Harnessing SEO Automation to Power Up Your Backlinks

Getting high-quality, relevant backlinks is an essential part of SEO. They not only help your website gain more exposure in the short term, but also establish credibility and authority in your niche. This credibility can significantly enhance your search engine rankings.

Unfortunately, backlinks are probably the hardest part of the SEO puzzle, because unlike the content we create, backlinks are out of our direct control. This is pretty much why Google puts so much emphasis on links – they’re harder for us SEOs to game!

One well-documented way to acquire powerful backlinks is by capitalising on the #JournoRequest hashtag on Twitter. This article looks at what #JournoRequests are, and how to seamlessly make responding to them part of your workflow through SEO automation.

What is a #JournoRequest?

The #JournoRequest hashtag serves as an essential networking tool on Twitter and other platforms, used extensively by journalists, bloggers, and other content creators seeking information, quotes, or expert contributions for their upcoming articles.

As a business, industry expert, or thought leader, proactively responding to these requests is an effective way to establish professional relationships and connections with these content creators.

Importantly for us SEOs, these interactions can also lead to valuable backlinks when your contribution is credited in the published content. These backlinks are often from high DA sites and are therefore extremely valuable.

In a nutshell, the #JournoRequest hashtag presents a unique opportunity to earn powerful backlinks while promoting your brand authority and fostering meaningful connections within your industry.

Searching for, filtering and responding to requests, though fruitful, can be damn time-consuming! It’s also inefficient, scrolling through hundreds of irrelevant requests in order to find one that you can answer. This is where tools like Zapier come in. 

Understanding Zapier for SEO Automation

Zapier stands is an online automation tool, which is able to seamlessly connect a diverse range of apps, including popular platforms like Slack and Gmail. It streamlines repetitive tasks, without the need for APIs, coding skills or the assistance of developers to build complex integrations.

Users can construct “Zaps,” or automated workflows, which perform specific actions when particular triggers occur, i.e. when X happens, do Y.

Linking #JournoRequest on Twitter to your Inbox

The purpose of this Zap is to automatically filter #JournoRequests and send relevant ones to your inbox. Prerequisites for this are an active Twitter account and a premium Zapier account.

1. Creating a Zap

Go to your Zapier account, click on ‘+ Create Zap’. Select Twitter as the trigger app and ‘Search Mention’ as the trigger event.

2. Configuring Your Trigger

In the ‘Customise Mention’ field, set the ‘Search Term’ to #JournoRequest along with a keyword relating to your individual niche. For example if you’re a bike shop, you might use the keyword ‘cycling’. This action will trigger your Zap whenever a new tweet is posted with the #JournoRequest hashtag and your keyword. You can set up multiple Zaps with all the keywords you’re interested in.

3. Setting Up an Action

After your trigger is set, the next step is to set up an action that will execute when the trigger event occurs. For this, choose your preferred email platform as the app and ‘Send Email’ as the action event.

4. Customise Your Email

In the ‘Customise Email’ field, you can personalise your email according to your preference. Make sure to include the Tweet Text and Tweet Link in the body of your email. These will give you the details of the #JournoRequest, enabling you to respond promptly.

5. Test and Turn on Your Zap

After setting everything up, test your Zap to ensure it works correctly. If all goes well, turn on your Zap, and it will run in the background, automating your #JournoRequest notifications.

Maximising #JournoRequest Opportunities

To effectively leverage #JournoRequest opportunities, ensure your responses are timely, relevant, and (most importantly!) add value to the requester’s content. Don’t respond to requests that aren’t relevant to you, or that your company or product is only tangentially linked to – you’ll only annoy the requestor.

Also, don’t go in only thinking about the SEO benefit. Of course we want to achieve a backlink, but you’ll have much more success if you go in with the mindset of offering valuable information and expertise. Think of the backlink as a bonus!

What have we learned?

Automation of #JournoRequest notifications through Zapier can streamline your backlink acquisition strategy. It eliminates the need for you to constantly monitor Twitter for #JournoRequest posts, allowing you to focus on other aspects of your business.

By responding (appropriately) to these requests, you can earn quality backlinks that boost your website’s credibility and search engine ranking. This efficient and practical method proves that sometimes, the best approach to SEO is to let technology do the work!

Back to blog list