Yesterday evening, I attended the April 2019 Utah DMC conference, a monthly event for learning and networking among Utah marketing professionals. This month’s lineup featured Elli Bishop and Bill Slawski, two people I really could not miss the chance to hear from. Elli, because she has been a good friend and teammate of mine at Clearlink, and Bill, because his research has added valuable insights for marketers seeking to peer into the mystery box that is Google’s algorithms. In fact, Bill’s persistent blogging work on SEO by the Sea has been inspirational to me as I considered starting my blog. I’ll add more insights from Bill’s presentation in Part Two.
Intro to Elli
It’s fair to say that Elli knows a thing or two about finding, hiring, and training Outreach Specialists. As Clearlink’s Director of Earned Media, Elli has been hiring and training Clearlink’s Outreach team since about as long as I’ve known her.
My own work with Elli began in 2014 when I had the pleasure of compiling and analyzing our research for SafeWise.com’s Safest Cities in America publications. Elli’s outreach for SafeWise.com earned our team anywhere from tens to hundreds of editorial-quality links per month, each month since the publication began. Besides being the backbone of SafeWise.com, Elli’s work shaped Clearlink’s entire outreach program.
I won’t be able to do a full recap of Elli’s presentation, so she has graciously allowed me to share her full slide deck here.
1. Bringing your link building efforts in house is exponentially stronger than outsourcing
Okay, I already knew this one but I can’t stress it enough. Quality links are still one of the top ranking factors in 2019. But earning high numbers of quality backlinks is hard. Really hard.
Sure, you can pay an outside agency to handle this work. Most companies still do. For businesses that can’t afford to hire in-house, or that lack the expertise to build an outreach team, outsourcing is usually the only option. At best, you might receive a moderate amount of good quality links. At worst, you could end up with a stockpile of low-quality links that places your site in jeopardy of being penalized.
Bringing outreach efforts in-house means greater quality control and greater earning potential for high-quantities of links. It does this by affording your outreach personnel the ability to collaborate directly with team members, stay in tune with the business and website, and utilize a wider array of link acquisition strategies beyond those that an outsourced company would utilize.
Much more could be said here, but suffice it to say that powerful campaigns like SafeWise’s Safest Cities in America would have been inconceivable for 99% of outsource agencies.
2. Recruiting will mostly be green
Of the 325 job candidates Elli has interviewed, she has hired 40 Outreach Specialists and only one with previous outreach experience.
Companies building in-house outreach teams don’t have a large talent pool to choose from so the most common path will be to hire green, look for the right qualities, and figure out how to train and support new employees. Of course, it really helps to start with an in-house professional like Elli.
3. Look for the right traits
Because most companies will need to hire green candidates, basing your hiring decisions on traits, rather than experience will be essential. Elli looks for the following traits in her candidates, and they must have at least four if they don’t have all of them.
• Resilient
• Confident
• Persistent
• Competitive
• Persuasive writer
• Top-notch researcher
• Creative problem-solver
• Strong relationship-builder
4. SEOs do not look at outreach through the right lens
At one point, Elli asked the SEOs in the audience to raise their hands. Then, she asked us to keep our hands raised if we enjoy doing outreach.
Most hands went down.
As an SEO who started out in the guest-posting world, I knew Elli was right on this. As much as I value and appreciate our incredible outreach specialists, SEOs rarely have the right perspective or the time to consistently perform high-quality outreach on our own. When hiring an outreach specialist, Elli recommends people with the following backgrounds: Editor, Reporter/Journalist, Freelance Writer, Product Sales Rep, Marketing Copywriter, News Producer, Head of News Assignment Desk, PR Specialist.
5. Keep your Outreach team engaged and excited
Again, outreach is really difficult. Like sales, outreach can be tedious, repetitive, and rejection emails will take a toll on people.
Elli recommends some of the following ideas to help her team stay engaged and motivated.
• Hold competitions, either on a team-level or an individual level.
• Set stretch goals.
• Create a “link culture” within the organization.
• Get the team to celebrate links.
Conclusion
For anyone attempting to implement pro-level outreach in an organization that can afford to hire and train internally, do it. The rewards will pay exponentially large dividends compared to outsourced link building. If you can’t find strong, experienced outreach specialists, be prepared to look for and train people who possess the smarts, mettle, and relationship-building skills to lean into their work and grow your link profile. And last but not least, do as much as you can to create a “link culture” in your organization so that all team members understand the value of links and can positively support your in-house outreach initiatives.
Lastly, for SMBs and organizations that cannot perform in-house outreach due to budget constraints or lack of internal expertise, this doesn’t mean that outsourcing your link building campaigns is a bad idea, or that other link acquisition methods will be ineffective. You can still drive effective results without outsourced services, but it’s crucial to only work with reputable link builders that will deliver quality links at a fair price. Ensuring the quality of these services is tricky. If you’re not sure whether or not you are actually getting good link building services, I recommend finding an SEO consultant who can audit your link profile and provide you with an independent analysis.