Local Link Building with Content

[Justin Mosebach]

@brettmandoes any tips regarding the pitch?

 

[brettmandoes]

I make sure they know I'm not trying to get money out of them. I had a realtor get real upset with me once because she thought I was trying to sell her a blog post lol.

Optimize the subject line. Use real names. Customize for each person. And just like in sales make sure that you're communicating the value to them.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Starts with email, sometimes moves to phone. It's hard. Sometimes people are jerks and you have to get used to rejection. I find that my success rate is dependent entirely on my pitch, so I spend a lot of time refining that. And yes, I've secured link placements doing this.

It's been talked about a lot on this forum if guest posting on local sites is actually useful for link building. It's much more difficult for local businesses and as an agency, I (and others) haven't found it to scale well.

It sounds like you believe you've found a way around that, which is awesome. If you have any further details, I'm sure we would be all ears. I would be particularly interested in your success rate. We've found it problematic in the cost area. If you combine the cost of creating content plus the effort of an employee to do outreach and secure a placement, I imagine it's in the range of hundreds of dollars. I think somewhere in the $200 - $300 range might work for us but often it tends to be more expensive than that.

At any rate, well done and continued success!

 

[brettmandoes]

Hey Josh, my phone is dead (as in manufacturer's defect dead) so I'm going to be slow responding. My response rate on initial contact seems to hover around 30-40%. My success rate in link acquisition varies wildly. I had one campaign with only 2% success and one with almost 50% success (but a much smaller sample size).

It's tough because it's not truly template-able in a one-size-fits-all pattern. The latter success came because I identified some webmasters who monetize guest posts and will take anything quality. The former was cold outreach to people who are historically bad at technology, and I'm convinced they don't actually know they have a blog.

Your unique situation will determine whether this is worthwhile to do or not. I'm still working on making it scaleable, but I'm confident that my process refinement will bring it into a $300 range based on hourly rates.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

It's tough because it's not truly template-able in a one-size-fits-all pattern. The latter success came because I identified some webmasters who monetize guest posts and will take anything quality. The former was cold outreach to people who are historically bad at technology, and I'm convinced they don't actually know they have a blog.

This is for local websites, correct? For local linkbuilding? Or is this more non local sites? I'm surprised there are local websites savvy enough to monetize guest posts?

 

[brettmandoes]

Yup. Look specifically for crossover in other categories and content shops that serve up localized content or are willing to link to local sites.