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How to Use Cision HARO Help a Reporter Out for Blog Link Building

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Are you looking for a great new way to improve your link building results? In today’s post I will explain how Cision HARO Help a Reporter Out can help you secure quality backlinks for your blog or website. Like most things, hard work is required for HARO to be effective for your link building efforts. This strategy will help expose your website to a whole new audience of thousands — even millions — of viewers. And HARO will help associate your website with other sites that have a quality Domain Authority.

What is HARO Help a Reporter Out?

HARO Help a Reporter Out is a journalist, PR and media relations tool that is used to source quotes and content from people with knowledge on a specific subject. HARO gives journalists and content creators a nearly infinite database of sources to use as the grounding inspiration for their upcoming stories.

You don’t have to be the one that reaches out to the journalists involved. Instead, they come to you. The best news of all is that huge media sources, such as Time Warner, Mashable, and the Wall Street Journal are already making full use of HARO. A backlink from one of these big media outlets is internet gold.

The fact that the giants of the online media world are using HARO Help a Reporter Out means that you will never run out of potential requests. There are many high quality small online publications that use HARO to source content. This guarantees you an endless supply of opportunities to establish yourself as an authority on a particular subject.

Photo by Tyler Franta on Unsplash

How to Receive HARO Queries

The first step is to sign up as an official source provider. After you have done so, you’ll get three emails a day. The emails will come at 5:35 a.m., 12:35 p.m. and 5:35 p.m., EST, from Monday to Friday.

The emails that you receive will be broken down into several different categories:

  • Biotech and Healthcare
  • Business and Finance
  • Education
  • Energy and Green Tech
  • General
  • High Tech
  • Lifestyle and Fitness
  • Public Policy and Government
  • Sports
  • Travel

Each email will have a list of queries that are accompanied by a category, title, query email, media outlet, deadline and a description. You should browse through each email to find topics that you desire to respond to. See below for a query example:

HARO Help a Reporter Out Query Example

Power Tip: Create a separate HARO Help a Reporter email folder where you can store all of the queries and responses that you get from incoming sources. This way, you can organize them and ensure that you don’t miss an opportunity to respond and secure a backlink. Many queries are time-sensitive so it’s important to get them as quickly as possible.

Sign up to be a HARO source

How to Make the Perfect Pitch on HARO

Photo by Kat Stokes on Unsplash

Using HARO Help a Reporter Out for link building takes consistency and hard work. Personally, I find the pursuit for placements exhilarating. There will be hundreds of people responding to queries with their pitches so you have to provide excellent content in order to stand out from the crowd.

When you respond to an inquiry, make sure you do so with your most effective and professional pitch. Once again, keep in mind that the source you are sending your pitch likely has many others to consider.

Make your pitch stand out by starting with a heartfelt greeting. Next, be sure to answer every question that they ask. Think of your response as an in-depth article. Make sure to give them thoughtful, thorough, well-written responses that they can cut and paste into their article.

Power Tip: Strictly follow any word count requirements that the journalist states in the query.

Lastly, make sure to include your bio as well as a link to your website. This will give you instant credit in the eyes of your sources. If they accept your pitch, you can use your quotes in some of your other content (give credit to the source), place the source’s logo as an “As seen on…” on your website, and benefit from the backlink juice that search engines will give you.

For the best results, always respond to the queries that interest you in as authoritative a manner as possible. Building quality backlinks is all about establishing a relationship of mutual trust and patronage. The best way to do so is to set yourself apart from the crowd as a reliable, authoritative responder.

Repurpose Your HARO Responses

If you tried your best and wrote an excellent response and it didn’t get chosen, don’t fret. Repurpose your unchosen Haro Help a Reporter responses in your other content. Use them in blogs, eBooks or even for other related HARO queries. Your time will not be wasted when your work on responses for this powerful link building tactic.

Contact Us for Additional Info about HARO

If you require further info concerning HARO or how to secure backlinks, please feel free to contact us. We are here to give you all of the latest and most reliable info concerning link building and other equally important topics. Check out our blogging tips for beginners for more professional guidance.


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Chris Craft

Follower of Jesus. Husband. Father. Founder of InspireFirst and Nao Media.