Use AI To Improve Your SEO
With Reverse Outreach
One of the most difficult things for website owners to master is the ability to secure coveted backlinks from authority sites that point to them as a helpful resource. Among many of the search engine optimization (SEO) strategies, backlinks is one of the things you only have so much control over.
You can try to ask for backlinks, and be strategic in positioning yourself as an authority figure, but it’s still up to the other site owner to decide whether or not they want to link to your domain.
You can do as much on page SEO as possible to help you rank your content well for keywords and phrases that appeal to consumers. But you can also use a strategy called reverse outreach that allows you to rank high for long tail keywords that are specifically of interest to top bloggers and journalists from mainstream publications (both online and off).
The kind of content that you’ll be creating for this purpose is very specific and easy to compile. It’s also a mutually beneficial between your site and the one that’s linking to you, so they’re as eager to link to you as you are to get that backlink.
The best part is artificial intelligence (AI) is going to be a fantastic assistant you can use to help you achieve this goal with your SEO. Simply follow the steps below to lean on it for your benefit.
AI Can Brainstorm Reverse Outreach Content
Coming up with content ideas is one of the most intimidating factors when using a reverse outreach SEO strategy. But the reality is, journalists and other top bloggers are looking for simple information that they can use to share with an audience using a link to backup their claims.
If you ask an AI tool if they know what reverse outreach is, it will respond positively and can help you brainstorm some ideas for content in your niche. The key is to have it come up with ideas that you know other experts will be looking for as a resource to link to.
That means you often want timely information and statistics about your topic. The best strategy to go with in terms of reverse outreach rankings is to use long tail keyword phrases in the same manner that journalists and bloggers will be typing their query into a search engine like Google.
These will often be questions or partial phrases that ask the search engine for numerical or statistical data. For example, a journalist writing an article for a major news publication might go to Google and type in how many people now work from home if they’re writing a piece about post-pandemic telecommuting opportunities.
One of the results that comes up is an article by The Hill, which links out to many resources – something you’d want linking to yours, too. The article not only links directly to research that’s been published, but it includes quotes from others, and links out to other blogs and articles where the data is being discussed.
You can prompt AI to come up with good reverse outreach ideas for you by asking it the following: “Can you give me a list of topics I can write about in the work at home niche where I can use a reverse outreach strategy and hopefully get others to link to my post?”
AI comes up with some great ideas, such as:
• Legitimate work at home job opportunities
• The rise of remote work and personal satisfaction
• Are work at home individuals as productive as office workers?
• The economic impact of a work from home trend
Let’s use the last one as our example. If you had consumers looking up work from home information and they landed on that journalist’s article who linked to your blog as a resource, you could have a new subscriber and customer to cater to.
But the topic is broad, and could include a global or national impact. Change it to individual economic impact and see how that works out. This would include, as AI instructs us, information about the economic benefits to employees such as savings on commuting, increased job earnings, and flexibility due to location.
We can further prompt AI like this: “I like the idea of the individual economic impact of a work from home trend – such as the benefits it delivers to employees. What types of data and statistics can I include that would be a good resource for journalists to find in my content?”
It will give you ideas such as:
• Work at home cost savings (commutes, vehicle maintenance, work attire, meals)
• Increased earning opportunities (diversified income, leveling up, better for disabled individuals, niches that have seen growth)
• Work-life balance and well-being statistics such as reduced stress, higher satisfaction, etc.
• Increased productivity and performance data metrics
• Financial benefits (tax advantages or deductions, less spending on childcare)
Now, take this information and prompt AI like this: “Based on the items listed below, give me several blog post ideas and long-tail keyword phrases I can target to rank high for the topic of the economic or financial benefits of working from home. Here is the list (insert it).”
It will give you several article ideas and keywords to target such as:
• 10 Ways Working from Home Can Save You Money (keyword phrase: work from home cost savings)
• Unlocking Financial Potential: Exploring Increased Earning Opportunities from Home (keyword phrase: remote work income diversification)
• Achieving Work-Life Balance: The Key to Reduced Stress and Higher Satisfaction in Working from Home (keyword phrase: work-life balance benefits of working from home).
Then you can pick one and have AI come up with the statistics other site owners might be looking for that you can create for your post. Prompt AI like this: “I like the idea about 10 Ways Working from Home Can Save You Money. What are some data and statistics people want to know about this topic?”
Now you have ideas such as:
• Commute savings (gas, public transportation, parking fees, toll roads, time, maintenance)
• Work attire savings (average spending on work clothes and accessories, percentage of work at home individuals who spend less on professional attire, estimated savings on dry cleaning expenses)
• Food expenses (average spending on meals and snacks in the office, percentage of work at home people who report spending less on outside meals, savings on coffee shop purchases)
• Reduced childcare costs (average monthly expenses on childcare, percentage of work at home people who now spend less or have eliminated these costs)
• Tax advantages (number of people using tax deductions, percentage of savings with these write-offs, estimated savings and credits)
• Income changes (number of people earning more working for themselves, percentage of debt reduced or increased savings from working at home)
It tells you to find government reports, surveys, industry statistics, and research institutions from which to gather data. Ask AI to do the outline for you and research the data, but make sure your AI tool has access to current information, not from years ago.
The outline above has 6 ways, not 10. So, let’s change the prompt and ask it to do the following: “I’m writing a blog to use for reverse outreach purposes about 6 Ways Working from Home Can Save You Money. I want you to create a comprehensive outline with current data and statistics based on these issues (and insert the bullet point list from above).”
AI then tells you everything you need to know, such as Americans spend $2,000 per year on gas commuting to work. They spend $500 per year on parking fees, $200 a year on toll roads, 25 hours per week commuting, etc.
It does this for each of the bullet points. For some, it references a specific study and their findings. Like a study by FlexJobs that found 60% of work at home people report spending less on meals outside of the home.
Always verify the information and data it gives you. AI admits it will make up answers, and you want your information to be accurate. Now, you can take all of the information AI has generated for you and write your reverse outreach post or have it do the work for you.
If you want AI to do it, prompt it like this: “I want you to write the part for my article about the commute savings and include the data and any referenced material or other information you feel would make it comprehensive.”
It will then craft the content on your behalf, you can edit it and ensure that it’s viable and publish it as your reverse outreach blog, once you go section-by-section and have it do each part.
Data Verification & SEO Increase
Your Chances to Get a Backlink
We talked previously about double checking your answers, and now you need to take a clear approach to doing this. Because other top journalists will be relying on your post as a resource, you want to make sure that no one goes to them and claims they are linking to bad information.
Anytime you can look up a specific study that AI points to, you want to verify that it exists. Try to find official data that backs up the claim and is from trusted resources, which is what you’re trying to be.
You can find a lot of information from companies that are publishing their own statistics. For example, a company might have a publishing for their shareholders, and it may include some data and statistics that you could include in your content.
The next thing you have to do is optimize the content, or make sure that AI helps you optimize it for search engine rankings. It’s not enough just to gather these statistics and data and plug it into a blog post in the hopes that it will achieve your goals with reverse outreach SEO.
You have to make sure that the content itself is optimized for search engine results pages. You can look online at competitor sites that are ranking for certain keyword phrases and look to see what other words they are using, but you can also simply ask AI for the semantic keyword information to help you have a well-rounded approach with your content.
Once your article is created, either by yourself or using AI, you can run it through your tool and ask it how it can improve the SEO. In some cases, it might have you change keyword phrases.
But it can also offer information about what headers you should be using, what subheading titles, any title tags or alt tags that will help you rank better, and more. In fact, I can write the meta description for your blog post, too.
You want to make sure that your meta description includes some of this data and statistics so that when it comes up in a search result, a journalist or blogger will see that information and automatically want to click through your link as a better resource than just someone’s opinion about things.
AI-Inspired Multimedia Concepts Improve Your SEO
Another thing that’s important when it comes to reverse outreach content for SEO purposes is for you to include multimedia aspects to your blog post. It’s a proven fact that content that includes things like charts, graphs, and other data from a visual standpoint is more well received than those without it.
In the eyes of readers, it improves the trustworthiness and viability of the information when you include some sort of visual chart, table, graph, etc. But you can also include video as a multimedia concept.
You can either gather information or ask AI to give you information that you can include on a graph or table, and you can ask AI to create it for you. If you don’t even know what content would make a good chart or graph, ask AI based on your topic such as saying, “Out of the information I am including in my article, what would be a good topic to make a chart, graph, or table from?”
Not only does AI give you some advice on what to do, but it will also come back with a ready-made table for you, such as one that shows the various expense categories associated with commuting and the average annual savings that can be achieved by working from home.
In fact, it even tells you how to enhance your visual element by choosing certain colors or icons, and you can ask it to advise you on those elements as well so that your multimedia content performs even better for you.
When it comes to your video content, which is also something that many professional publications want to link to, you can have AI create an entire script for you that you can use with a slideshow presentation and screen capture recording software.
It can even tell you what text to put on the slides, what narration to use, and even what color palette would work best for your presentation. If you tell AI how long you want your video to be, it will adjust the content to those needs, whether it’s a 30 minute or 30 second video.
AI Can Help Build a List Using
Your New SEO Rankings
It’s important to keep in mind what your ultimate goal is when you are going to the extra effort of achieving rankings and search engines so that you can become a valuable resource for journalists and other bloggers.
Let’s assume you get dozens of backlinks using the reverse outreach strategy, and your blog post rises to the very top of the SERPs. What are you going to do when you have a flood of traffic coming to your domain?
You want to make sure that you not only have an opt in form in that sidebar, but also somewhere within the content that they are clicking to read so that you can build a list and cater to these individuals for years to come.
There are many ways AI can help you with this strategy. You can ask it to come up with lead magnet ideas that would work best in this particular content. You can prompt AI like this: “When visitors come to read my blog post called 6 Ways Working from Home Can Save You Money, what are some good ideas for a lead magnet that audience might appreciate?”
It will come up with ideas from expense trackers to tax guides, a resource bundle, and more. It can then outline your lead magnet for you and even write it for you. If you want help creating the opt in form, it can give you advice on what to put in your call to action, what color palette to use, etc.
Mistakes To Avoid When Using
Reverse Outreach for SEO
Reverse outreach as an SEO strategy is a wonderful and easy thing to implement in your business. However, don’t make the mistake that many of your competitors are making, which is failing to go back and freshen up your content on a regular basis.
You want to make sure that journalists and other publications see your blog as the most current source for the information they are seeking. If you allow your data to expire, and your statistics are from months or years ago, they will bypass your blog and instead turn to one of your competitors who is keeping their content up to date with fresh statistics and information.
This is something you should be doing anyway for Google and other search engines, because they are constantly looking to see when you have updated your content so that they can send their users to the freshest information possible.