What is HARO link building?

HARO stands for “Help A Reporter Out”, and it is a unique link-building service that many companies have chosen.

It is a free service that helps journalists to find sources easier daily for a variety of subjects. Unlike many other types of link-building services, this service doesn’t require constant outreach efforts.

The database that it generates will allow journalists and bloggers to come to you looking for quality and reliable sources of information.

This not only helps them do their job efficiently, but it is an excellent way for you to gain backlinks to your website from reputable media outlets. After all, accounting for my research, high-profile media outlets have started utilizing HARO services.

So, it isn’t just smaller-time journalists and bloggers that will have access to the articles that you write on your website.

There have been reports from mainstream media outlets, like the New York Times and other newspapers, that some of their journalists have found sources using HARO, and they find the service useful.

How does HARO link building work?

Before getting started with a HARO service, it is important to make sure that the email you use has the HARO site’s emails directed to a specific location.

This is key to making sure that their emails do not get missed, due to being sent to random email folders like your spam or junk folder. This is just a suggestion, but it will help with the overall process of the HARO service.

Now that you know what HARO link-building is, it is important to understand how the service works.

After all, you can’t fully utilize the service if you do not understand how the service fully works. Here are the steps you should take to ensure you understand how the service works.

‍1. Sign-Up - There are several HARO service sources out there that you can choose from. Once you choose a HARO service, you will need to sign up to get started. Most HARO services have different levels, including a free version of the service.

This might be an excellent way for you to start your attempts at using the service. However, there are levels that you can pay for that provide you with more information and higher-quality queries for you to sift through.

‍2. Sift Through Emails - Most HARO services have a schedule on when they send out emails. Some will do it two times a day, but most will send emails out three times a day at the same time.

Each request in the email will have a title and an outlet source, which will help you to narrow down which query you have the ability to most effectively answer.

‍Optional Step - Visit Ahrefs Site Explorer - If you are not sure which query sources are relevant or are classified as high-authority, you can quickly check their status on Ahrefs’ site explorer.

This will let you know if the source inquiring for information is a quality source or not. This is an optional step because you may recognize some of the sources on your own, which means you will not have to go to the site to verify them.

‍3. Make a Pitch - Once you find an inquiry you want to respond to, all you have to do is submit a response to their questions. The response that you provide should be detailed and thoughtful.

You do not want to just send a fast one or two-sentence answer to their questions. After all, these requests are coming from journalists and bloggers that are looking for quality sources for their articles.

Detail is key in giving your response. Plus, when you send your response, it is a good idea to include a short autobiography and a link to your website where the journalists and bloggers can go and see your other work.

‍4. Wait for Response - Once you have submitted your response, all you have to do is wait and see if the journalist or blogger likes your response and thinks that you will make a quality source for their article.

If they do, they will email you and inform you that you are going to list as one of their sources, and when their article is released, there will be a backlink to your website in that article. Simple. The whole process only requires you to check for new queries every day until you find the right one to respond to.

With this service, you can choose how much or how little you can respond to the service. You might only find one contact every three or four weeks, but it works so that you do not have to constantly outreach to find link-building opportunities. You can focus on other things and only take a few minutes to check for sources and then respond when you find one.

Why should I do HARO link building?

When you are considering link-building, the first thing that people tell you is that link-building can take a long time to show any benefits, but HARO tends to be one of the faster link-building services available if it is used properly.

This does not mean that you will get hundreds or even tens of links instantly from the service, but it does provide you with a way to reach journalists, bloggers, and other forms of established media quickly and with the information that they are searching for.

After all, a journalist’s story is only as good as their sources, and if you can prove to them that you are a high-quality source of information, you will receive excellent results with HARO services to help improve the number of backlinks to your website and content from reputable media outlets.

Plus, this type of service is not a time-consuming link-building method. You can do what you have to do and then move on to other important tasks that you have for your business and website that you wouldn’t otherwise have time for.

How do you pitch on HARO?

Pitching on HARO is quite simple. The main thing that you have to worry about is not providing a detailed enough response to the query that you want to answer.

Your pitch is everything, and if you are making a pitch to a well-established journalist or media source, the backlink that they will give to your website will greatly increase the relevance and authority that your website will have.

Just search through the queries that are sent from the HARO service and choose one that best fits your expertise and niche. Your pitch is the detailed information that you send to the person or organization that placed the query.

Being as detailed as possible is your best bet for being picked as a source for their article. After all, if you shoot to answer queries for well-established media outlets, you will have to contend with more people for a place to be one of their sources.

Therefore, to ensure that your inquiry is chosen, your pitch needs to be detailed and specific. Plus, it needs to be better than the other people that are also pitching for the same query.

After all, the journalist who placed the query will ultimately be the person that decides which sources they want to use for their article. So, be precise. Be professional. Be detailed. Provide the best and most up-to-date information possible.

How do I get HARO backlinks?

Getting HARO backlinks is a simple thing to do, but it can take a while, depending on the amount of time and detail you put into the pitches that you make through the service.

One of the best ways to get backlinks using a HARO service is by providing the best pitches possible to the journalists and other media organizations that post queries on the service for you to sift through.

One thing that is important to get backlinks to your website is providing quality information that will provide the journalists’ readers with quality and relevant information that they were looking for in the journalist’s article.

You want to make sure that the content on your website is written well and has substance and meaning in the niche that you are writing about.

Without this, journalists will more than likely go with another inquiry that they received on the same query that you responded to.

You always need to remember that you are most likely not the only person providing a pitch back to the journalist.

Therefore, you want to make sure that the information you provide in your pitch is superior to others. That way you will increase the chance that your pitch is chosen and not someone else's pitch.

How to succeed with HARO

For you to succeed with HARO, you do have to take the time to put in the work.

Although it doesn’t require constant work like other link-building services, you will still need to work diligently to get the results that you want.

Keeping this in mind, here are five important things that you should do to be successful when using HARO services.

However, you need to remember that there is still no guarantee that your pitches will be chosen.

The only thing you can do is follow these steps and put forth your best material for journalists to respond to so they will want to use you as a source for their article. Here are the five things that you should always do.

1. Respond quickly

Response time is one of the most important things that you need to have to be successful for HARO link-building services.

Journalists and bloggers may request a fast query time because of their deadlines.

Therefore, they do not always have time to wait for a long time for people to respond to their queries.

Due to this, it is imperative to respond quickly to any queries that you are interested in.

It will help journalists get the information they need, and it will help to ensure that they get your information before competitors.

Otherwise, they might use other people as a source even if the information you provide is better or at least better researched.

2. Look for relevant requests and topics

When using a HARO service, you have to remember that the journalists and bloggers that use it as well can be looking for any type of information.

You want to pay close attention to the topics and requests that you respond to. You should find various requests that are relevant to your niche and website. HARO will only work if you can provide information to the journalist or blogger that they can use.

Therefore, you need to make sure that your website does have relevant information for the queries that you are responding to because even if you respond to a query request with good and relevant information if your website does center around the same things in some form, the backlink might hurt you if they backlink to your website.

3. Be concise

The worst thing you can do when responding to a HARO query request is inconsistent.

You always want to be concise because journalists and bloggers that use HARO services are looking for reliable and relevant information for their articles. This also means that you want to be sure to answer with information that is concise with the topic.

For instance, if the query asks you about a specific product in a line or larger products, you want to keep your response to the query about the specific product in question.

Otherwise, your information might be considered vague, which could hurt your chances to be chosen as a source by the party that is seeking out the information for their article or blog.

4. Provide actionable and useful answers

No one wants to cite a source that doesn’t provide readers with some sort of answer either way. Therefore, it is imperative that you also provide actionable answers that they can use and can help their readers in whatever area that they are dealing with.

Plus, you never want to send information that a journalist cannot verify in some way unless the query is specifically asking for your opinion.

However, even then, if they are asking for your opinion, you need to be sure to include your autobiography that way they will have some reference for their article on your background experience.

For instance, someone seeking out actionable information and opinions about medicine wouldn’t want to take the advice and opinion of an engineer. It wouldn’t be actionable and the answer provided probably wouldn't be useful for their article or blog.

5. Never use filler content

Journalists and bloggers are not interested in filler content for their articles. They are looking for reputable sources of information to follow through on their piece.

Therefore, when you are pitching and responding to a query, you need to make sure that your response is not full of filler content that doesn’t have any real substance to the subject at hand.

This also goes for the content on your website. Even if your answer doesn’t feel like filler content, journalists may visit your website and check out the information you have there, as well.

If you have a lot of filler content on your website that doesn’t have any substance, then they are still more likely to choose someone else to cite a source, and this will cost you a viable backlink.

Best HARO link building services

Now that you understand how HARO works and the dos and don’ts to the service, here are just a few of the best HARO link-building services that I have found. They all get positive reviews from both sides of their service, and each one is a credible choice that you should consider. Here they are.

Joshternyak.com

Joshternyak.com is owned and run by me, Josh Ternyak. I am an SEO consultant, content marketer, and Webflow developer who has generated over $1 million in revenue for my clients.

I've been helping b2b and b2c companies with SEO and link-building services for over 2 years.

I've been featured in large online media outlets, like the Times of Israel, Jerusalem Post, and others. And my clients have been featured in USAToday, Reader’s Digest, Score, and others.

I work with companies from all industries and sizes, and I work directly with all of my clients because I enjoy getting to meet new people and helping them with their relevance and visibility online.

My prices vary depending on the services I provide, and I'll go over all of this with you in our consultation call.

If you're looking for a HARO link building expert who can help you grow your website's organic traffic, schedule a strategy session today.

Linkbuilder.io

Linkbuilder.io was launched back in 2016, and they provide a variety of link-building services for their clients to choose from. They also are an excellent source for people who are new to link-building. They have some of the top link-building strategists working for them, as well.

Linkbuilder.io provides direct pricing for their services, which can help when you need to plan out your budget for link-building and other SEO and marketing campaigns. This is just one of the many ways that they are one of the best HARO link-building service providers.

They provide a rigorous internal training program for all of their specialists, but they encourage their employees to branch out and learn as much as they can about new strategies and new skills that will help them to keep on top of their game for their clients.

Haro.guru

HARO.guru is a revolutionary HARO link-building service, and they have spent their time building their reputation with journalists and bloggers for offering and providing quality sources and opportunities to make contact with future sources. With other HARO services, you might get charged for every link that you get from the service.

However, at HARO.guru, their pricing is a bit different. Their linking opportunities can lead to both dofollow and nofollow links, but most of the time, they find that their links do tend to be dofollow, which are excellent ways of getting traffic to your website.

On top of that, they realize that the journalist, blogger, or media outlet might link to your source in multiple areas. However, unlike other services, HARO.guru only charges its clients for the initial link that it generates. If any other links come from that link, they do not charge their clients for the additional links.

Loganix.com

Loganix.com has three different office locations where they can provide their clients with excellent service. They have several link-building service options, including HARO. Depending on the clients' needs, they work with them to make sources and contacts in the media world.

One thing that sets them apart from other companies is the amount of detail that they put into their services. Plus, they care about the reputation of their clients, and they strive to help their websites and campaigns look polished and professional to help make them more profitable for their clients.

They have been providing their services to clients for over 10 years, and currently, they have had over 35,000 links placed and over 2 million citations built, which is impressive for a company of their size.

Haro-seo.com

Haro-seo.com has been providing HARO link-building services for its clients for over five years. Although they are one of the newer companies providing this type of service, they have proven that their methods are effective and confident. Their pitching process focuses on topics that are related to HR, business, and marketing.

By using their methods, they average getting 3 to 7 links in approximately 3.5 months. However, they do guarantee the placement of links, but they do not always guarantee the timing that they will be placed. This is because the journalists and bloggers ultimately have the last say in which links they do or do not use.

It is important to note that although their HARO SEO service could lead to inclusions in major publications, they admit that this is a rare occurrence, and they do not guarantee this sort of thing for their clients. However, they do tell their clients to expect excellent backlinks but not media coverage.

JulianGoldie.com

JulianGoldie.com has over five years of experience in building quality backlinks for SEO for their clients, and to date, they have worked with hundreds of clients to improve and grow the visibility of their websites with the use of SEO. Unlike other companies, JulianGoldie.com goes through and shows that they are not perfect.

They show the things that they originally did, and they help clients to avoid those mistakes by helping them with their HARO service. They have currently assisted companies in various industries in building their backlinks, and they have even secured some from top media outlets.

They do not guarantee these results, but they have proven that their methods work in general for gaining backlinks that help the visibility of their client's websites in their industries.

Inbeat.agency

Inbeat.agency is a digital marketing firm that helps its clients with creating different types of SEO content, including HARO service links. Each of their employees has years of experience in different link-building strategies.

They have offices in different parts of the world, and they use their HARO service to connect their clients with journalists and bloggers who need help with relevant sources of information.

HAROSEO.co

HAROSEO.co is a company that is based out of New Zealand. They started up their company after seeing how HARO services can work to help companies get backlinks easier and more consistently than other types of link-building services.

Unlike other HARO services, HAROSEO.co understands that people want dofollow links to help increase the visibility of their websites. Therefore, they do not charge for nofollow links, which is positive in the eyes of most of their clients.

Who uses HARO?

HARO has become increasingly popular over the past couple of years in all industries, and media outlets have come to rely on the sources that they find through using HARO services, as well.

People who want to establish backlinks for their business but do not have the time to devote to traditional back-linking strategies have come to use HARO services.

One of the best things about HARO services is that they can be used by literally anyone that is looking to establish backlinks to their website.

Each HARO service is slightly different, but they all have the same principles. They are designed to help reporters, journalists, and bloggers find sources for their content that would otherwise not be obtainable.

Regular people, small-time bloggers, and major media outlets can all benefit from HARO services, and therefore, it has become increasingly popular for just about anyone to use that wants to increase the visibility of their website without having to devote all of their time to generate backlinks to their website.

What is the best way to use HARO?

Whenever you decide to use a HARO service, it is important to remember that HARO services are based on SEO and not Public relations. If you are wanting exposure from a PR standpoint, HARO services are not the way to go.

However, if you want to build backlinks to your website, the HARO service is one of the best ways for you to accomplish this.

The best way to utilize this service is by making sure that each pitch you make in response to a query is quickly submitted and is as detailed as possible.

This is the best way to get those looking for the information to choose you and a source over other people submitting pitches.

If they like your response, it could lead to multiple backlinks, and it could open up a form of communication for future backlinks from the same journalist or blogger.

However, it is important to know that although some larger media platforms use HARO, that doesn’t mean that you are guaranteed these sorts of backlinks, any relevant backlink will help increase your website’s visibility.

How many people use HARO?

The number of people using a HARO service increases every day. You have to realize it isn’t just the people searching for backlinks that are using the HARO service.

It also includes the journalists, reporters, and bloggers that are searching for reputable sources for their articles and pieces.

Every day the number of people who are using HARO services grows, and it is becoming one of the most popular ways for companies to get backlinks to their website.

What is a HARO pitch?

A HARO pitch is the response that you provide to questions posed by a reporter or journalist looking for information. It is the contact that you make with them.

It is called a pitch because you are pitching your information to the journalist in hopes of them liking your information and citing you as a source for their article, which will provide a backlink to your website.

This backlink could be a dofollow or nofollow link, depending on the journalist and how they link you as a source in their piece.