Close your eyes and imagine it: Your new software featured on the TechCrunch blog.

Your recipe book reviewed by Ree Drummond on The Pioneer Woman.

Your language learning app recommended by Benny the Irish Polyglot on Fluent in 3 Months.

Wouldn’t you like to have your business positively reviewed by one of the most influential bloggers in the world?

Of course, it would be great because your business would definitely benefit from the exposure.

For example, you can dramatically improve your search engine rankings by getting a lot of direct traffic from a popular website—if a blogger from that site agrees to give you links or reviews.

Also, your site will get significant exposure on social media networks if you get some assistance from a well-known blogger.

And if backlinks could kill, your competitors’ sites would be dead.

Backlinks from popular bloggers are incredible for SEO and keyword rankings.

To make the long story short, getting coverage from popular bloggers is a great thing for businesses.

So let’s learn how to make it happen.

Tips for Finding the Right Bloggers

Clearly, asking just any old blogger for backlinks and reviews isn’t a good idea. You have to start with strategic blogger outreach instead of reaching out to every blogger you find on the net.

Here are the things to remember:

• Look for bloggers who specialize in product reviews

• Look for bloggers who write best-of lists

• Look for bloggers who have ties to your industry

• Look for bloggers with a large readership and a strong social following (you can use tools like BirdSong Analytics and Klear for influencer search).

• Look for bloggers whose sites boast strong SEO metrics (review their site with the Monitor Backlinks Free Backlink Checker first, to make sure they have enough authority to be worth your time.)

Now it’s time to make sure you approach a blogger in a way that will get your backlinks and reviews you want.

How to Get Backlinks from Bloggers: 7 Tips for Linkbuilding Outreach That Works

1. Spamming Is a Bad Idea

If you’ve sent out one or two outreach messages already and haven’t heard back, then one of three things probably happened:

• you didn’t impress the blogger

• the blogger isn’t interested in this type of collaboration

• the blogger ignored your message, or you went straight to the spam box

…so, just forget about it. Sending them more follow-ups or the same offer in a duplicate email is a total waste of time.

Besides, it’s really annoying.

The same rule applies to sending mass emails. If someone didn’t provide an answer for a few days, it’s a clear signal that they’re not interested.

If you keep on spamming them, you’ll create an image of a needy or “salesy” person who likes to waste the time of others.

Now, you can work to limit how often this non-response situation happens in the first place.

2. Make Your Message Personalized

Once your list of potential partners is done, it’s time to begin outreach effort.

A personalized email is a much better idea than a mass email.

Every person on your outreach list should be addressed in a unique way in order to increase the chances of getting a positive answer from them.

Here’s what you should do:

• Don’t include a lot of details in the first email. Too many details will distract the reader right away. Just try to get a feel for whether or not they’d be open to a certain type of collaboration.

• Don’t use a template for each blogger. Make sure to call everyone by their name and mention their blog by name. Show that you’ve seen their work.

• Compliment the blogger’s site and work. People love compliments, right? However, this doesn’t mean that you need to say things like “OMG your blog is the best ever.” No one is going to fall for that. Instead, comment on one of their recent posts and say specifically how it was useful for you.

• Don’t be pushy if a follow-up is needed. Just one friendly follow-up message is needed after you’ve reached out the first time—no spamming, remember?

3. Send Samples of your Products

Let’s make one thing very clear: Offering bribes is totally wrong and I’m not encouraging you to do that.

What I’m trying to say here is that you should offer a freebie to a blogger you want to work with because them trying it out personally may increase your chances of getting good coverage.

Some bloggers don’t review anything before they actually try it, either, and this makes a perfect sense. To accurately review a product, they need to experience it.

So, make sure the freebie never comes off as a bribe, but rather as a helpful resource for the review.

You can even consider making a more indirect request—rather than asking them to write a review or share it with their audience, you might ask for their honest feedback on your product.

4. Consider Connecting on a Personal Level

This one actually falls into the personalization category but deserves more attention. Popular bloggers get a lot of emails that look like templates with their names slapped on them.

Of course, emails like this ruin the first impression, so most bloggers don’t even bother with replying.

“If you want a blogger to read your message to the end, make sure it doesn’t sound like a template,” says Phoebe Bledsoe, a marketer from ProWriting. “Make it personable.”

For example, instead of repeating the name of your brand, focus on them and let them know you’ve taken the time to read their blog and appreciate their work:

Hey,

I wanted to get in touch with you because I’ve been reading your blog for a while now, and I find your video tutorials on social media marketing very helpful. I applied the technique from the last tutorial and increased the viewership of my new posts by 7 percent.

One of the most important things to remember here is that you shouldn’t pitch your product or service first.

You don’t want to sound all “salesy,” right? Remember that bloggers stay away from these people.

So, connect with the blogger you want to work with on social media or read their blog regularly to build a relationship that leads to a mutually-beneficial partnership.

5. Try to Put Yourself into the Mindset of a Blogger

An experienced blogger realizes that you need them more than they need you. So, they may not respond very quickly regardless of how attractive your offer is.

Be patient: Popular bloggers with a strong following suffer from tremendous information overload and will need some time to find and read your message. Give them more than a day before following up—several days or a week at the absolute earliest.

A new blogger would be flattered to receive a review request from you. They don’t have a lot of viewership, so they’re much easier to get publicity from. You can follow up with them after a couple of days if they haven’t gotten back to you.

Regardless of whether you address a new or a veteran blogger, make sure that you offer publicity (if you can provide it). Bloggers always appreciate a good audience.

Yeah, this may sound a bit ironic because you’re looking for publicity yourself, but if you have a massive Twitter following, a huge newsletter subscriber list or are planning to buy some advertising to disseminate the review produced by the chosen blogger, mention this in your pitch email.

6. Describe Your Product Briefly

Getting bogged down in details while describing your product is a bad idea.

Just write several sentences! For example, identify your product/service, let the blogger know that it really works and then show them that other people have benefitted from it.

Also, promise to send some additional or free resources that come with your product/service.

For example, if you’re offering a review of an email automation tool, let the blogger know that you can send email templates and other helpful resources.

This way, you’re showing that you genuinely want to help the blogger’s audience.

7. Be Clear About What You Want Them to Do

As was briefly mentioned above, bloggers, especially well-known ones, are suffering from information overload. So, sending them an outreach email that leaves them with a feeling “Okay… and?” is a very bad idea.

Be absolutely crystal clear about what you want from them. You can make a distinct call-to-action that outlines your request along with the mutual benefit of the partnership.

For example, don’t write something like “I want to write a guest post on your blog.”

Tell them about your success with writing guest posts on other blogs (mention some specifics like readership increase) and let them know that you’d like to do something similar for the audience of that blogger.

A message like that would be much more interesting for them.

Go Find That Perfect Blogger!

Now it’s your turn.

You have a pretty straightforward framework you can apply to your outreach process.

Hopefully, it’ll help you to get a great coverage by excellent bloggers with a large readership.

And once you’ve begun reaching out to bloggers for backlinks, be sure to stay on top of your flourishing backlink profile with Monitor Backlinks.

It’s the perfect way to confirm that the bloggers have delivered, as well as keep track of your own site’s keyword rankings and key SEO metrics.