| 🎯 What’s the goal? Acquire quality backlinks through reaching out to Resource Pages | ⚠️ Why does it matter? To improve the authority of your domain. |
| 🏁 What’s the result? Earn high-quality backlinks to your site.. | ⌚ When do you do this? Every time you want to build links to your site. |
| ✅ Any special requirements? Perform your Keyword Research and having a clear content strategy prepared is a must. | 🙋♂️Who should do it? Your SEO Team (In-House or VA) |
👉 Where this is done: In your browser, and using spreadsheet to stay organized
⏳ How long will this take? about 5-15 hours
Let’s start our research and link-building!
Environment setup:
- Access to MS Excel, Google Sheets or any other similar tool.
- A lot of patience.
Preparing to find Resource Pages
First of all, you should have something worthy of a link. No matter if it is a blog post, tool or another informational resource. It can also be your entire homepage – all depending on its value. If your resource (blog post, page, etc) is valuable, it is worthy of a link.
Work on a good visual side of your content
Your site/blog should look valuable. Focus on attention to details such as social media icons, “clean” theme, “About Us”, “Contact” pages etc. Of course, you should also keep your content at high quality so it will be recognized by audiences and potential contacts as valuable and relevant. Think of it as a presentation for potential page owners that will decide if your link should be featured.
Keep your content up-to-date
Keep your content up-to-date so you will avoid situations when in future, someone will go to your page following the link and he or she will encounter outdated information.
Organize your resource page findings
Before you start, you should prepare a worksheet that will help you organise your findings. The worksheet should be simple and clean so you will be able to easily analyze your list.
For the task, we prepared a simple worksheet template.
URL – this is where you will put the URL to the Resource Page.
1st Name/Last Name – here you should put the name of the person to outreach.
Contact Form – if this will be the only method you will find to contact the desired site.
E-mail address – E-mail address of the desired site admin/owner etc.
Contacted – Just in case you can keep track of the people you will reach.
Finally, we divide our worksheet into three spreadsheets.
By doing that you can divide your findings into categories. It will help you organize your work and you will decide if you should propose a link to your entire site, tool or a particular post.
The 1st and fundamental step of reaching out with resource links is of course potential Resource Pages. The amount of methods to find those blogs is huge.
We will cover those that we find the most attractive.
Find the relevant Resource Pages using Google Search
For this method, you should already have a list of your Keywords.
Check out our SOP how to perform a Keyword Research.
This is the easiest way to find Resource Pages but unfortunately with a high chance of finding low-quality sites. You should analyze and check all pages you will find that way.
The procedure is very easy. Prepare a list of your Keywords and using Google Search look for:
“[your keyword]” + “resources”
“[your keyword]” + “links”
Other ideas include a combination with “valuable links”, “resource”.
For example, if you want to build a backlink to your site which contains healthy food recipes one of your keywords should be the phrase: “Food recipes”, then your search should look like this:
You should also try to search using formulas with symbols like:
By doing so, you will find extra results.
As a result, we found some sites that look promising.
Visit those sites and check if they are of high quality.
Then put URLs of those sites into your Worksheet.
The search result should bring you sites that already have Resource Pages.
So if you find valuable sites, add them to your Worksheet.
At the end of this SOP, we will cover some methods on
how to find contact information to admins/ owners and influencers.
Find the relevant Resource Pages using Google Search Operators
Google search operators are special characters and commands (sometimes called “advanced operators”) that extend the capabilities of regular text searches. They’re effectively advanced search modifiers that allow you to pull a more specific set of results from Google.
We will go on with an example from before that we are going to find Resource Pages for “our” food recipes.
So in our case, we will search for: “recipes intitle:resources inurl:resources.html”.
So we will “tell” Google that we want to find about recipes but in sites title, there should be “resources” and in the URL of the page, there should be “resources” to. And below are our results.
As you can see we found some sites that we should target as well – and they are definitely Resource Pages (so you can add them to your worksheet).
You should try to search with different operators and keywords.
Here are some examples – of course, remember to replace our keyword (recipes) with your own:
- “recipes intitle:resources inurl:links.html”
- “recipes intitle:links inurl: resources.html”
- “recipes inurl:.com/resources”
- “recipes inurl:resources intitle:resources”
Try to expand your findings by slightly changing the keyword (of course while still using your relevant keywords)
REMEMBER: Don’t go too specific with “keyword”. You may struggle to find results when you put “recipe for healthy spaghetti” instead of “recipes spaghetti”.
If you want to try more Google Search Operators check this article by MOZ.
Remember to put all URLs you found in your Worksheet.
Reviewing / Analyzing your findings
Now it is time for you to judge all pages you found. Take some time to sort your findings from the most valuable pages to less valuable. Remember that this evaluation should be objective. Analyze with caution and attention to details.
While you are analyzing focus on:
- Relevancy: Is your site a good fit for the Resource Page owner? (And vice versa).
- Types of link: Do other links on the page link to products, websites, or is it all books and scientific journals? Check if the Resource Page will fit you.
- Page Type: Decide which page of your site ( or your entire site ) will be a good addition to a targeted site.
- Special offers: Can you offer users a short free trial or a marginal discount to ensure you get featured? Think of it as an extra bonus you can offer to the site owner so he/she can offer something for their audiences.
- Overall Site Visual layer and credibility: Objectively judge visual layer of the page. Is it looking good and trustworthy? Think of it as an add. Is it attractive?
Once you have decided which page you want to target, move to the next step.
Searching for contact information
Arm yourself with patience. Trying to reach someone is no easy task.
Finding contact email addresses manually
The most obvious method while looking for someone’s email address is checking the target site for the contact.
In most cases, this will redirect you to a contact form that will allow you to reach someone from the site’s managers. You should save the link to that contact form on your worksheet – this will be your last resort if other methods will fail.
Check the “about”/”about us” page on each site. Those pages can contain contact information as well as Name of the founder/owner of the website. This will allow you to add more information to your worksheet.
Check all the social media links. They are the source of potential contact information. Ultimately you can use them while using methods discussed in the next parts of this SOP.
Finding contact email addresses using RocketReach
Rocketreach is a paid service (with 5 free searches each month) that will allow you to find contact emails based on the social media profiles. If the previous step leaves you with only a contact form but you manage to find the owner/admin profile in social media, you should consider using this method.
Creating Rocketreach account
- Go to RocketReach site.
- Click on the “Sign Up” at the upper right corner.
- You can either fill in with your credentials and click on “create account” or sign up using Google or Facebook account.
RocketReach will occasionally ask you for your phone number to send you an activation code. This is a security measure to prevent people from exploiting free trials.
- Once you create your account, move to the next step.
Using Rocketreach
- Once you log in to your account you should see a search bar at the top.
Simply put a social media link to the desired person’s page, name of the company/page and hit “Search” so you can check the results and find the one you are looking for.
In our opinion, the best use of Rocketreach is to search with social media accounts URL.
You should find the correct person directly, so we will put an exemplary LinkedIn profile URL. This method works best if you manage to find the name of the owner or administrator of the targeted site while searching for it in “about us” and “contact” pages.
- Fill in the search box with the social media account URL and click on “Search”.
- Review search results by checking “Name” and “Company”. Then click on “Get Contact”.
- Contact email addresses will appear In the place of the “Get Contact” button.
You should copy it and add it to your worksheet.
In some cases Rocketreach will fail to deliver 100% accurate information – in that case, no credits will be charged and you will be notified that the email address can be wrong.
Finding contact email addresses using ContactOut Chrome Extension
For this method, you should install the Contact Out Chrome extension in your browser. This method is also used only to get contact information from LinkedIn profiles.
Installing Contactout Chrome extension
- Go to Chrome Web Store.
- Highlight “Extensions” on the left side of the screen.
- Type “contactout” into the search box.
- You should see the ContactOut extension by contactout.com.
- Click on it.
- Then click on “Add to Chrome”.
- Select “Add extension” in the pop-up window.
- Now you should see your Contactout extension visible in the upper right corner of Google Chrome web browser.
- Click on the “Contactout” icon and choose “Register”.
- You can choose to sing in using Google or Outlook account (1), or you can enter your work email address and create a password (2). Then click on “Register”.
Using Contactout Chrome extension
- Using Contact Out is straightforward. When you find a person that you want to reach on LinkedIn simply click at the “Contactout icon” in your Chrome extension bar.
- Contact Out will bring you the result of mail searching for that particular account.
Click on “show”.
- And there you will see your desired email address. Copy it to your worksheet.
Reaching out to Admins/Owners/Editors/Bloggers
You do all that hard work that allows you to collect all contact information you need.
Now is the time for the most important step. You should write to people from your list. You should take some time to compose a good template that will work in most cases.
For each page, you should also focus on that page’s content and show that your content will be valuable for the site and will fit in the Resource Page.
Here is a simple email template that you can edit for any situation:
Hi [Name],
[Your Comment] – This part will help you get noticed by the audience of your email. It is a good idea to write about something related to the direct page niche.
I’m writing to you because I’m interested in contributing to your resource page.
Based on your content, I feel that your site will grow in value with adding my link:
[IPut your link with a brief description of a tool/page etc] ALSO TELL WHERE THE LINK SHOULD GO IF TARGETED [AGE HAS DIFFERENT CATEGORIES – Make the other person’s life easier by telling them precisely where you think it makes the most sense to add your link. This isn’t being pushy or condescending; it’s helpful
[Feel free to add some more ideas in one email (BUT NOT TO MUCH)]
[Put a link to a post on your page that you find related to the target audience and tell that is an example of your content.] – AS AN EXTRA INFORMATION, IF YOU FIND THAT IT IS CORRESPONDING WITH TARGET SITE.
Do you think these links would be a good fit?/Do you like these tools/links etc?
Do you think these links will attract more readers?/ETC…
I can also…(write about any “coupon”/discount you can offer for the readers of the targeted site – Site owners always like to give something for their readers so a discount or special offer can be crucial).
ULTIMATELY YOU CAN CHECK LINKS ALREADY FEATURED ON THE RESOURCE PAGE AND REPORT THAT IF THEY ARE BROKEN – This will help you get the sympathy of the reader and you will help so you might be featured in return – a win-win situation.
Best Wishes,
[Your name]
How to do proper outreach & cold email deserves their own SOP.
To dig further on best practices, please check these Blog Posts:
High-Converting Cold Email Template by Lemlist
Cold Email Guide from A to Z by Lemlist
26 Cold Email Example Broken Down by Dmitry Dragilev
To dig further on Link Building with Resources Pages, please check these:
Resource Page Link Building: The Only Guide You Need by Joshua Hardwick
Resource Page Link Building Step By Step by Matthew Woodward
Google Search Operator by MOZ
How to Build Unique Backlinks With Resource Page Link Building by Sam Oh (YouTube)
Resource Page Link Building + Real Examples (Quick How-to) by Links Hero (YouTube)
Finally, the secret weapon of any decent outreach is using the power of follow-up using tools like Lemlist or Snov.io to make an “email drip campaign”, that will be the topic of our next SOP.
Now you are ready to be featured in some Resource Pages
Building your authority is one of the most important ranking factors.
Remember to be patient and careful with your search.
