Getting Domain Authority with HARO

TL.DR: You can use HARO to get high-quality backlinks, so your website will perform better in Google, but it takes work.

If you use a website to make money, you should care about Domain Authority.

Domain Authority is a scoring system created by several SEO tools that tells you how many and of what authority other websites link back to yours.

The higher your website’s domain authority score is, the higher your website will rank in search engine results.

A couple of links from high authority sources, say from websites with D/A scores above 50, can make a huge difference to low authority websites like our blog. We’re sitting on a D/A score of 13, and even a tiny jump to say 18 could increase our organic traffic by 50%.

But getting these backlinks is hard. We’ve tested quite a few different methods lately and have found one that’s starting to work. It’s got us two 50+ D/A score backlinks in the past week. Which, as above, is a big deal in the backlinking game.

Here’s how it works.

Join HARO

You’re going to become a source for journalists and bloggers. They’ll mention you as a source in their articles and link back to your website when you provide them with helpful info.

So, first, create a free account with HARO.

Register as a source, not a journalist, when you create your account.

Then choose the topics you want to be a source for – ours is business & finance.

Respond To HARO Requests

You’ll receive a couple of emails a day summarising a list of journalists looking for sources with details about the information they need.

When you see a topic you can contribute to, email the requester with your response – using the address mentioned in the request for information.

If you succeed, the journalist will reply and accept your pitch.

^ the article isn’t published yet, but their site hvtimes.com has a D/A of ~55.

If they aren’t interested in your pitch – you won’t hear from them.

So far, I’ve submitted 15 pitches (2 hours of work) and had two accepted.

Key Takeaway: Getting high-quality backlinks is a guaranteed way to get more traffic from search engines.

Speed Dating Organisations At Scale

TL.DR – We’re leveraging digital tools to influence people at scale and get group trust faster.

I’m off to Jakarta this week to work with a Nickel mining company that wants to become a publicly listed company.

The CEO has hired us to help them source international investment.

The company is large, fractured, and hierarchical. Somehow in a short space of time, we need to bring these people together by gaining their trust.

We don’t have the time to network with an organisation of thousands of employees. So instead, we’re taking a shortcut with digital tools.

I’m targeting their top 1000 employees with Facebook ads that lead them to PR stories that outline our work with TikTok, Universal Music Group and Microsoft.

I’ll then run a second set of ads later in the week with our featured work in Forbes, Inc. and the News segments we’ve had from Digital Boost.

We’re leveraging digital tools to one-way-speed-date their team without meeting them. So when we do, we’re one step closer to building enough trust to work together.

Key Takeaway: There are multiple ways you can influence others at scale. You can kill two birds with one stone by choosing the right method.

“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”

~ James Clear

Where We’re Learning

 • 7 Best Backlink Strategies For 2022 -> Brain Dean is the backlink godfather and this article outlines the strategies he’s leveraging in 2022.
 • All In Podcast #80 -> In-depth look at how we can expect the coming (or already here depending on how you look at it) recession to affect venture capital and startups from industry veterans.

Margin Of Safety

TL.DR Operating with a high margin of safety seems foolish during good times but wise during the bad.

It looks like a recession is inevitable.

$35 trillion in global market value has been erased since the beginning of this year – that’s 14% of all global wealth.

Public markets like the Nasdaq and S&P 500 have already gone bear. Down 30% and 20% respectively from their highs just six months ago.

Real wage growth, i.e. wages adjusted for inflation, is negative across virtually the entire OECD.

In times like these, we tend to look to past recessions to try and predict what’s next. But that never works. Our economy is too global and complex to project accurate outcomes.

Instead, we’re better off looking at who survived or, better yet, who emerged stronger from past recessions and how did they do it.

A shining light here is two nonagenarian lead investors of Berkshire Hathaway. They have been ridiculed for their conservative approach for almost a decade now and deemed past-it.

Yet while many fail during recessions, Berkshire Hathaway, led by Warren Buffet and Charlie T Munger, always emerges stronger.

How?

For the exact reason, techno-twitter (tech entrepreneurs, commentators & investors) have labeled them past their used-by date—they work with extreme safety margins.

With a war chest topping $150 billion at the start of 2022, when things turn to custard, they are ready to strike more than anyone else. In this year’s first quarter, they’ve already purchased more public equities ($50 billion) than during the 2008 downturn.

There’s no-way Berkshire will go broke when things turn to shit – they’ll come out further ahead than when we go in.

As Warren likes to say – ‘Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.’

Key Takeaway: If you want to prepare for tough times ahead, start building your margin of safety.