How To Write an Amazing HARO Pitch? [6 Tips]

As per Search Logistics, 46% of marketers spend $10,000+ on just link building, and this makes it clear that buying links is a very expensive way to grow your SEO, even though building links is one of the most important parts of an SEO strategy.

So if you are a small business that wants to build quality backlinks in order to improve your website’s SEO with less or minimal investment, HARO is the solution you must choose.

What is HARO?

HARO stands for Help a Reporter Out, and it bridges the gap between journalists and sources. It is where bloggers, content marketers, and journalists ask their respective questions to subject matter experts and use those answers as content on their website or platform.

The amazing part of HARO is that it is completely free if you want to respond to any query.

The concept of HARO is simple.

You will be receiving three daily emails at fixed times, where you will be given a list of queries that the bloggers and journalists are asking.

All you need to do is answer those queries in the best way possible within the given deadline, and voila! Enjoy quality, relevant links!

Now that you know what HARO is and how it helps you build high-quality backlinks, the question is, how can you write a perfect pitch that gets accepted by them?

6 Tips to Write an Amazing HARO Pitch That Generates Results

1) Subscribe to the correct industry feed:

In HARO, if you are subscribing for free (the Basic plan), you are most likely to receive all the irrelevant queries as well, which are not even associated with your niche interests.

Hence, make sure that you subscribe to HARO on a paid basis (Advanced plan), as this will help you filter out all the relevant queries among them, making it easier for you to submit the answers.

2) Read and evaluate the query:

Always ensure that you read and understand the query topic as much as possible. HARO queries are literally like exams; if they ask you a question on social media and you start by giving answers about SEO, your answer is most likely to be rejected by them.

In some queries, the blogger or journalist might require an answer from industry experts with years of experience in the field, so if you feel you are not as experienced or have relevant experience as to what they require, don’t answer it, as the chances of getting accepted are pretty low.

So ensure that you read everything once, twice, or even three times before expecting a backlink from them, as they are receiving hundreds of responses from people all over the world.

3) Pitch Concise:

Thrive, an internet marketing agency, after analyzing around 2,500 queries, claimed that 53% of the sites in HARO have a domain rating greater than 70.

This just means that half of the sites from HARO are high-domain-authority sites, and if one wants to crack good-quality links for their website, one needs to ensure that the queries are receiving high-quality pieces of content.

So, make sure that your HARO pitch is airtight and that you are explaining exactly what’s required in the query. Also, it would be better if you could merge the content with your relevant personal experience, as it will be a great value addition to the content and help you increase the chances of it getting accepted.

4) Write a catchy subject line:

Subject lines play a major role in improving the open rates of your HARO pitches. As mentioned earlier, HARO receives tons of responses for all the queries. The question is, How can you stand out among the rest of them?

The answer is simple: keep testing subject lines!

For example, if there is a query on how one can improve their SEO with just content efforts from a big media site and you respond to them by using a subject line such as “[HARO Query Answer: {Topic}]”.

You are most likely to be ignored. Instead, if you write a subject line such as “I Improved My Organic Traffic with Just Content, Here’s How”.

What do you think will have better chances of higher open rates?

So, keep on testing subject lines and get closer to generating quality backlinks from high-domain-authority media sites.

5) Proofread and edit:

Before hitting that send email button, ensure that you have properly cross-checked your entire content and that it is free of grammar errors. If your content has a lot of errors, there is a 100% chance that your HARO pitch is going to get rejected by the journalists, as it may seem unprofessional and inexperienced to them.

To ensure that your content is error-free, you can use tools like Grammarly and Quillbot, which will help you highlight and fix all the typos present in your content.

6) Avoid templates:

Don’t use any templates. You can use templates if you want to, but ensure that you are using them just for ideation purposes and never just copy-paste stuff.

The reason behind this is that if you are copy-pasting or using templates, chances are there might be many people like you who have used similar content from other websites, making it clear to the journalists that you are in it just for the PR or a link in return and nothing else, improving the chances of rejection of your HARO pitch.

Conclusion:

It is extremely competitive to get a backlink from HARO, but if you follow the right strategy and execute things in the right manner, you are definitely going to reap the benefits from it.

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