Backlinks on news sites that rank, which get actual human traffic, do four things:
- Send you relevant human visitors – not bots.
- Social proof you (leads see that people are covering your company), which cuts the time from awareness to conversion.
- Increases your SEO rankings.
- Gets you surfaced more in LLMs.
The easiest way to consistently get news backlinks is to have actual relationships with relevant journalists.
Lots of journalists don’t just make content for a single publication – they make content for many publications. One relationship could result in dozens of mentions and backlinks from a handful of unique, relevant, authoritative domains.
And one of the most straightforward ways to start creating these relationships is by finding hyper-relevant journalists.
Rule of thumb
There are journalists who ONLY cover a certain beat. If you’re in their niche, mediocre news to you is still news to them.
They NEED things in their niche to write about – they exist to write about things in their niche.
Hyper-local is the perfect example
What do you see in hyper-local publications?
- New restaurant opening
- How the upcoming cold will affect homeowners (quote from plumber)
- Store doing a new sale
- How the summer heat could affect your roof (quote from roofer)
Not the most interesting news, but to people living in the area, it’s still click-worthy – and for journalists, it’s relevant to cover.
Put another way, the bar for what counts as news is LOW.
ChatGPT Prompts
If you’re a local business, try this prompt on ChatGPT (swap out the business type and location):
“I have a roofing repair business in Dallas, Texas. I want to message local journalists who cover news in Dallas. What are all of the angles they might report on that would be relevant to me?”
You’ll get a major list like this:
ChatGPT literally gave me 15 angles to use.
Next, use this prompt in the same conversation:
“Give me a prompt to give to ChatGPT Agent Mode so that I can find journalists to message.”
You’ll get something like this:
Give that to ChatGPT Agent Mode:
ChatGPT Agent Mode will create a virtual browser and do the research for you. When I ran that prompt, it spent 25 minutes doing the research, returning a super thorough list:
Still with ChatGPT Agent Mode enabled, follow up with this:
“Now analyze their last 5 articles and suggest a customized pitch angle for each journalist that would align with their writing style and coverage focus.”
Follow up with, “Write the pitches.”
You’ll get something like this:
Edit the messages for your personal voice and remove AI giveaways like em dashes and buzzwords.
Send the pitches through publicly listed emails or DMs on social channels.
Remember, these journalists constantly NEED content. Give them something in their beat so it’s easy for them to say okay.
This is the most important part
Now here’s what nobody does – this is where the biggest opportunities are completely neglected and lost.
Once you’re covered… follow up every month or two.
“Hey,
Hope you’re doing well! I really enjoyed helping with the last story: [LINK]
Are you working on anything new I can give a comment on? Here if you need anything.
Warmly,
[Your name]”
Or another pitch,
“Hey,
Hope you’re doing well! I really enjoyed helping with the last story: [LINK]
As we’re expecting an alarming amount of rain this weekend…
[Insert pitch]
Warmly,
[Your name]”
Or just give this to ChatGPT Agent Mode to get a new pitch:
“I run a [TYPE OF BUSINESS] in [CITY, STATE] and was previously featured by [JOURNALIST NAME] in this article: [LINK] – analyze their last 5 articles to identify recurring themes, tone, and timely angles they cover. Then suggest 3 hyper-relevant, location-specific pitch ideas tied to current events or seasonal trends and write short, natural follow-up emails that reference our previous collaboration and position me as a helpful expert source.”
Because you’re no longer a cold contact – your acceptance rate will be WAY higher.
AND, the more you’re covered by a single journalist, the more you develop top-of-mind awareness with them. That means when the journalist thinks of anything related to your niche, they come to you first for information.
Again, journalists often contribute to multiple publications – so this means links and mentions from various domains!
This works with any business, not just local
The key is to niche down as much as possible.
Copy and paste all the text on your home page / landing page to ChatGPT:
“This is my business:
————
[Pasted landing page text]
————
I want to message hyper-relevant journalists who cover news in my niche. What are all of the angles they might report on that would be relevant to me?”
Then:
“Give me a complete customized prompt to give to ChatGPT Agent Mode so that I can find journalists to message.”
Your competitors don’t know to do this
This system allows you to capitalize on the lowest-hanging-fruit media opportunities so you:
- Get your foot in the door for initial stories.
- Get follow-up coverage in multiple publications with a lot less resistance than when you got your initial coverage (since you’re already vetted).
The biggest backlink wins come from finding and creating relationships with hyper-relevant journalists.
Do this to become a major player in the media landscape for your niche and a huge SEO authority that gets high rankings, LLM coverage, social proof, and relevant referral traffic.
If you like creating systems that get you wins within SEO and LLMs
My SEO course, Compact Keywords, is a system for using SEO to specifically get customers, users, and warm leads calling you up.
In it, I show:
- How to find very high-intent keywords. Keywords like:
- voice note recorder for dentists
- handmade artisan ceramic mugs
- emergency lawn drain repair boston
- How to make and rank conversion-based SEO landing pages for these keywords
- How to structure your site for these pages
- How to audit your site to maximize its surface potential
- More link building methods so you build SEO authority, while also using language that signals to LLMs you’re an authority in your niche
- Lots more
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