# The outreach email that gets a reply

Every link email is competing with twenty identical ones in the same inbox. The ones that get answered have three things in common: they are short, they are about the recipient's page, and they were obviously written by a person who read it. Here is the shape, with the mistakes that kill the rest.

Updated 2026-09-15 · Source: https://porteur.ai/guides/link-outreach-email

## The shape: one paragraph, one ask

Four sentences. What you noticed on their page, why it matters to their reader, what you have, and a line that makes it easy to say no.

```text
Subject: broken link on your uptime guide

Hi Marta,

The link to statuscheck.io in your uptime monitoring guide has been
dead since the tool closed, in the section on status pages. We built a
free checker that does the same job without an account:
pingfox.com/tools/status-page-checker. Worth a look for that section,
and the dead link is worth removing either way.

Thomas
pingfox.com
```

- Subject line: what it is about, in five words, lowercase, no urgency.
- First sentence: their page, named specifically enough that you clearly opened it.
- Second sentence: the thing you have, as a URL, with what it does in one clause.
- Third sentence: permission to ignore you.
- Signature: your name and your domain. No title, no logo, no legal footer.

## Who to send it to, and how to find them

The author, not the company. An email to info@ arrives nowhere, and a contact form arrives in a queue nobody reads.

1. **Start at the byline** Most articles name a writer and link to their profile. That profile often carries an email or a personal site with one.
2. **Try the personal site** Writers who take pitches usually say so on their own site, sometimes with the exact subject line they want.
3. **Then the professional network** A short message on LinkedIn to the person who wrote the page is fair, and often faster than email.
4. **Last, the pattern** If the site publishes addresses in a known pattern, use it once. Do not run a guessing tool through ten variants: bouncing four addresses is how a domain gets a bad reputation.

> If you cannot find a person after five minutes, skip the page. The time is better spent on the next one, and a form submission almost never becomes a link.

## The angles, ranked by how they land

The template matters far less than the reason you are writing. These are the openings that exist, from the ones editors act on to the ones they delete unread.

| Angle | Why it works, or does not |
| --- | --- |
| Their link is broken | A defect report on their page. They want to know, whatever they do about your page. |
| A fact on their page is wrong or out of date | Errors embarrass an editor. Corrections get made, and the link often comes with the fix. |
| They named you without linking | They already decided you belonged there. The ask is a formatting change. |
| You built the thing their section describes | Plausible, if the thing does one job and needs no account. |
| You wrote a guide on their topic | Weak. Your page competes with theirs, so linking it costs them. |
| You would like a link | Nothing in it for them. This is the majority of what lands in their inbox. |

Notice that the top three are about their page and the bottom three are about yours. Choose targets where you can honestly use one of the first three, and skip the rest rather than writing a weaker email.

## The openings that get deleted

Editors recognise these instantly, because they receive them daily. Any one of them ends the email.

| What you wrote | What they read |
| --- | --- |
| "I came across your article and really enjoyed it" | A template. Nobody enjoyed anything. |
| "I hope this email finds you well" | Sent to five hundred people this morning. |
| "I noticed you have a page about [topic]" | An unescaped variable, or the human equivalent. |
| "Quick question" as a subject | A sales sequence. |
| Three paragraphs about your company before the ask | Not about me. Delete. |
| "We would be happy to link back to you" | An exchange, which is a policy problem for both of us. |

The fix for all of them is the same: open with a fact about their page that you could only know by reading it.

## What you can and cannot offer

The email is one-sided by design. You are offering something that helps their page, and nothing else.

- You can offer: the replacement page, the corrected fact, the raw data, an answer to a question, a screenshot they can use.
- You cannot offer: money for the link, a reciprocal link, a free plan in exchange, or anything of value in return for a link that carries no rel attribute.
- You can say who you are and that you built the thing. Hiding it is how a fair email becomes spam.
- You can ask once more, a week later, in two sentences.

Those offers are not a matter of taste. Buying links, trading links at scale and paying with products for unmarked links are all named in Google's link spam policy, and the links that result are ignored anyway.

## The follow-up, once

One follow-up, a week later, in the same thread, shorter than the first. Then never again about that page.

```text
Hi Marta, just bumping this once in case it got buried. The dead link
is in the status pages section. No worries if it is not useful.

Thomas
```

Two follow-ups is a sequence, and a sequence is what everybody else is running. The people you want a link from are exactly the people who notice.

## The tracking sheet

Six columns in a spreadsheet. You need it so you never write to the same person twice about the same thing, and so you can tell which kind of email works in your field.

| Column | Why |
| --- | --- |
| Page URL | What you were writing about |
| Person and where you found them | So the next email goes to a person, not a desk |
| Date sent, date followed up | To keep the one-follow-up rule |
| Angle | Broken link, correction, resource list, study. This is what you compare later. |
| Reply | Yes, no, silence |
| Outcome | Link added, link removed, nothing |

After thirty emails the sheet tells you something real: which angle gets answered in your category, and which pages are worth building next. That is worth more than any template, including this one.

## Questions

### How long should a link outreach email be?

One short paragraph, four sentences at most, plus a signature with your name and domain. The recipient decides in seconds whether it concerns them, and anything longer reads as a pitch that was going to be sent regardless of who opened it.

### What is a good reply rate for link outreach?

It depends entirely on the angle. Telling someone their link is broken or their fact is wrong gets answered often. Asking to be added to a list gets answered sometimes. A generic pitch gets answered almost never. Track your own rate by angle rather than chasing a published average.

### Should I use an outreach tool?

For a founder sending a few emails a week, a spreadsheet and your normal email client are better: tools encourage volume, and volume is what makes these emails worthless. If you do use one, never let a template variable reach the recipient, and never run a multi-step sequence.

### Can I offer a link back in exchange?

No. Excessive reciprocal linking is named in Google's link spam policy, and a link swapped for a link is not an editorial link. If two sites genuinely help each other's readers, link because it helps, without making it a condition.

### How many follow-ups should I send?

One, a week later, two sentences, in the same thread. After that, silence is an answer. The people worth a link from are the people who notice a sequence, and they will remember which company sent it.

## Read next

- [Broken link building: find a dead page, write the replacement, tell the sites](https://porteur.ai/guides/broken-link-building): Find a dead page other sites still link to, write the page that replaces it, and tell them. The five steps, the tools for each, and the email.
- [Unlinked mentions: the easiest link you will ever earn](https://porteur.ai/guides/unlinked-mentions): Someone wrote your product name without linking it. Here is how to find every mention, decide which are worth an email, and write the three-sentence ask.
- [Resource page link building, done without being a nuisance](https://porteur.ai/guides/resource-page-link-building): Resource pages exist to list useful things. Here is how to find the ones in your category, what to send, who to send it to, and how to be worth adding.
- [Digital PR for a small product: the study, not the pitch](https://porteur.ai/guides/digital-pr-for-seo): Journalists link to figures, not to products. What a small product can measure, how to publish it so it can be cited, and how to reach the right writers.
- [How to get backlinks for a small product site](https://porteur.ai/guides/how-to-get-backlinks-for-a-small-site): What to build, who to ask and how to measure. A founder’s plan to earn backlinks without spam or spend, with examples and a checklist.
- [Link building](https://porteur.ai/glossary/link-building): Link building is earning links from other sites to yours. Here is what works within Google’s policies, how to measure it, and what to avoid.
- [Nofollow link](https://porteur.ai/glossary/nofollow-link): What a nofollow link is, what changed in 2019, how to check rel values, when to use nofollow, sponsored or ugc, and the traps to avoid.
- [Link exchanges: what Google says, and what people actually do](https://porteur.ai/guides/link-exchanges): Reciprocal links are not banned. Excessive exchanges are. Where the line sits, the patterns that get neutralised, and the safer version of the same idea.

Paste your URL and the free check names the sites linking to your two closest rivals and not to you, which is the list these emails should go to. Free check: https://porteur.ai/