of content I have ever had leveraged the “critical angle” in regards to a topic.

When looking for a juicy topic to write on, I noticed there was a lot of positive reviews of a specific supplement.

I did a little research and found that most people were using this supplement incorrectly and all of the pieces of content currently published were mainly just rehashed versions of each other.

Bam!

There’s an opportunity to present a very critical view of the product.

Because I knew that my perspective would be heavily scrutinized given it goes against what everyone else is saying, I made it a point to heavily research this piece of content to ensure it was bulletproof.

[su_note note_color=”#f9dacf”]Helpful Tip: The internet tends to act like an echo chamber with most content creators copying each other’s viewpoints instead of doing objective and independent research. If you can introduce a piece of content that goes against what most “experts” say you tend to get more opens, responses, and links.
[/su_note]

It took some time and upfront legwork to get it done, but now I am constantly doing outreach with it.

Every. single. month.

From a scaling perspective, creating a content system that produces high-quality pieces is difficult, but it CAN be done.

Here’s how I do it…

First I need to find topics.

For content, I like to use AHREFs to see which pieces of content are most popular in a given niche.

Their content explorer tool is great here as well as their AHREFs toolbar.

When it comes to content meant to be used for outreach, I don’t concern myself TOO much with the search volume, but more so target prospects and the likelihood people in my niche will find my content interesting.

Other website owners are your target when it comes to backlinks, not necessarily your normal website visitors.

This is KEY to understand.

If I get search traffic for the piece, then that’s just gravy. 🙂

Remember, linkbuilding IS a numbers game, so the more relevant link prospects you can find the greater chance of success.

Since I use Linkclump and Scrapebox as my primary forms of collecting linkprospects (see scaling linkprospecting section for more on this) I DO want there to be a lot of people talking about a subject and articles listed in the search results.

Each website that talks about a given topic I consider to be a target prospect and any domains pointing to those domains (aka referring domains) in the search results are all also possible prospects.

I look for lots of referring domains pointing to a search result and just overall volume of results in the search engine results.

losing weight example

That’s it.

I’ll list out maybe 10-20 topics that fit these criteria then schedule them to be written by my in-house writing team.

I’ll have a writer write a piece, then an editor come in and polish it up with video and pictures.

When the piece is done, I’ll publish it.

Depending on how competitive the target keyword is, I might polish the content even further by adding infographics, custom images, and additional value to help with the “wow” factor when doing outreach. If you can’t do that or don’t have the budget, totally fine, most of my campaigns still perform well with my normal process minus all the extra flare.

When the piece is finally published, this initiates the next step in the process.

Linkprospecting…

Scaling Linkprospecting

Linkprospecting… the next phase in building out a scaled linkbuilding system.

Within this phase, I like to think there are two main steps.

  • Collecting relevant search results (your prospects)
  • Collecting the contact information

With certain tools, both of these steps can be highly automated, but I will warn you, too much automation during this phase can severely hamper the overall success of your campaign.

Let me break down each in more detail and some tips on where to automate and where to keep in manual.

Step 1: Collecting Relevant Search Results

For the first step, I want to clarify that when I say “collect search results” I mean collecting the website URLs for search queries related to the article you are promoting.

And the key during this step is to balance speed with relevancy.

Some tools can grab EVERYTHING for a specific search term, but you want the results that will yield the highest chance of converting. You also don’t want to be seen as a “spammer” which is what will happen if you email someone about something completely unrelated to your article.

For example…

If you email a person letting them know you just published a guide about weight loss, but they have a website about astronomy… you’re going to get ignored or a nastygram as a result (see my above screenshot as an example). This also increases the chances that the recipient will report you as spam, which could hurt your deliverability score and get more of your emails put in the spam filters.

Not good.

So, what should you do?

Combine advanced search queries with tools like Linkclump and Scrapebox.

Advanced search queries will narrow your results to ensure you only extract the specific URLs from Google for your target topics.

When it comes to the queries, there are a CRAP ton to choose from (over 1,000+). In my opinion, you really only need a few to be successful.

My personal favorite is the exact match Google search query.

exact match for linkprospecting

This queries Google for the term exactly as entered.

Without the quotations, Google will attempt to also return other articles it thinks are relevant to the term. We don’t want that because when you hit page 2 and page 3 of the search results, you’re going to start getting some weird and irrelevant stuff.

The last bit I’ll mention is Linkclump and Scrapebox are great to physically collect the search results when you’ve run the query. Rather then control+c and ctrl+p, these tools scrape up the queries MUCH faster getting them in a Google doc to then continue working with.

Step 2: Collecting the contact information

After you gather a list of websites relevant to the topic of your content, you’re ready to begin collecting contact information.

I will say that some tools like Hunter.io make this dead simple (almost too simple). All you need to do is load in a list of contacts and it spits out email addresses.

As great as this sounds, I don’t recommend it for two reasons:

Reason #1: Hunter.io returns as many email addresses as it has to give. You can cap it at 10 email addresses per domain, but that means you have 10 emails associated with a website and no clue which email is the BEST email to outreach to. That means you have to guess… By guessing, you reduce the relevance of your outreach email and as a result, reduce its effectiveness.

Reason #2: If you use a tool like Hunter.io you’re going to outreach to everyone in your niche VERY QUICKLY. For example, if you have a website about paintball and you write a great guide on paintball tips if you use Hunter.io, you’re going rip through your niche in a hurry. The better way to do it is to ensure you grab the right person and tailor the campaign in such a way that it maximizes the chance for success.

Instead… I recommend virtual assistants (or VAs) for the role of collecting contact information.

It’s a dirty job, but there really is no replacing someone to manually go through a list and pull out the name and email from a list of URLs.

On top of gathering contact information, they can also be leveraged to remove irrelevant prospects refining your list (something I teach them to do quite often).

Going the VA route will be slightly more expensive than a Hunter.io type tool, but for websites with a small niche focus as I mentioned, will end up providing a better shot at link conversion.

If you DO want to still leverage Hunter.io to collect contact information, I’ve developed a special tool to attempt to pick the best email by quickly sorting and filtering through the emails based on a criteria you can set. Click here to check that out.

Scaling Outreach

After you’ve written your content and collected your prospects, it’s time to do some outreach.

Before you can begin the outreach phase, you should have a couple of things:

  1. A document with a list of email contacts, their names (preferably), and the URL of the page you want to get a mention on
  2. A custom outreach script relevant to the topic
  3. A tool to actually send emails and automate follow-ups

This is where you’ll benefit the most from the tools that are available on the market.

With cold email outreach becoming an increasingly more popular outbound marketing strategy, companies like BuzzStream, NinjaOutreach, Pitchbox, and Mailshake have been popping up to provide solutions to eager marketers.

Without going into too much detail here’s my flash breakdown of the tools to conduct the outreach and actually SEND the emails.

  • BuzzStream/NinjaOutreach: Better for larger teams, affordable price point, steep learning curve
  • Pitchbox: Better for larger teams, tailored toward agencies doing client work with approval workflows, expensive, and very polished
  • Mailshake: Perfect for smaller teams, has built-inin list cleaner (LOVE THIS), easy to use, VERY affordable

Personally, I prefer Mailshake.

I think the key feature that has me sold is the built in list cleaner. It does cost a bit of extra money, but it is SO convenient, keeps from getting too many bounced emails, and reduces a step in my outreach process, which means less time needed to conduct each campaign!

[su_note note_color=”#f9dacf”]Helpful Tip: Even though I have a VA extracting email addresses from my target URLs, emails still go stale, get deleted, or deactivated resulting in bounces. I ALWAYS recommend folks use tools to clean their outreach lists removing high-risk/likely to bounce emails. [/su_note]

Once you’ve decided on a tool that suits your team’s needs, it’s time to load in your list and schedule your outreach.

At this point, the most important thing to consider is your outreach script.

If you’ve done everything up to this point correctly, you’ve only created a giant list of contacts you think MIGHT be interested in the article or guide you created.

Creating a good outreach script is CRITICAL to a linkbuilding campaign’s success.

Ideally your outreach scripts should have the following things…

  1. Addresses the recipient by their first name
  2. Answers the question, “Why are you contacting me”
  3. Answers the question, “How did you get my email”
  4. Answers the question, “What do I get if I respond”
  5. Answers the question, “Is This Relevant To My Interests”
  6. A signature with your image (high-quality headshot if possible), link to your website, and social handles
  7. A way for them to “opt out” of your cold emails
  8. 100% Perfect English (if English isn’t your native language, pay someone to write your emails)

If you answer the above correctly, then you stand a fighting chance in a cluttered email box.

But…

Even if you NAIL the above questions, you’re still probably going to get ignored.

The idea here is to do everything you can control to give yourself the greatest chance to succeed.

At the same time, we have to balance the fact that for a list of 300 prospects, we’re not going to write 300 different emails.

That’s not scaling, instead that’s bespoke outreach, which generally has higher conversion, but takes ages to complete.

So…

How do you balance a bespoke approach and a scaled approach?

A couple ways.

But rather I try to type it all out, let me show you with a draft outreach example.

cold email script example

And that’s it!

Send that out as your initial email and then up with 2-3 additional emails if you don’t hear a response.

Tools like Mailshake make follow-ups extremely easy.

I have a follow-up set to ping the person if they don’t reply.

People are usually busy when they see your initial email.

Sure some folks immediately delete it, or never intend to respond, but some folks DO intend to respond.

For outreach, the frame of mind you should be coming from is that your sharing something of value.

Would you ever be ashamed to share something valuable with people who might be interested?

Of course not.

Imagine this:

You’re a scientist who just wrote up an article on the cure for male pattern baldness. You nailed it… you know EXACTLY how to put hair back on a man’s head.

You wrote a step-by-step guide, added nice pictures, and even shot a quick video of your explaining how it works.

You then take a minute to revel in the fact that you’re a scientist who’s just solved hair loss and created some kickass content to promote it.

Now it comes time to share it.

So you find the email addresses of popular men’s magazines and email them.

They don’t respond….

Would you stop emailing them?

Of course not, they WANT to read information like that and they will THANK YOU for letting them know it exists.

Granted my example is an extreme case, but the point I’m trying to make is that you’re sharing something of value to people who are likely to be interested.

If you created good content, conducted sound linkprospecting, and capped it off with a quality script and follow-up sequence, you WILL find success.

But because there is so much noise on the internet and other people jockeying for their attention, initial emails get filtered out very easily. which is why following-up is so important.

Final Thoughts…

Woah… what a ride.

I really hope you got a lot out of this guide.

Linkbuilding (and outreach in general) really has the ability to put your business on the map and help you reach your target audience.

Whether through links you’ve built with other websites, collaborations with other influences in your niche, or something else entirely, when you do outreach right good things happen.

This guide outlines the framework for my outreach.

As I discover new tools and optimize processes it gets refined and more efficient over time.

Some of the key areas I am working on optimizing even further are link prospecting systems and contact collection systems.

I have a couple unique approaches to both, but I’ll save those ideas for future guides 😉