link building case study results of 515 outreach e with timestamps YoutubeScribe.com

[0:00] We sent 515 emails asking for backlinks, and
today, I'm going to share the stats from our
[0:05] campaign, the exact process we used, and
key learning points that you can use in your
[0:10] link building efforts.
[0:12] Stay tuned.
[0:12] [music]
[0:17] What's up everyone?
[0:17] Sam Oh here with Ahrefs, and this is the second
episode of our 3-part series on creating linkable
[0:23] content and actually getting links to it.
[0:26] So if you're new to this series, the first
video was all about strategically building
[0:30] a statistics page that we thought would generate links.
[0:34] And even before we started creating the content,
we found roughly 4,200 websites we can contact
[0:40] -- of course this number is unfiltered and unvetted.
[0:44] And since I showed you how we created that
content in part 1, now I'll show you how we
[0:48] built links to it here in part 2.
[0:50] So as we were planning our experiment, we
wanted to report accurate results from our
[0:54] link building campaign.
[0:56] So to isolate backlinks from our email
outreach efforts, we didn't promote
[1:00] the post to our existing audience.
[1:02] So no email subscribers, customers or social followers.
[1:06] On top of that, we hid it from our blog index
and category pages, RSS feeds, and we even
[1:12] noindexed the page so it couldn't be
discovered in search.
[1:16] The post was basically invisible unless
we sent you an outreach email.
[1:20] So without further ado, here are
the results from our campaign.
[1:24] We sent 515 emails.
[1:26] 473 were deliverable and 42 bounced.
[1:31] And based on deliverable emails, we had a
reply rate of 17.55% and a conversion rate
[1:37] of 5.75%, which works out to 27 links from
unique websites.
[1:43] But two other cool things happened.
[1:45] #1. We got an additional five referring domains
from sites we didn't reach out to.
[1:51] And the most probable reason is that some
people were discovering our page from those
[1:55] that linked to us and from the odd social shares.
[1:58] In total, we had around 19 shares
on Facebook and two on Twitter.
[2:02] None that we started.
[2:04] So that brings our referring domains count
to 32 or a 6.8% conversion rate.
[2:10] And #2. Some of the sites we reached out to
linked to us more than once, both from new
[2:15] and old posts.
[2:17] So in total, we had 36 editorial links from
unique posts.
[2:21] But let's use our first conversion rate of
5.75% on referring domains as I think it's
[2:27] a better reflection of our results.
[2:30] Finally, I want to give you an idea of
the quality of links we picked up.
[2:33] All of the links we built were editorial links
on contextually relevant pages.
[2:38] Now, as for metrics, let's simplify it and
talk about just two.
[2:42] Domain Rating, which represents the overall
strength of a website's backlink profile,
[2:47] and domain-level search traffic.
[2:49] So this is what the Domain Rating distribution
looked like for our acquired links:
[2:54] 9 of the 32 referring domains had a DR of
70 or greater.
[2:59] That's 28.1% of our total referring domains.
[3:03] 12 of the referring domains had a DR
of 40 to 69, which is 37.5%.
[3:09] And the remaining 11 had DR values of 4 to
39., which is 34.4%
[3:15] Now, let's look at the distribution of websites
based on domain-level search traffic.
[3:20] And these are based on search traffic numbers
from Ahrefs, which are usually underestimations.
[3:25] So they don't include other traffic sources
like direct, referral and social.
[3:30] So six of the linking websites get over 10,000
monthly search visits, one that actually gets
[3:35] over a million organic visitors.
[3:38] Another six get between 1,000 to 10,000
monthly organic visits.
[3:42] 16 websites get between 100 to 1,000
monthly organic search visits.
[3:47] And four get zero search visitors, which all
happened to be websites we didn't reach out to.
[3:54] So are these results good, bad, or average?
[3:57] Well, to answer that, you need to understand
the full scope of the process, things we intentionally
[4:02] didn't do, like automated follow-ups, and things
we weren't willing to do, like link exchanges.
[4:09] So throughout this video, I'll share some
of my insights as well as the more granular
[4:13] stats that no one really talks about.
[4:15] But I'd love to know your thoughts based
on your experience and what you know of
[4:19] our campaign so far.
[4:21] Do you think the results were good, bad, or average.
[4:24] Let me know in the comments.
[4:26] Also, I will warn you that if you're new to link
building, some of the concepts and thought
[4:30] processes are a bit more advanced than
our other link building tutorials.
[4:34] So feel free to ask any questions in the comments
and we'd be happy to answer.
[4:39] Let's dig into how we executed this campaign.
[4:42] So the first step was to get a list of link prospects.
[4:45] And we started by looking at the top-ranking
pages for the query "SEO statistics" that had
[4:49] lots of backlinks.
[4:51] So when we were prospecting, we saw that these
three pages cumulatively have over 4,200 referring
[4:57] domains pointing at them.
[4:59] And we found another page that had around
980 referring domains.
[5:03] So we opened all four of their backlink profiles
in Ahrefs' Site Explorer and set the "One link per
[5:08] domain" filter since we don't want
to pitch the same site multiple times.
[5:13] The next thing we did was look for reasons
why people were linking to these stats pages.
[5:18] So looking at one of the backlink profiles, you'll
see that the majority of links are happening
[5:22] because people are referencing a specific stat.
[5:26] Pretty obvious, considering the topic of the page.
[5:29] But which stats are being mentioned the most?
[5:31] Let's head over to the Anchors report to get
a summarized view.
[5:35] As you can see, there are tons of links that
can be attributed to this 93% stat.
[5:41] So we continued looking through this report
and jotted down around 5-10 popular stats
[5:46] based on the link anchors.
[5:48] So with this information, we needed to
check off two checkboxes.
[5:52] #1. Are there enough people linking because of
these stats?
[5:56] If yes, that could make a link building
campaign worth the effort.
[6:01] And #2. Can we justify a good reason for them to link
to us instead of, or in addition to the current link?
[6:09] So we went back to the Backlinks report and
searched for mentions of the stat in the anchor
[6:13] and surrounding text of the link.
[6:16] And as you can see, there are well over 700 links
from unique websites where they're mentioning
[6:22] the stat "93%."
[6:24] So that ticks off checkbox #1.
[6:26] Now, if we visit the page, you'll see that
the stat isn't even mentioned on it.
[6:31] So that checks box #2.
[6:33] We have a good reason to contact them.
[6:35] So after analyzing all the stats pages and
their specific stats, we came up with two
[6:40] main outreach angles which were:
[6:42] #1. The page you're linking to doesn't mention the stat.
[6:46] We have more recent data.
[6:47] And #2. The stat you're mentioning is X years old but
new data suggests whatever the new data point was.
[6:55] So we exported the report and then we did
the exact same thing with all of the other
[7:00] stats and all of the other stats pages.
[7:04] And because we were finding outreach angles
for individual stats, this allowed us to easily
[7:09] segment our link prospects so we could send
personalized emails to everyone in a somewhat
[7:14] automated way without being spammy.
[7:17] So we imported each of these reports into
Google Sheets and labeled each URL according
[7:22] to their segment.
[7:24] And by the end, we had a list of 1,986 URLs.
[7:30] The next thing we did was an initial clean
up job of our prospects list.
[7:34] So first, I deduplicated URLs from the same
domain since websites could potentially be
[7:39] linking to more than one of the stats pages.
[7:42] This was easy to do using Google Sheets.
[7:45] I just parsed the root domain from each URL,
clicked on Data and then remove duplicates.
[7:51] Finally, I set it to analyze just our root domain
column and then hit Remove duplicates.
[7:59] The final thing I did here was to remove prospects
based on link attributes and the page's SEO metrics.
[8:05] From our list of deduplicated prospects, I further
narrowed them down to just followed links, and
[8:10] websites that got at least a certain amount
of organic traffic across their entire domain.
[8:16] And I pulled domain-level traffic using Ahrefs'
API with Google Sheets' Script editor.
[8:21] Alternatively, you can use Ahrefs' Batch Analysis tool.
[8:24] Just paste in up to 200 domains and set the
target mode to Domain with all its subdomains.
[8:30] You can then export the file and run a
VLOOKUP against the root domains.
[8:35] So after all was said and done, we had a list of
902 prospects that we'd need to manually vet.
[8:41] Now, if you've watched any of my other link
building videos, then I'm sure you know that
[8:45] I'm a huge advocate of using APIs
and automation when possible.
[8:50] So to kick off our link building campaign fast, I
took all of the URLs and put them into a custom
[8:56] tool to scrape as many of the author's
names as I could.
[8:59] And in total, I got 741 scraped author names,
but it was far from perfect.
[9:06] But I still took all those names and ran them through
Hunter's API to search for an email address.
[9:12] In total, Hunter sent back 452 email addresses.
[9:16] And with email addresses that were found, I
simultaneously ran them using NeverBounce's API,
[9:21] which would tell us if the email addresses
were deliverable.
[9:25] So after around 20-30 minutes of automation,
we had a total of 168 valid emails, 92 catchalls
[9:32] that needed some manual intervention,
and 178 emails that were not deliverable.
[9:38] So these would need to be searched for manually.
[9:40] These simple automations made our vetting
process much faster because all we had to
[9:45] do for valid emails was check that the pages
were of decent quality and they were still
[9:49] mentioning the stat we were about to
pitch each prospect.
[9:53] And the entire outreach process was handled by
Vlad, who's a memeber of our marketing team.
[9:58] He basically took a few hours each week
to vet pages, find emails, and send them.
[10:03] Now, to simplify the vetting process, I set
a list of criteria for people we should and
[10:08] should not contact.
[10:09] Vlad would then set a specific status based on
the page and domain so we could keep track
[10:14] of our campaign stats.
[10:16] So based on this list of statuses, we disqualified
spammy pages, those in another language since
[10:22] we wouldn't be able to send effective outreach
emails, ones where we couldn't find an email,
[10:27] and URLs where we had existing relationships.
[10:31] And for all pages that matched our set criteria,
we'd mark them as "good."
[10:36] The last thing we did in the preparation phase
was write our outreach template and create
[10:40] personalization fields for each contact.
[10:43] Now, before we continue, I want to make a
quick note on the concept of personalization.
[10:48] In my opinion, there's a balance between
sending a relevant, well-written email and
[10:53] sending a creepy one.
[10:55] First off, adding someone's first name in your
email doesn't mean it's a personalized email.
[11:00] That's just a personalization field.
[11:02] But on the other extreme, you don't want to
say things that'll be too personal which might
[11:07] come off a bit strong.
[11:08] For example, saying:
[11:10] "Hey Sam,
[11:10] [Then whatever your outreach pitch is]
[11:13] By the way, I heard the weather in Toronto is
22 degrees with a 90% chance of precipitation.
[11:19] Guess it would be better to stay indoors
instead of playing golf.
[11:22] Love, Josh"
[11:24] While this might seem personalized, it's a bit
strange and also irrelevant to the purpose
[11:29] of your email.
[11:30] So the approach we took was to personalize
emails based on a specific thing they said
[11:35] in their post.
[11:36] And of course, that was the stat, which again,
is why I think segmenting link prospects on
[11:41] large link profiles make a ton of sense.
[11:44] So here's what our exact email template
looked like in Pitchbox.
[11:48] And since it's basically a bunch of merge
fields, I'll fill them in as I read you a sample.
[11:53] "Hi Sam,
[11:53] I saw you mentioned how 93% of online
experiences begin with a search engine
[11:58] on your page about ecommerce SEO.
[12:01] That stat is actually 14 years old.
[12:03] More recent research (from 2019) suggests
that this number has gone down to 68%.
[12:09] I think it's lower because social and other
sources now account for around 1/3 of traffic.
[12:15] We published this and a few other fresh SEO
stats here: [URL].
[12:19] Not sure if you're actively editing posts,
but might be worth an update if you are?
[12:24] No pressure :)
[12:25] Cheers, Vlad"
[12:27] Now, to set up these merge fields, we basically
created another worksheet called Outreach
[12:31] emails, and it looks like this.
[12:34] And then within our export sheet, we basically
just did VLOOKUPs based on the segment the
[12:39] contact falls in, which would then automatically
populate our merge fields.
[12:44] Then it was just a matter of exporting the
sheet, uploading it to Pitchbox, and then
[12:48] making sure that our emails made sense
before actually sending them.
[12:53] Now, if you don't use Pitchbox, you can do the
same thing in pretty much any other outreach tool.
[12:58] And that's pretty much it in terms of the entire
process for setting up our link building campaign.
[13:04] Now, let's revisit that thought again about
whether our results were good, bad or average.
[13:09] And there isn't a straight answer because your
mileage will vary based on way too many factors.
[13:14] But for simplicity's sake, let's compare our
reply rates to a couple industry studies.
[13:19] So our response rate of 17.55% was pretty
high in comparison to the 8.5% that was studied
[13:27] by Pitchbox and Backlinko.
[13:29] So in total, we had 83 people actually
respond to our initial email.
[13:34] Now, with a good number of responses, our
link acquisition rate on referring domains was
[13:38] 5.75%, which seems pretty average at face value.
[13:43] So why the big discrepancy?
[13:45] Two reasons.
[13:46] #1. We had a ton of requests for link exchanges
and other things.
[13:51] So in total, eight people requested a link exchange,
three people asked us to pay for the link, and six
[13:56] people requested something else like a free
Ahrefs account, or for us to share their content
[14:01] on social media.
[14:03] And these requests came from small websites
with low authority and little traffic as well as big
[14:08] sites with millions of visitors and high link authority.
[14:11] Now, link exchanges aren't something we participate in.
[14:14] We've never and will never pay for links.
[14:16] And we don't just hand away Ahrefs accounts.
[14:19] So in that respect, we had very little power
or actually no room for negotiation.
[14:24] But if we had done the link exchanges, traded
Ahrefs accounts, and did social shares, that
[14:30] would have brought our referring domains count to 46,
which would have been a 9.7% link acquisition rate.
[14:36] And that's pretty good in my books considering
the number of emails we sent and the fact
[14:41] that we weren't soliciting trades.
[14:43] The second reason for the discrepancy is that
five people actually linked to the source of the stat
[14:48] rather than to the article we pitched.
[14:51] And these are people that actually replied to us.
[14:53] So there were probably more.
[14:55] And it comes with the nature of the type of
post we created: a curated list of the most
[15:00] recent SEO stats we could find, where obviously,
we'll be linking to the source on the page.
[15:05] And I'll expand on this in the third part of this series.
[15:08] Another thing to consider when evaluating
the success of our campaign is the quality
[15:12] of the links.
[15:14] As I've already mentioned, all of our links
came from topically relevant pages and websites.
[15:19] And the majority of our links were from
pretty good sources.
[15:22] Now, let's talk about some key takeaways as
well as our shortcomings.
[15:26] So based on our overall stats, I think it's telling
about the current state of outreach for links.
[15:32] Based on my experience, the number of people
looking for some kind of exchange or payment
[15:37] has skyrocketed.
[15:38] More and more people understand the value of a link.
[15:41] And whether it be from knowledge or personal
experience, they know that some people will
[15:45] give them tangibles for it.
[15:47] So in my opinion, it's only going to get harder
to get links which will require you to go with
[15:52] more of a targeted approach, especially
since tons of people are sending horrible
[15:57] spammy outreach emails.
[15:59] So by sending good emails, you actually have
a chance to standout from the rest of the crowd.
[16:04] Now, there are two shortcomings from our campaign
that I think contributed to a lower conversion rate.
[16:10] First is the age of the links.
[16:12] I've already told you that one of our pitch
angles was that 93% stat was 14-years old
[16:17] and wasn't even on the stats page.
[16:20] So there were definitely pages in there that
had aged without an update.
[16:23] And second, which was probably the biggest
limiting factor to our link acquisition rate
[16:28] is that we didn't send any automated follow-up emails.
[16:33] Follow-ups definitely help increase conversion rates.
[16:36] I've seen it in my own campaigns and the guys
at Authority Hacker shared more convincing data
[16:42] from their study on 600,000 outreach emails.
[16:45] They said that sending three follow-up emails
has at least doubled their results.
[16:51] So why didn't we send them?
[16:52] Simple: we didn't want to bother people without
good reason.
[16:56] The main reason for this campaign was for
a case study.
[16:58] Not because we need tons of links.
[17:00] So the only people we followed up with are
those that said they would link to us but
[17:05] didn't make the change within two weeks.
[17:07] Which by the way, helped us get more links.
[17:10] So everything is out on the table and you
might be wondering if doing outreach for links
[17:15] is still worth the effort considering lower
than expected conversion rates.
[17:19] Of course it is.
[17:20] These stats are from just one campaign.
[17:22] And our results can't be generalized to all
outreach emails.
[17:27] Yes, you might find people wanting something
in return these days but it's still possible to
[17:32] build good links without paying or trading
for them.
[17:35] So to conclude part 2, if you plan on doing
outreach, I strongly recommend going with
[17:40] more of a segmented approach and to stay away from
sending 10,000 identical emails to every person.
[17:47] The additional effort can go a long way.
[17:50] Now, outreach for links isn't the only way
to build links to your page.
[17:54] You can actually build them passively using
PPC advertising.
[17:57] Or at least that was my theory.
[17:59] So in the final part of this series, I'm going
to show you advertising campaigns we ran
[18:04] to two different types of stats pages,
and links that came as a result of our
[18:08] PPC  advertising campaigns.
[18:11] This video will drop a week from this video's
publishing date, so make sure to subscribe
[18:15] to our channel so you don't miss out on that.
[18:17] Also, let me know your thoughts on our results,
your results, or the state of link building in general.
[18:23] And if you enjoyed this video, make sure to
hit the thumbs up button and share this video
[18:26] with others who can benefit from it.
[18:28] I'll see you in the final part of this case study.

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