There’s hardly any link-building strategy that can beat the effectiveness of using HARO.
The HARO platform connects users with reporters of established news outlets who need information about a certain topic to complete their stories.
If you help them by sharing your industry knowledge and expertise, you can easily acquire high-authority backlinks and envying press coverage for your business.
That’s why we’ve put together this guide — to train you on how to use HARO for generating backlinks.
Let’s dive into it!
Frequently Asked Questions
What is HARO and How Does It Work?
HARO is a service that connects reporters who want to collect information about a particular topic with sources who are willing to share that information.
Both sources as well as reporters create accounts on HARO’s website, and when a reporter posts a query seeking information about any particular topic, all HARO sources who want to share information on that topic are notified of the query in their email.
From there they can contact the reporter with their information, and if the reporter found their pitch valuable he/she can use it in their content piece.
Why is HARO Important?
HARO can be among the best link-building platforms for any website owner looking to achieve any of the following objectives:
-Establishing their credibility in the industry
-Acquiring high-quality backlinks
-Building relationships with journalists/reporters for more media coverage in the future.
What You’ll Need to Use HARO to Get Backlinks?
You’ll need the following 3 things to start using HARO to get media coverage and backlinks:
- A HARO account
- An email address to receive the queries of reporters
- Expertise in your industry/niche.
Once you have these 3 things, you can start using HARO to your advantage.
How to Use HARO to Get Media Coverage & Backlinks
It all boils down to a simple 5-step process explained below:
Step 1: Read the Rules
Navigate to the official website of HARO.
The homepage would look something like this:
Click the “I’m A Source” button.
On the next screen, you’ll be shown some rules that are meant to be followed by all Sources in their dealings with reporters using HARO.
Not following them may get your account banned, so you should take some time to read the rules before you sign up for the service and start using it.
Once you’re done with that, you’re good to go.
Step 2: Sign Up for HARO
Click on the “Sign up” button in the top right corner of the navigation bar.
It should bring you to a page like this:
When you scroll down, you’ll see a form like the one shown below:
Sign-up by providing your personal information and email address.
Upon successful submission of your information, an account will be created and you’ll see the success message shown below:
Now go to your email inbox and verify the email address you used to create the account.
You should receive an email from HARO that confirms you’ve been signed up, along with a link you need to click for verifying your email address.
Click on it to verify your email address.
Your account is now active.
You should see a message like the one below:
Step 3: Set Up Your Profile
Now that you’re signed up with HARO, it’s time to set up your profile so you can start receiving queries in your mailbox.
Click on the “Update and add to your Account Details” link on the account activation page that’s open on your screen.
This will bring you to your “My Account” page where you can add or update your personal information, contact information, and preferences.
This is what the page looks like:
Add your name and other information (i.e. company name, Title, timezone, country, etc.) to create a complete profile.
Then scroll down a bit to the ‘HARO Preferences’ section, which looks something like this:
In this section, check the checkboxes of all those topics for which you want to receive the queries of reporters in your mailbox.
The greyed-out topics mean that you can subscribe to them, but at the moment not enough queries are available for them so you’ll receive the queries related to them sometime later.
Once you’ve selected your preferred topics, hit “Save and Update”.
Step 4: Start Responding to Queries
Now you’ll start receiving queries from reporters in your email.
If you subscribed to multiple topics while setting up your HARO preferences, you’ll receive multiple emails every day.
You can identify emails for each topic from the subject line.
Respond quickly, but don’t respond too quickly.
Take time to thoroughly read the information requested by the journalist before responding.
This will help you avoid any mistakes in your pitch.
How To Format Your Pitch
- Be clear and concise. Just answer the reporter’s questions in a way that directly responds to their request without making things complicated.
- Keep in mind that you’re not the only person responding to a HARO request. Every reporter receives hundreds of responses, so you need to make sure that your reply stands out. Provide a unique take wherever possible that can help you stand out from the crowd.
- Never request an interview from the reporter, or say something like “Contact me for more info”. If they feel the need to do so, they’ll do it on their own.
- Don’t ever include attachments in your responses — they’re automatically stripped of the responses by HARO’s systems.
- Avoid fancy formatting.
- Try to finish it in 2-3 paragraphs at most.
How To Submit Your Pitch
Once you have drafted your pitch, it’s time to submit it.
To do so, log in to your HARO account and navigate to My Pitches >> Submit A New Pitch.
Once you land on the Submit A New Pitch page, enter the email address of the reporter and your pitch details in respective boxes.
Enter an attention-grabbing headline, and hit the Submit button to submit your pitch.
Step 5: Set Up Alerts to Monitor Your Responses
Once you’ve submitted your pitch, it’s time to keep an eye on whether your response was used or not.
Because you won’t necessarily be notified by the reporter or HARO even if your response is used.
In such a situation, Google Alerts can come extremely handy.
Set up a Google Alert about a unique part of your pitch to the reporter (i.e. your name, your company’s name, or something else that was part of your pitch).
For greater accuracy, you can also include the name of the publication for which the reporter was working.
When an article with your pitch will go live, you’ll instantly get a Google Alert in your email inbox notifying you of the same.
Once you receive the alert, you can start promoting the post through your social media or other means.
Similar Tutorials to Check Out
- How to Improve SEO: This tutorial explains how can you improve your SEO to start ranking in Google’s search results. So while link building through HARO can improve your backlink profile and off-page SEO, the steps given in this tutorial can be used to boost your on-page SEO.
- How to Rank on Google: This tutorial explains in further detail how can you rank in Google for the keywords of your choice.
- How to Analyze Search Competition: This tutorial can help you analyze your competition in Google search results, and learn from their strategies to boost your rankings.
Wrapping Up
If you want to establish yourself as a respected authority in your industry, media coverage is extremely important.
HARO makes link outreach simple and more straightforward for you than having to navigate through the maze of expensive PR.
That’s why it’s important to know about this tool, and how to use it.
We hope we explained the whole process of using HARO to get backlinks and media coverage in an easy-to-understand manner.
Now we look forward to your feedback about the same — share your thoughts in the comments, and let us know how you plan to use HARO for your business.
All the best!
