The Problem with Link Outreach: a Reality Check

There are basically 2 types of backlinks that do not violate Google's spam policies: "natural" backlinks and "outreach" backlinks. "Natural" backlinks are those that are created without any action on the part of the website owner, which happens very rarely (if you are not a well-known brand) and may be considered to be no more than a pleasant bonus; you obviously can't consider those as a core part of your off-page SEO strategy. "Outreach" backlinks are those that are created when you reach out to website owners and ask them to link to you, without offering anything in return (to be specific, "money, goods or services", as Google puts it). There are a lot of guides out there that will tell you how to do link outreach, and it can be a viable strategy to some extent, but there are a ton of caveats that they either don't mention or don't emphasize enough. Let's take a deeper look.

How is it supposed to work?

The ideal scenario looks like this: you find a website that is relevant to your niche and has a good domain authority, you reach out to them and ask them to link to you because they should like your content and think it will be useful to their readers. There are different angles you can use to form your pitch (such as offering to write a guest post, the "skyscraper" technique, fixing broken links, and so on; I'm not going to go into the details here, as there are a lot of guides on the subject already). The idea is that you are offering something of value (but nothing "tangible") to the website owner, and they should be happy to link to you in return. It's a win-win, right?

Unfortunately, in reality, it's way harder than it sounds on paper. A great way to see the potential issues clearly is just to put yourself in the shoes of the website owner who is receiving the outreach email. Let's break it down.

People who own authoritative websites know the value they possess

If someone has managed to build a website with a decent domain authority and which receives a good amount of traffic from Google, they probably know a thing or two about SEO. That most certainly includes the knowledge of the SEO services market, including link building, and what would be a fair price for a backlink from a website like theirs. So why would they give it to anyone for free?

Just think about it: it's not like they are doing you a small favor by linking to you - they would actually be giving you (a total stranger) something that has a monetary value, and not getting anything in return. Not to mention that they would be kind of vouching for you by linking to you, so they would be risking their own reputation in a way. There should be one hell of a reason for them to do that.

This leads us to 2 most likely scenarios when you reach out to a website owner: they either straight up name their price (and we were trying to play by the rules here, remember?), or they simply ignore you. This leads us to the next point.

The absolute majority of outreach emails are ignored

Let's take a look at two case studies that were conducted on the subject by Ahrefs. The first one is about paid backlinks. They reached out to 450 website owners and asked them to link to their website in exchange for money. The results were as follows: 78.6% of the emails were ignored completely (let that sink in: even when you are offering money, almost 80% of the emails are ignored), 8.8% of the website owners told them that they don't sell backlinks (which is basically no different), and only 12.6% of the addressees agreed to sell them a backlink. Starting to get a feel for how the numbers would look for a "legit" outreach campaign yet?

Well, let's see. Their second article in question shows that the majority of link outreach campaigns when no money is offered yield around 1-5% conversion rate (meaning this is how often you do secure a backlink). In the same article, they mention the results of their own outreach campaign, which had a 5.75% conversion rate; but as they also acknowledge, they are a well-known brand in the SEO industry, so they definitely had a higher success rate than most people who are trying to do link outreach, so I think it's safe to say that the actual average would be closer to 1%.

Now let's crunch some numbers. Let's say you have a goal of getting 100 decent backlinks to your website (this amount will definitely move the needle in a lot of niches, but it's nothing too crazy). If we assume a 1% success rate, you would need to send 10,000 outreach emails to achieve that goal. Can you even imagine sending 10,000 emails without it being blatant spam?

It basically doesn't work in some niches

It's one thing to run, for example, an SEO blog like the aforementioned Ahrefs: you can conduct some cool case studies, which are relatively easy to pitch in an outreach email, and people will be more likely to link to such content, just like I did in this post. But what if you are in a niche that is not as "sexy"?

Let's say you run an eCommerce store that sells clothes. What are you going to pitch, yet another "10 fashion tips for men" article in your blog section? Good luck with that. Not to mention straight up categories and product pages.

Or let's go even deeper and explore the online gambling niche, particularly its shadier corners that target countries where online gambling is illegal. It's just impossible to get a backlink in this niche without paying for it, because what "value for the readers" can one possibly offer here? Of course, not every niche is as extreme as this one, but I'm just making a point about the limitations of the "legit" outreach strategy.

You wouldn't be able to provide top-notch content for guest posting by definition

Everyone who is trying to get a backlink by offering to write a guest post promises to write "great content". The problem is that you want the best content you can produce to be on your own website, not on someone else's. For example, I spent $9k to find out if UGC backlinks work, which made for a great case study. If I had offered it to someone else as a guest post, first of all, what would I have left to post on my own blog, and secondly, I would have gone bankrupt in no time with such an approach, spending thousands of dollars just to get a single backlink.

So by definition any content you can offer for guest posting would be mediocre at best if not some outright generic regurgitated slop. And if you are not offering the best content you have, why would anyone want to publish it on their website, without something to tip the scales?

The only exception to this is if you get an opportunity to write a guest post for a website that is very authoritative and has a big audience, so getting a backlink from them would be a huge win for you, not to mention the exposure you would get. But this is a very rare occurrence.

Your outreach will collide with paid competition sometimes

I have faced this a lot in my own outreach experience. This especially applies to the "skyscraper" technique (when you find a piece of content that is already popular and ranking well, then create a better version of it and try to convince people who are already linking to the original to link to you instead).

For instance, I've come across articles highlighting the benefits of using certain SaaS products in my niche (i.e. my competition). Other sites featured comparison charts listing multiple competitors but not including my product. So, I have reached out to them, explaining in detail my product's strengths, how it outperformed the competition in certain aspects, and so on, showing why it would be a great fit for their readers, and I asked them to consider including my service in their articles or lists.

What happened in most cases? They declined. Why? Because those articles were literally guest posts, paid for by my competitors, as the website owners themselves told me (believe it or not). Even in cases where an article linked to multiple competitors, it was usually one of two scenarios: either all the featured companies were affiliated, or sometimes it's done to make the guest post look more organic (and less like a paid one) by including links to some other websites as well. So, obviously, they were not going to change anything in those articles since they had been paid to publish them exactly as approved by the sponsor.

So, what to make of all this?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that link outreach is completely useless. It can be a part of your off-page SEO strategy, but you should also be prepared to spend a lot of time and effort on it and be ready for a lot of rejection.

There are some upsides to it as well. For example, you can get some good exposure and build relationships with other website owners, which can lead to other opportunities down the road, or get some really juicy backlinks that you wouldn't be able to get otherwise. But you should be aware of the limitations of this strategy - the main one being that it'll be very hard to reach the needed quantity of backlinks this way in any reasonable amount of time, especially in some niches, since the success rate is so low.

It's just a part of the game. And if you try to play strictly by Google's rules, you will be trailing behind those who are not afraid to bend them a little. It's not like Google is going to catch you every time you buy a backlink. By the way, think of this: if you acquire a backlink by running a "legit" outreach campaign, how is Google going to tell if you did or didn't pay for it? That's right, they can't, they are not omnipotent. So, if you are not doing anything too crazy (like buying thousands of backlinks for a few bucks on Fiverr; don't do it!), you should be fine.