Link Building Outreach Email Generator
Pick the pitch, say who you are writing to and why it matters to their readers, and get a short email, two alternative subject lines and one follow-up — checked for the mistakes that get pitches deleted.
This writes the email. It does not send it — copy it into your own mail client and send it from your own address.
Nothing you type here is uploaded, stored or sent anywhere. It all runs in your browser.
An outreach email template is the smallest part of outreach
People search for an outreach email template because the blank email is the part that feels hard. It is not. I have sent a lot of link-building pitches, and the wording decides maybe a fifth of the outcome. The rest is decided before you write a word: whether the site is worth a link at all, whether your page is genuinely useful to their readers, and whether you picked a person who can actually say yes. This tool writes a short, honest pitch in the shape I use. What it cannot do is make a bad target a good one.
Relevance first, then the email
Before I pitch anyone I judge the site. Does it rank for anything? Does it have real readers, or is it a blog that exists to sell posts? Is it about the same subject as the page I want linked? If I cannot answer yes to all three, I do not send the email. The Backlink Value Calculator is the checklist I run for that, and it will talk you out of more pitches than it talks you into. Fewer, better targets beat a thousand-name list every time, because the thousand-name list gets you flagged as spam and the ten good targets get you replies.
The first line is about them
Editors can spot a mail merge in the first line. "I came across your blog and loved your content" means you did not read it. Naming the specific article, and saying one true thing about it, is the whole difference between a pitch and spam. That is why the tool flags an email with no page of theirs in it: without that line, it is the same email they deleted this morning. And never open with "I hope this email finds you well". Everyone does, which is exactly why it reads as a template.
One ask, one link, one reason
Each pitch type here makes a single request. A guest post pitch asks whether they want an article and offers topics. A broken link pitch points out the dead link first — that part helps them whether or not they use your page — and offers a replacement second. An unlinked mention asks for the mention to become a link. Stacking asks ("could you link this, and also share it, and also would you like a guest post?") gets you none of them.
Keep it to one link, to the page you are asking about. Two links in a cold email looks like a template and trips spam filters. The reason to say yes goes in its own line, and it is about their readers, not about you. "It would really help my site" is not a reason. "Your readers keep asking about wholesale pricing and this answers it" is.
Leave the industry words out. "SEO", "backlink", "link juice" and "DA" tell the editor you are a link seller, and editors who get forty of those a week delete on sight. Say what the page does for their readers, and the link follows from that. The tool flags those words wherever they turn up, including in what you typed yourself.
Follow up once
One follow-up, five to seven days later, as a reply in the same thread. A lot of replies come from the follow-up, because the first email arrived on a bad day. A second follow-up almost never helps, and a third gets your domain reported. If they do not answer twice, the answer is no, and that is fine.
What I will not do
I do not pay for placements on sites that sell to everyone. If a site has a price list, a "write for us" page that takes any topic, and outbound links to casinos, loans and CBD in the same month, a link from it is worth nothing and can cost you something. Earned links from relevant sites are slower, and they are the only ones that last. If you do end up with a mix of pitched and earned links, watch the anchors: the Anchor Text Distribution Checker shows when too many say the same keyword, which is the pattern that gets noticed. And if you are trying to work out what a campaign like this should cost, the Link Building Cost Calculator does that sum honestly.
The numbers on this page are my rules, not laws
- Under 120 words, and a hard warning over 150. My judgement from reading replies, not a measured cut-off. A short email is read on a phone in one go; a long one gets saved for later, and later does not come.
- A subject under 60 characters. Roughly where phone mail apps start cutting it off. It varies by app and screen.
- One follow-up after five to seven days. What has worked for me. Some people wait three days; I think that is pushy.
If you would rather someone else did the finding, the pitching and the follow-ups, that is what the link building packages are.
Questions people ask
How long should a link building outreach email be?
Short enough to read on a phone without scrolling. I aim for under 120 words and treat anything over 150 as too long — that is my working rule, not a measured one. The email needs four things: a line that shows you read their site, the one thing you are asking for, the reason it helps their readers, and your name. Everything else is padding the editor skims past on the way to the delete button.
How many times should I follow up on an outreach email?
Once, five to seven days after the first email, as a reply in the same thread so they can see what you sent. A single follow-up catches the people who meant to answer and forgot. A second and third mostly annoy people, and enough spam reports will hurt the deliverability of every email your domain sends, not just the pitches.
Should I mention SEO or backlinks in my outreach email?
No. Editors who run a site worth a link get a steady stream of emails asking for backlinks, and "SEO", "backlink", "link juice" and "DA" are how they recognise them. Describe what your page does for their readers instead. If they link to it, it is because it is useful, and that is also the kind of link that holds its value.
What is a good reply rate for link building outreach?
I do not trust the published benchmarks, because they mix well-targeted campaigns with scraped lists of ten thousand sites. What I can say from my own work is that relevance moves it far more than wording: the same email sent to ten genuinely relevant sites does much better than it does sent to a hundred loosely related ones. If your reply rate is poor, fix the list before you rewrite the email.
Is it worth paying for a guest post?
Rarely. Paid links are against Google’s guidelines, and the sites that sell them tend to sell to everyone, so the link sits next to casino and loan links and is worth very little. If a real publication with real readers charges an editorial fee and marks the post as sponsored, that can be worth it for the traffic, but it is advertising rather than link building. Judge the site first with the Backlink Value Calculator.
Does this tool send the emails for me?
No, and it cannot. It is a writing aid: the email is assembled in your browser from what you type, and nothing is uploaded, stored or sent anywhere. Copy the subject, the email and the follow-up into your own mail client and send them from your own address, which is better for deliverability anyway.
Related tools
The email is the easy part
Writing a good pitch takes ten minutes. Finding the sites worth sending it to, and getting the few that say yes to link to you, is the actual job, and it is the one I do. If you would rather hand it over, tell me what you are trying to rank.
See link building packages Talk to Hayk
Further reading: How I evaluate a backlink before I build it · Why most backlinks do nothing for your rankings