For as long as the world spins round we are going to have to get used to statements along the lines of “SEO is dead”. This has been the case for years and those involved in the industry are always going to claim, and completely rightfully at the time of writing, that this isn’t the case.
Something which has changed in the industry is the art of link building. Put simply, the days of buying thousands of links are long gone. Black hat techniques still exist, but they tend to be left to the experts who know the trade inside-out.
It means that the scope for growing a white hat link profile has suddenly grown. More people are turning towards it, and looking for the latest methods. As the title of this guide might have suggested, one of these methods is tapping into free people searches by Checkpeople. We will now mull through each step of the methods to show how it works.
Step #1 – Find existing content
First and foremost, you need to identify content that is already out there, which is at least remotely similar to what you are about to publish.
Finding something similar is really important for the success of your outreach campaign. It’s here where you can find exactly what publications are open to publishing which topics. If you don’t do this, what tends to happen is that you will be left with a huge list of possible publications – yet only a handful are going to be open to publishing your piece in the first place. Ultimately, you will waste a lot of time.
Step #2 – Who wrote the content?
Now that you have found these content pieces, it’s all about finding out who is the journalist behind them. The importance of this should not be understated – this is effectively the door to getting your own content published. By finding out who wrote the original pieces, which are related to your topic, you can establish exactly which journalists or writers have an interest in the chosen subject and also open to publishing about it.
Nowadays, most newspapers will attribute an author name to each article, even if the said journalist is working on a freelance capacity. At times, they may include an email address, but this is rare which is why we recommend proceeding to the third step…
Step #3 – Initiate the contact
This is where a people search comes into the equation. If you have been lucky enough to stumble across contact details then it’s great, and the process can conclude here. If not, tap into one of these people search engines, and you’ll be gifted the contact information on a plate.
Of course, you have to be quite shrewd about how you initiate contact. Some journalists will appreciate a direct question, where in other cases you might have to play a longer approach and build rapport.
