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A head-to-head comparison of HARO-based outreach versus conventional link outreach.
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[00:00] Hi this is your host sayad al fanaj mal and in this episode of the SIA business show I want to speak about two primary link earning techniques that we offer to our clients so we have a lot of you know current uh and prospective clients asking um about harrow outreach versus conventional outreach so um I am going to share um what the difference is and you know which one may be better for you and so on okay so
[00:49] Hero outreach um you know basically uh harrow or help a is a platform or or you know I guess you can call it a marketplace even where journalists may publish their queries like they may be working on a story and they may need expert insights or they may need to hear about people who may not be experts but who may have some relevant you know experiences about the story that they are working on right so they will mention hey this is you know um jane doe
[01:32] From uh forbes and I'm writing a story about how covet 19 has you know um impacted your business or hi this is you know um um john doe and I'm representing you let's say psych central and I want to know how covet 19 may have impacted your mental health and how it may have impacted mental health the mental health of your team members and employees and so on and then when you see that query what you do uh or what you know your your marketing agency may do
[02:11] Is that they will answer that query uh on behalf of you right and then if the journalist likes your um pitch then then you know they may quote you in their uh story in their article and a lot of the times they you may get get a backlink from that um you know mention sometimes uh they might not even link to your website or sometimes they may uh grant you a no follow back link so no follow back link is basically you know that target site telling Google
[02:47] That okay I have linked to this website but you know you know don't don't uh take this backlink into consideration basically just you know ignore it or you know in more technical words don't uh pass on as any um SEO juice or SEO value to this um you know this website okay so that's basically harrow all right now what is conventional outreach so conventional outreach is basically something we at uh our agency dmr we have you know basically we we use the term conventional outreach to
[03:23] Talk about basically any other white hat strategy other than harrow outreach okay so please note that we are a white hat outreach agent outreach agency we we are not uh interested in in uh you know pbns and all that we have never worked on that um and um you know that's that's not what we do so you know obviously pbs etc are you know out of the question uh anyway but any white hat strategy other than hero outreach uh we we call it conventional outreach okay so this may include the skyscraper
[03:57] Technique which was you know popularized by brian dean um where you know um to put it in simple words you you um you know you um come up with a high quality uh content um and and and the content piece that you come up with uh it may be a guide and info and or an uh and and it it's it would be on a topic which um you know um other sites have written about and which have maybe received a lot of backlinks or even shares but
[04:33] You know what you do with your content piece is that you write a better guide or a better infographic or or you know a better research study or a better survey report or something right so you come up with something better on the same topic and then you know you will start those websites you will start contacting those websites and um you know the ones that have backlink to to those other studies that you are inspired from and then you know you will you will um persuade them by by mentioning how
[05:06] Your content is content pieces uh much better more um more insightful and so on and that you know this is why they should they should maybe link out to you guys right um so I I might do a proper video on skyscraper technique but this is the basic idea behind it guest posting I I hope that you know what that is you're basically you know outreaching to other websites which may need you know content uh which which may accept you know guest authors on their site and then you write
[05:37] For them uh then there is link insertion where you find uh some some method to you know insert your um in an existing article of of another okay um and actually I mean I should do um you know videos about all of these then there is histographic outreach which I guess is kind of what you know can be can be said to be part of skyscraper technique as well again it depends on you know how you do it and what strategy you use and so on
[06:08] Okay so that's the two basic uh now the way I look at it um with harrow your opportunities are fewer okay um you there may be a very um a very very small number of coming up uh in the harrow newsletter that you will get like three times a day um but but the good thing is that you know there are a lot of other benefits okay which which I will explain in a in a few moments uh with conventional outreach um you know basically you don't have to wait for the harrow
[06:46] And you don't have to you know find out if there is a there is a relevant um you know theory that you can answer okay you basically you know sky is the limit in in the sense that you can find uh websites on your own via Google or you know scrape box or Ahrefs or something like and then you you know you you you run an outreach campaign um either manually or by some kind of an automation software like you know mail or pitch box or ninja outreach etc
[07:19] Um actually I'm not sure if ninja outreach is still there or not but you know um it's it's surely one of the options there um now anchor text I mean you you really cannot uh select an anchor text uh in case of hero and in fact in I would say 99 percent of the cases um they would just link out to your uh company name so so you know you will get a lot of branded anchor texts which is actually something that uh many of our clients
[07:57] Desire and appreciate uh to to to have those branded uh anchor text based backlinks from you know high DR websites okay um and another thing is that other than the uh other than the fact that you you you you I mean you cannot select back uh anchor text and and you will be getting mostly uh branded anchor text which is actually much better for you uh to be honest because that's what you want to focus on most of the time I guess like you know maybe 70
[08:34] Of the time okay so if you have 100 backlinks you ideally want 70 of seventy percent of them to be branded backlinks so if I'm earning backlinks for dmr I may want to make sure that most of the are using the anchor text dmr or you know dmr dot agency or digital marketing ROI okay um by the way we have we have gone through some uh rebranding obviously so if you look up our our agency's website on Ahrefs you will see that we don't have a lot of backlinks and all
[09:09] That because we you know we we are on a new domain okay um and um but the good thing about harrow outreach I would say which I think I I have not mentioned here which I should add here is that in most of the cases you'll be getting backlinks from medium to high domain rating websites okay so you'll be getting backlinks from the likes of you um you know DR 50 DR 40 50 60 70 80 90 those are the kind of backlinks that you can expect if you are
[09:48] Doing everything right and if you are doing everything on time okay um so that's that's something that is is really good and in fact I will I will I will be sharing some examples of the backlinks that we have earned uh which had high DR uh in fact let me let me just go ahead and show you at um some some of these high domain authority backlinks so you can see this is one of our clients right stir you can also check out their their case
[10:15] Study uh here on our website but let me show you the kind of backlinks that we have earned so you know we have a do follow contextual backlink um you know I'm not talking about blog comments based backlinks or or or you know image links or something I'm talking about you know the the the best of the best backlinks here so I'm talking about do follow backlinks and you can see that the DR here is 89 right pollution.com uh then there is a backlink from clutch.com which has a back uh
[10:45] DR of 86 then is there is a backlink uh from omnisend which has a DR of 82. uh then there is another back uh another client and and you know we have published their case study as well on our website you can see their testimonial you can see right sir and you can see that you know we have earned a do follow back link for them from apartment therapy.com I mean if if if you are a company like centric which is in the home management niche um you know you you
[11:17] You really cannot expect a lot of uh better backlinks than these ones so you know this is actually an extremely relevant backlink for centric okay then there is a backlink from brit.co um you can see that all of these are 80 plus DR backlinks and we have actually uh backlinks of DR 90 plus as well uh even do follow backlinks okay so there is a backlink of from threelist.com uh there's a backlink from cms wire uh we have earned backlinks for for different websites from cms wire quite a few times actually
[11:51] Okay so these are some of the backlinks that I I wanted to show you as you know just just so you know what kind of battling scan you want obviously we have been doing this for you know I mean I think it's about three plus years now and and you know we have a really good process um we have tested a lot of things we are testing new things all the time uh just yesterday uh a team member was mentioning how he um sent four new pitches using a
[12:20] Different strategy three of them were with the new strategy and one was uh with with you know the the the more um conventional way that that we do hero outreach and and he saw that the three that he sent with the new strategy um they they were uh opened much sooner okay um and and and speaking of um how do we find out um when this when the journalists open our email or when they have clicked on it and all that obviously there some of you might know that there is
[12:51] Email tracking but you know we actually one step ahead and we we do something else with one of the email tracking um called Boomerang which which basically helps us predict what are the chances of our email getting a response okay uh anyway I think I'm I'm digressing a bit uh here so uh my apologies for that uh but like I said with hero outreach you are answering journalists curies via the harrow platform with conventional outreach you are contacting websites anchor text selection is not possible in
[13:24] Case of harrow outreach but you will be a lot of medium to high domain rating backlinks in case of convention conventional outreach um I would say it's usually I mean you you can definitely uh select anchor text I would say ninety ninety percent of the cases uh but these would usually be medium uh you know low to medium uh domain rate websites okay so high sorry in case of harrow it's medium to high uh domain rating websites and in case of conventional it's low to medium DR websites
[14:00] But but then again in case of hero these are mostly home page backlinks and in case of conventional outreach it's mostly going to be in their page backlinks okay so um a lot of our clients they do want homepage backlinks as well because you know I guess according to at least some experts that that that means that you have a more natural uh link portfolio and that's considered more safer and all that uh but you know if you are someone who wants more inner page backlinks then you
[14:27] Know definitely you you you want to do more of the conventional outreach okay um all right uh relevancy uh in case of harrow um you know it's it's I would say that it's low to medium the relevancy bit okay so you know a you know just look at like richard branson okay so so you see him I don't know cycling and and working and you know mentioning you know how how family is important to him and you know a lot of other things right um and you know he is a billionaire
[15:04] Which I guess the last time I checked he has built like you know eight plus billion dollar companies in eight industries okay so so the goal here is that we help you be seen more more than you know what you are selling okay so you want to show you as someone who has a multifaceted personality rather than you know someone who is just focused on you selling your own thing uh I'm not saying selling is bad I'm not saying you should not be selling I'm not saying that you should not be
[15:35] Focusing on that what I'm saying is that people like to do business with people they they want to trust people they want to see that if I'm you know if there is a brand uh there are real human beings behind it and and you know they have different values they want to see okay what kind of a culture they have what are their hiring strategies what are they doing for productivity how have they managed to to to you know um fight the the pandemic based you know recession and whatnot so you
[16:08] Want to show all of these different angles of your your company brand and your personal brand and that means that you don't really have to care too much about relevancy in case of harrow outreach because you know on one hand it helps your brand uh I think it helps your conversions as well uh although I don't have you know any data to back that up to be um it's it's just what I feel what what my gut feeling is but if you want more relevancy if you want more relevant
[16:40] Um you know if if you know if you are a an auto care company and you backlinks from you know car enthusiasts and you want back things from let's say um travel blogs and whatnot and then you know I totally understand that and in that case you have to focus more on conventional outreach okay because the relevancy in that case would be much much higher okay uh time scale again uh with hero uh while you are you will be able to earn those high authority backlinks that
[17:15] I I uh mentioned uh DR 80 plus tr 90 plus dl70 plus um but but you know the the time scale can actually be much longer um you know a lot of the sites I mean you can have the initial backlinks coming in uh if you are sending let's say 30 pitches every week or something you can the initial backlinks coming in from you know pretty much the first week or something I would say dependent on how good how well you do it and so on
[17:48] But um typically you should you should expect to earn backlinks within three three months okay so so at least some of the backlinks especially the more higher backlinks you you you may have to wait one month two months three months or even longer okay the reason being that these large uh they get a lot of pitches maybe um they they work under a tight schedule they may be publishing you know uh not even dozens but but hundreds of stories um every week or something uh they may
[18:24] Have a content calendar um and and they have to stick to that that's why the time scale here is much much longer um the worst case uh here can be that um I had this really nice journalist reach out to me after she saw my hero pitch and um you know she asked me a few questions and and I answered those and she probably reached out to me once more for the same and then you know I just the link was just not coming in although she did say that she will be
[18:58] Mentioning mentioning me but the article was not getting published it was not there I would keep on checking one month two month three month and I'm not really sure uh but I think it took like you know longer than one year for that article to get published but you know what it got published in harvard business review uh it is a publication that I want to write for some day so you know I am really proud of the fact that I got uh mentioned there in in in harvard
[19:27] Business review okay because I can use that as a stepping stone to you know get published and get published as a columnist in harvard business review to get featured in in other publications to convince other publications to grant uh me backlinks or or I guessed column and whatnot you know so it's all it's all part of a process right it's it's outreach it's not pay to play we are not bribing someone we are not paying someone um we are doing genuine actual natural legitimate outreach here okay so
[20:04] This is how this works um with conventional outreach the time is much much much shorter you will start seeing backlinks from you know probably the first week again it depends on your budget and but whatnot as well how much effort you are putting in but you know it's it's very easy to see those backlinks coming in pretty uh pretty soon okay now in term of pricing what we do is that we have uh tears so you know um they are based on domain rating or DR
[20:37] Which is basically a third party matrix Ahrefs and so for a backlink of br1 to 10 which is a smaller site or you could say a more newer site or a site with a smaller SEO presence I guess in that case um the price is lower much lower okay but obviously if it's a backlink with with a DR of 90 or 95 or something then obviously the price is higher okay so so we we charge uh prices uh for both on on this try a tiered base
[21:12] Pricing model which which uses the DR um if if you want to work with us if you want us to um start working with you um in case of hero outreach we we would definitely need your persona as in you know your bio your headshots um ideally in 200 by 200 resolution but also some high resolution pictures as well because that can help in case of larger uh some story hooks as in you know something which really attracts the that that um target you know um it may be a rags to riches
[21:50] It may be uh it may be a hero story where you know you you you are struggling with something and then you overcome your uh your challenges and and um you know you you became more successful and whatnot uh we may also need to know if we can use uh our own personas where we will uh act as your representatives you know we your permission uh on that as well and we need your understanding that that we will be doing doing that um in case of conventional outreach obviously
[22:22] You can you can provide some anchor text um you can provide us the DR range like you know what DR do you excuse me what DR range do you want backlinks from you know like I don't know 30 to 50 or or whatnot and you know you will you should also let us know some inner informational page URLs I mean you can share some promotional pages as well like your sales page and whatnot but um you know you should know that there are better ways to
[22:50] To um boost the keyword rankings and traffic of those promotional pages okay so what we do is that we earn backlinks for your um informational page uh and once that page is um ur or URL rating has increased uh once we have boosted that what we do is that we uh require you to link from that page to the um to the promotional pages okay so that is how you you can uh leverage these two different strategies okay um let me know if you have any
[23:31] Questions and you know I would be happy uh respond back to you um ideally um you know if if you want to know uh which strategy is best for you again it really depends on what what your current state is what the current state of your website is and what not and what your you know goals are and what not but usually if you are using both these strategies um then then you know you can obviously reap more benefits in my opinion okay if you are a new
[24:07] Website I would definitely say spend more time on hero outreach uh invest much much more than that uh we recently worked with a client who when they started working with us um in about may or june uh their domain rating was about 10 or 12 okay so they're a texas-based company and and their domain rating was 10 or 12. after we earned them a bunch of harrow backlinks um their domain rating basically uh reached about 38 uh by the end of august so you know may june july august so that's
[24:43] About because I think we worked in like middle of the month sorry middle of may or something we started working um so I think that you know in about just like three or three and a half months their domain rating went from 12 to 38 right so if you're a new company I would say that definitely work more with hero outreach I guess um if if you have been business for a uh if you are getting some decent traffic and and you do have um you know a lot of these um
[25:14] Um you know uh home page backlinks with branded anchor text and whatnot then I would say that you should definitely uh work more on conventional outreach so yeah I think uh this helps uh that's it for this episode of the sie business post podcast um and um you know do do let us know um if if um this video was helpful uh or if it was not for helpful we would love to have your feedback because it helps us to you know improve and you know I will
[25:51] I'll speak to you in the next episode of the SIA business podcast take care