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Outreaching to webmasters who have mentioned your brand on their website but not linked to it is a simple but effective white hat SEO technique, but what do you need to consider when claiming this link? Here are four things you should be addressing when performing this process.
Your search
The first thing you need to consider is how you are going to search and what you are going to search for to find these unlinked brand mentions.
A great tool to use in order to help you with this is BuzzSumo, as one of the things it allows you to monitor is brand mentions, therefore it means it will also find exactly what you should be looking for — content that contains a mention of your brand name within it. You can set up BuzzSumo alerts that go straight to your inbox to tell you everytime, when and where your brand has been mentioned on a page.
If you would prefer not to use BuzzSumo, you can use advanced search commands within Google search and then a SERP tool such as the MozBar to download a spreadsheet of the URL’s that were found for brand mentions. RankTank (a free tool) can then be used to pick out the links that are and are not linked.
Where to collect this data
Once you have this data the second aspect you need to consider is where you can store it to utilise it for your outreach.
BuzzStream allows you to create a prospecting list from the links Buzzsumo has found and, by selecting the ones you would like to outreach to, you can save them to a project database within BuzzStream. This database will then give you the information you need for the outreach email, including contact details, website statistics and social metrics.
If you have chosen to use RankTank to find your links you will already have the links in a spreadsheet, however you will need to gather the other information you need for the outreach email yourself and amend the spreadsheet.
Who you should contact
When choosing which webmasters to contact from this database you should first look at the domain authority (DA) of the website that the mention is on.
Start by looking at the site’s with the highest DA first — ideally 30 or above — and work backwards, although this isn’t the only metric you should be considering. The relevance of the website to what you do is also very important, as this will have a large bearing on the impact the link will have on your search rankings.
How you should contact
Now you know who you should contact you need to think about how best to go about it.
BuzzStream can create a template that you can use specifically to address unlinked brand mentions, however make sure it is a general outline so there are parts you can change to allow for personalisation. This involves using the data collected by BuzzStream to include the webmaster’s name and their website name within the email so that the outreach email appears to be tailored.
Have you had much success with trying to reclaim unlinked brand mentions? If so, which strategies do you employ? Let us know in the comments or drop us a line on Twitter.
Want to find out more tricks for boosting your organic search rankings? Check out our free eBook, the Beginner's Guide to On-page Optimisation.
