Link building outreach is the deliberate practice of reaching out to relevant websites to secure backlinks. Instead of passively hoping sites discover and link to your content, you identify link prospects, craft personalized pitches, and negotiate placements through email, social media, or direct contact. The core workflow involves research, personalization, and follow-up. You find sites in your niche with domain authority above 30-40, editorial calendars that accept contributions, or resource pages that list tools like yours. Then you pitch something they'd actually want: a guest post that fills a content gap, an expert quote for an article they're writing, a data study their audience needs, or a correction to a broken link on their site. Generic spray-and-pray templates get 1-3% response rates. Personalized outreach referencing specific articles or gaps hits 15-25%. Common outreach tactics include: - Guest posting: offering to write original articles for their blog in exchange for an author bio link or contextual link - Broken link building: finding dead links on their site and suggesting your content as a replacement - Resource page additions: pitching your tool, guide, or data to be included on their curated lists - Unlinked mentions: asking sites that mentioned your brand without linking to add the hyperlink - Skyscraper technique: creating superior versions of content that already earns links, then contacting everyone who linked to the inferior piece At Ottawa SEO, we run outreach campaigns for clients in competitive verticals where organic link velocity is too slow. Expect to send 50-100 emails to land 5-10 placements. Quality beats quantity: one link from a relevant DR60 site in your niche beats twenty directory submissions. Budget 8-15 hours per week if you're doing this in-house, or $800-2500/month for an agency retainer that includes prospect research, copywriting, and relationship management. The real skill is identifying who has both authority and incentive to link, then making it easy for them to say yes.