HARO Backlinks Service:

“Help A Reporter Out” (HARO) is a platform where journalists (as well as bloggers) ask questions (queries) on different topics and seek expert inputs from subject matter experts. And, subject matter experts and website owners (sources) respond (pitches) to the queries, relevant to their business/niche.

If a journalist decides to use a response in their article, in most cases, they will link back to the source’s website. A win-win situation for both, the reporters and the sources. Journalist gets answers to their questions and sources get free PR and an authoritative backlink.

Here, it’s important to note that, journalists usually receive hundreds of pitches for each query they post. Obviously, they have the luxury to pick the best answers.

This is where a professional HARO Backlinks service can help.

The average delay between the pitch submission and the publication date is 2-4 weeks. It’s up to the journalists/publications to decide which pitches to accept.

While we guarantee the placements but do not commit to timings. On average, you can expect 2-3 links placed in 1-2 months and 5 links in 2.5-3.5 months.

The best part about HARO link building is that it is completely organic. However, this is also the weakest part. Because we have no control over the links. That’s why it is not scalable. It takes a lot of time.

It all depends on the reporter whether they include our pitch or not. Even if they decide to include the pitch, it’s up to them when to publish their article.

While some pitches get published within a week, most pitches often take more than a month to be included. In some cases, we have observed that it may take more than two months.

However, for our clients, there is a blessing in disguise.

How?

We start pitching for you immediately after the completion of the onboarding process and stop pitching when a pre-determined number of links are published.

But, as noted above, since these pitches take time to be published, you will likely get a higher number of links than what you paid for as some of them may come months after we have finished pitching.

Yes. We will provide a link to a Google Sheets report where you will see all the earned links and other updates.

Wish we could do that. HARO is time-sensitive. Every pitch comes with a strict deadline, sometimes just a few hours. Plus, the sooner we submit, the more likely the pitch is to be included. Because most of the reporters take some of the early pitches and ignore the rest. Therefore, it is not possible to send every pitch for approval.

Not much. At the time of onboarding, you will need to provide the requested details, and we will handle the rest.

On average, you can expect 2-3 links per month, starting with the second month. However, we can’t commit to the timing.

With a few exceptions, HARO works with nearly every business. However, HARO link building is more effective for some businesses (such as Marketing, Business, Lifestyle, Fitness, etc.) than others.

Also, it depends on the authority of your website. For best results, it is important that your site has enough content and it drives a few thousand monthly traffic. Because no media would want to link to a poorly maintained site.

That said, you can run a HARO backlinks campaign even if your site is brand new. But in that case, you will have to put in extra effort and it may take longer.

Therefore, we recommend that you send us your details before ordering our service. You can send your inputs through this form.

While it is possible, we cannot guarantee such placements. It depends on many factors – your niche, site authority, availability of HARO queries, etc.

To be honest, such inclusions are very rare. And, therefore, instead of running after them, we should focus on getting links from other relevant sites which is relatively easy and cost-effective.

We follow the same pitching process for every client. We only look for relevant queries and respond to them only when they meet our criteria.

All the high-quality backlinks share the following key traits:

#1: Good Backlinks Come From Trusted, Authoritative Sites, Not Spam Sites

Would you rather get a backlink from big sites like Forbes or The New Yorker… or a random article directory?

Looks like Google feels the same way. Google puts lots of weight on the authority of the linking domain. It is called Domain Authority (DA).

The logic is, that the more authority a linking page has, the more link juice (link value) the backlinks will bring to your site.

As it turns out, Google trusts some sites more than others. If you get most of the links from sites that Google doesn’t trust (low-authority sites), it will negatively affect your search performance.

However, good links aren’t easy to get.

Going by the rule of thumb: The harder it is to get a backlink, the more valuable it will be. Likewise, the easier it is to get a backlink, the lower its value.

For example,

Imagine how much it would cost you to get an authoritative link from Forbes, Business Insider, or CNN.

On the other hand, it’s easy to get links from forums or blog comments. You only need to comment on a blog post or answer a thread, and, your link is up.

In short, a single backlink from a major website is more powerful than 100 links from anonymous blogs or 1000 links from shady link farms.

How to assess website authority?

You can use Domain Authority (DA) metric by Moz or Domain Rating (DR) metric by Ahrefs. We use both.

#2. Good Backlinks Come from Sites (and Pages) That Are Topically Relevant To Your Site

If you get a link from a webpage that is topically related to your site, then it’s relevant.

For example, if you run a travel site, where do you want to get links from? Definitely, from a site or blog on the same topic, travel, or something related to travel.

So, a link from CNN’s travel page is more relevant than one from an SEO article on Moz Blog. It doesn’t look natural either. Otherwise why on earth would a travel blog link to an SEO site?

#3: Valuable Links Have the “Dofollow” Attribute

Dofollow links pass on link juice (link authority) to a linking website, nofollow links don’t.

And Google and other search engine algorithms treat these links differently. While they do index nofollow links, they tend to ignore links with a “nofollow” tag for ranking purposes.

So, from an SEO point of view, you will want to get “dofollow” links from authority sites.

#4. Good Links Are Contextually Placed Within the Content

The location of a link on a page also matters in SEO.

Backlinks placed inside the content tend to have greater SEO value. Even better, if they are placed at the beginning of the page. Likewise, links that flow naturally with the surrounding content carry much weight.

So, you will want to get contextual backlinks only. Site-wide links that are placed on footers or sidebars are not considered valuable. Moreover, if you have an excessive number of site-wide links, Google will perceive them as spammy.