Cold outbound guide for high DR backlinks

A quick cold outbound email guide for getting high DR backlinks

It is possible without paying for links but if you're spamming literally any site to see if they accept casino links or essay writing services then you will obviously fail.

Do less, with more quality.

I don't often send cold outbound any more but I have good success with getting links and acquiring high DR sites to build on.

The first thing I do is look at links my competitors are getting that I'm not. If you're building something good and useful your competitors will probably have links from established media, .gov and .edu as well as high DR blogs.

In the example I shared earlier my site is a hobby science tool and already has links from NASA and other places.

Rule 1: be linkable. It's a simple rule but 99% of cold outbound is not linkable. At all.

When I have a list of potential link targets I run an agent across them all, usually they write throwaway scripts and checks for this to deep dive it:

- Do they link to other tools/apps/content like mine?
- Are any links broken, no longer go where they should, now spammy sites on an old domain?
- Are there any technical issues on the site I could help with?
- Which page(s) would be the most topical and logical place for them to link to me?
- Are they linking to URLs that could be replaced by mine to better serve their visitors?
- Do they have very obviously paid links already or offer "sponsorship"?

You can figure this out for your own apps but I am actively looking for reasons not to email them if objectively there is no good place or reason for them to link to me or they already look like a link seller.

Rule 2: make sure your link is genuinely useful. Most people will say it is but be honest with yourself (insert Beckham meme here).

Another angle that I sometimes use and will likely do more of now personal agents can just do this for me is using the data I have to build reports and dashboards and landing pages that are up to date and have an interesting angle to use for the outreach.

I could have an app exploring crime statistics and enriching it with demographics, cost of living, local facilities etc to try and find unique insights.

Much easier to send outbound to somebody who has already covered and linked to these types of reports if you have one thats genuinely useful and different.

Rule 3: Combining data into unique reports and insights works very well, especially for PR.

My guiding compass always with SEO, AEO, programmatic content, links, whatever it is, is to serve users the best I can.

I don't care about Google or their ever-changing guidelines. I focus solely on "is this useful to people in and of itself" and would I use it myself.

It sounds cliche and bullshit (and sometimes it is) but you will probably find that if you put that care and focus into your products that your success rate in outbound increases significantly.

Nothing groundbreaking here. Just be a purple cow (Google it) and stand out. Nobody else is so you have every opportunity!