The following are five things that anyone can do to establish authoritativeness and trustworthiness that can be communicated quickly and contribute to earning more links. The trick to this technique is that you have to put some time into these tactics first but the rewards after you are done are links, lots of them.
The idea behind this tactic is to convince a web publisher to give you a free link, or to give you the opportunity to publish an article (with or without a customary byline and link).
In order to cut through the noise of all the other emails the web publisher receives, it is necessary to establish your authority in order to inspire trust. And you need to do it quickly. These are some touchstones I crafted, through trial and error, in order to accomplish a higher success level in link building campaigns.
I call this method, Establishing your Bona Fides. It works by creating trust with one to two sentences. Whether at the beginning, middle or end of the outreach is up to you, but I’ve enjoyed a good response rate by placing it near the beginning.
Here are the shortcuts to establishing bona fides:
- Awards
- Media appearances and mentions
- List of authoritative organizations that have published your work
- List of peers that have published your work
- Authority of your website’s authors
As you can see this isn’t really something you can fake your way through. But if you take the time to first establish your bona fides (what makes your legitimate and authoritative), you will see a higher percentage of positive response rates. People will take your emails more seriously.
There is no need to be annoying and badger people over and over the way some marketing agencies do. The success rate improvement from this method will cut the need for such aggressive pestering, something that I have never approved of.
The first two bona fides are self explanatory. But I will explain them quickly.
Awards
It’s always useful to obtain recognition in whatever field that you are in (if that’s a thing). Even if it’s recognition for volunteering for an organization and doing charitable work. Other kinds of awards are the kind that local news might give out, like best whatever in whatever town your company is based out of.
Media Appearances And Mentions
Appearing in television news, being cited in respected news or online magazines are ways to establish signals of authoritativeness. Signals of authoritativeness aren’t just ranking signals, they are also the kinds of things that humans respond to.
Organizations And Associations
The third bona fide relates to associations and organizations that your company is allied or partnered with, and any publications that are related to those organizations, both online and offline. Some organizations are always on the lookout for people to profile or publish articles by for their association publications. This kind of publishing is a great way to establish authoritativeness and trustworthiness. It’s truly earning recognition for your expertise.
Publishing articles in offline publications are a bonanza. While you likely won’t get a link, you will also be the rare online organization submitting a guest post in those publications. Most companies and marketing agencies aren’t doing this because there is no link associated with it. This this will be your advantage because as you’ll see, it will help to increase your link building success rate. When you publish an article in an authoritative space, even if it’s offline, it gives you the ability to rightfully say in your outreach email that you’ve been published in so and so magazine or newsletter. Associating your brand with the authoritative brand in this way instantly makes your brand authoritative to the person you’re communicating with. This is especially powerful if the person you’re communicating with is also a member of whatever association or organization that you have published an article with.
The reason this approach works is that it enables you to establish yourself as authoritative with a single sentence. With only a few words in your outreach email, you can quickly profile your site as not a spammer, and a legit organization that’s ultimately worthy of getting a link. In my experience this has worked exceedingly well for consistently earning instant trust from whoever you’re outreaching to.
You can get to number four (list of peers that have published your work) without doing number three (list of organizations that have published your work). But you’ll have greater success if you put a good amount of number three projects behind you. Even if you don’t use all the projects in your initial outreach email, you may have to deploy them in follow up emails to doubting recipients who need more convincing. And you get add all of these to your About Us page.
Authority Of Website Authors
Point number five (authority of your website’s authors) is more or less self-explanatory. It helps if the person authoring your articles is someone who the outreach recipient can identify with, can think of as “one of us” when you list their credentials. For example, I once did an outreach in the educational space citing the writing talents of a math teacher who was also an education technology blogger. This person’s credentials and authority opened doors for my link building outreach and helped my client receive links from some truly prestigious education related websites.
Obviously, the success of this approach requires do some work ahead of time to get appearances in blogs, podcasts, video interviews, publishing in association and organization online and offline publications. Even taking a photo with someone who is well known and authoritative and putting that on your About Us page can be helpful. People who are considering giving you a link will go to your website’s About Us page to verify who this company is and if they’re as above board and authoritative as you say.
Using the above pre-campaign tactics will improve your trustworthiness and authoritativeness and have a positive impact on link building success rates.
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Krakenimages.com
