Link Building Outreach Anyone Can Do in 5 Simple Steps (2025 Edition)

Anyone can do outreach for links in 2025.

There are so many tools and resources available that it’s no wonder that interest is at an all-time high:

However, the game has drastically changed in the past twenty years. Even today, Google constantly updates its algorithm to combat link spammers.

2024 saw some of the most significant algorithm changes since 2012.

All that said, building links is still a significant need for just about every business out there.

In this post, I’ll show you the five simple steps for successful link building outreach in 2025.

• Relevance and quality matter more than ever in link building outreach.
• Finding the right contact is just as important as finding the right site.
• Personalization makes or breaks your email pitch.
• The CHAMP method ensures your pitch is effective.
• Follow-ups should be strategic, not spammy.

What Is Link Building Outreach?

Link building outreach is emailing website owners or writers to get a link back to your site.

In some cases, the outreach is done to promote a piece of content for which you are trying to build links.

For instance, when we published our State of Digital PR report, I did some link building outreach:

In other cases, it is more of an opportunistic approach that requires the site target take some sort of action to include your link.

Here is an example of an email I sent asking someone to update an incorrect link in an article I’ve written about them:

In each case, the goal was to build a link back to our site.

As you can see, great outreach follows a similar format.

Its something I refer to as the C.H.A.M.P. method, which I’ll cover later.

Link Building Strategies You Should Use

As mentioned in the introduction, our recent studies (not to mention a significant Google algorithm leak) have shown us that Google has changed how they think about links.

Instead of getting the most links, I focus all my link-building efforts on building high-quality links relevant to our brand or site.

Today’s strategies and tactics can be employed with and without content. (I won’t cover all of these in this post because we’ve got extensive guides for each.)

Here is a quick breakdown with links to our guide posts:

Content-Driven Link Building

• Guest blogging
• Broken link building
• Digital PR
• Resource page link building

Link Building Without Content

• Link insertion
• Unlinked mentions
• Link exchange

If you’re interested, you can also just check out our full link building strategies post.

Next are my five steps for link building outreach.

1. Build a List

When building a list of sites for outreach, I start by determining who my target audience is.

The goal is to find relevant sites that are open to linking to me.

Let’s pretend I want to build links to my State of Digital PR report.

My target audience is going to be PRs and SEOs.

So, I need to build a list of blogs to pitch that cater to PRs and SEOs.

I’m use a Google Search for “seo blogs” to find blogs that have written about similar content.

To speed up the process, I’ll use BuzzStream.

Then BuzzStream will give me my list:

Google can only get me so far. Once I have my list of potential targets, I want to evaluate it and make sure they are truly relevant.

That’s next.

2. Make Sure The Sites Are Relevant and Quality

Quality and relevance is the name of the game in 2025.

Let’s talk about how to quickly check for each.

Checking for Relevance

The biggest mistake link builders make is reaching out to irrelevant sites.

The easiest way to check relevance is to click through to the site and look through their homepage and current articles to make sure their site matches my target audience.

Here’s Search Engine Journal’s home:

I see lots of content about SEO, so I know I’m in the right place.

This quick relevance check ensures I’m not only reaching the right audience but also that a link from this site will be valuable to Google.

There are some more extensive relevancy checks I can do, which I outline in my relevant links post.

Checking for Quality

Two quick ways to gauge a site’s quality are to look at its traffic and authority metrics.

I use Ahrefs Site Explorer to check my target site’s average monthly organic traffic and Domain Rating (DR).

I can filter by those metrics in BuzzStream to only look at sites with a DR above 65 and site traffic above 10,000 estimated monthly organic visits:

There are other quality metrics that I like to look at, which you can find in my quality links post.

Now that I’ve confirmed the site is relevant to my target audience, I want to find a person to email at each site.

3. Find the Right Person

The second biggest mistake people make in link building outreach is reaching out to the wrong person.

In link building outreach, once I identify a site, I aim to find the author of a relevant article.

So, for my State of Digital PR study, I’ll search the site for “SEO study” to find relevant articles.

I’ll do this by using a site:search on Google:

I clicked on one and found Matt G. Southern.

(This is about AI and journalists, so I know I’m on the right track.)

I want to ensure Matt is the best fit by finding a bio page.

When I click on the name, I find that Matt is the Senior News Writer at Search Engine Journal. It says Matt oversees strategy development for SEJ’s news department.

I can also see Matt’s recent articles, which all appear to be SEO-related studies:

So Matt appears to be the right person. Let’s move to the next step: finding the contact details.

4. Find Contact Details

The best way to find contact details is on the author’s page.

Luckily, Matt’s is right here in front of me. But it won’t always be that easy.

If you’re stumped, I post about ways to find people’s email addresses.

Now, we can move on to the fun stuff: crafting the outreach pitch.

5. Craft Your Email Pitch

The pitch has two parts: the subject line and the email body.

Let’s cover the subject line first.

Crafting the Subject Line

Take a look at your inbox. See how crowded it is?

You goal is to make your email stand out above all of the noise.

Here is a snapshot from my inbox:

You can see a link building pitch email gets lost due to a very generic subject line.

To stand out, ensure my subject lines describe what it is and who it is for.

For my State of Digital PR outreach, it will be:

“New data study for Search Engine Journal”

Short and to the point!

Crafting the Email

Over my ~10 years in link building, I’ve developed the C.H.A.M.P. outreach method for crafting email pitches.

In short, the idea is to send them an email that is personalized to them, provides them with something of value, and then gives them all of the information they need to take action.

Here it is broken down:

So, for my State of Digital PR email pitch to Matt from Search Engine Journal, I’m going to follow this structure:

In this case, the real value I’m giving is that I’m providing (what I think is) really great data.

It’s relevant to Matt because he’s shared a lot of other studies.

I’m personalizing a bit calling out a study that he shared, showing him that I know his beat.

If I can take a lot of the work off of Matt’s plate, it may be easier to share.

I’ve built this out in BuzzStream so that I can send and track responses.

That’s basically all there is to it.

6 (Optional): Follow up

In most cases, I like to follow up only once. I call this step optional because you don’t always need a follow up email.

I keep it short and to the point:

I would be wary statistics that you see about follow-ups that recommend following up multiple times like this:

Usually these kinds of follow-up studies are created by cold outreach software which caters to sales teams and email marketers, which are very different from link building.

Remember, the goal with link building outreach is to pitch a specific value and ask for a targeted action—not just spamming inboxes in hopes of a reply.

Why Is Link Building Outreach So Important in 2025?

Outreach is critical if you want your content to be seen by Google and, more importantly, by users.

Some well-known brands with high authority can get links with little to no outreach based on their brand exposure alone.

The rest of us need to do it the old-fashioned way.

You might think that what I mean is that big brands don’t need to do any link-building outreach.

Here are three reasons why I think all brands should:

Gets Content Ranking More Quickly

Links have been shown time and again to help sites rank better on Google. Link building outreach gets the content in front of people more quickly, jumpstarting the ranking process.

So, even large, well-known brands still engage in link building outreach.

Cuts Through the Noise

There is more content than ever! Between email newsletters I’m subscribed to and LinkedIn posts, I probably see hundreds of great “link-worthy” content daily.

By doing email outreach, I am getting the content to the right people at the right time to increase the likelihood they will link to me.

Builds Relationships for Future Wins

My favorite reason for doing any outreach is that it allows me to connect with people.

And developing relationships with bloggers, journalists, and site owners increases the likelihood that they might feature my content again!

Next, let’s briefly look at the link building strategies that require outreach.

Link Building Has Changed But Still Works

Not everything works like it used to. Google has been getting smarter at identifying link building strategies that are used to game the system.

Buying links, link exchanges, and even guest posting are all risky tactics if you are not extremely careful.

We’ve outlined several white hat link building tactics that work today.

Ready to get started? Check out BuzzStream today.

Vince Nero

Vince is the Director of Content Marketing at Buzzstream. He thinks content marketers should solve for users, not just Google. He also loves finding creative content online. His previous work includes content marketing agency Siege Media for six years, Homebuyer.com, and The Grit Group. Outside of work, you can catch Vince running, playing with his 2 kids, enjoying some video games, or watching Phillies baseball.

More Posts by Vince Nero
Website: https://buzzstream.com