Most link building is you chasing other people.
HARO flips that.
Journalists and writers post requests for expert sources. You respond. If your pitch is good, you get quoted — and you get a link from a publication that probably won't accept a cold outreach email from you.
That's the HARO model. And when it works, it produces links from Forbes, Business Insider, HuffPost, Healthline, and hundreds of other publications that would otherwise be completely out of reach.
The catch: everyone knows about it now. The competition is brutal. You can't just dash off a 3-line reply and expect it to land.
This guide is about doing HARO properly.
HARO stands for Help a Reporter Out.
It was founded in 2008 by journalist Peter Shankman as a way for reporters to quickly find expert sources. Cision acquired it. It has since been rebranded as Connectively but most people still call it HARO, so that's what I'll call it here.
The mechanics are simple:
Three emails go out every weekday: morning, afternoon, and evening. Each email contains dozens of queries across different industries.
The link quality can be exceptional. We're talking DR 70–90 links from editorial publications. The kind of links that would cost hundreds or thousands of dollars if you were buying them — which you shouldn't be doing anyway.
Go to connectively.us (formerly helpareporter.com) and create a free account.
The free tier gives you access to email digests. Paid tiers let you filter by specific beats and get faster alerts. If HARO becomes a serious part of your strategy, the paid tier is worth it — speed matters.
You can subscribe to specific categories:
Subscribe only to categories where you can actually pitch as a credible expert. Don't subscribe to everything and spray generic answers.
HARO emails arrive three times a day. That's 15 emails a week. Filter them into a dedicated folder so you can process them quickly without them drowning your inbox.
Every query has the same structure:
Read the query text carefully.
Journalists are specific. They say exactly what they need. If they ask for "a marketing executive at a company with 50+ employees who has experience running influencer campaigns," and you run a one-person consultancy, your pitch won't land.
Match the brief exactly.
This is the part most people get wrong.
HARO queries often get 50–200 responses. The journalist is scanning fast. Your pitch has about 5 seconds to prove it deserves to be read.
Start with your credentials — but only what's relevant.
"I'm the head of content at a SaaS company that's grown organic traffic from zero to 400,000 monthly visitors over 3 years" is relevant if the query is about SEO or content marketing.
Don't list every job you've ever had. One sentence that makes them immediately think "this person knows what they're talking about."
Answer the question directly.
The journalist asked a question. Answer it. Not with filler. Not with "great question!" Not with a five-sentence intro. Answer it.
If they asked "what's the biggest mistake companies make with their email marketing?" start with the answer. "The biggest mistake is treating email like a broadcast channel instead of a conversation."
Be specific.
Specific beats vague every time.
Bad: "Email marketing is really important for engagement."
Good: "We increased our open rate from 18% to 34% by switching to plain-text emails with a single call to action. Formatting was killing us."
Specific claims, specific numbers, specific experiences. That's what gets selected.
Keep it short.
Under 200 words for the main pitch. Journalists don't have time for essays.
If they want a longer quote, they'll follow up.
Include your bio at the bottom.
Name, title, company, and website. This is where your backlink comes from — make sure it's there.
"I'm writing an article for Entrepreneur about remote work productivity. Looking for founders or executives who have concrete tips for staying productive when working from home. Deadline: 5pm today."
Bad pitch:
Hi,
My name is John and I'm a business coach. I've been working with companies for over 10 years and I specialize in productivity and leadership development.
I think remote work is really important and I have a lot of thoughts on productivity. Here are some tips: set a schedule, take breaks, find a dedicated workspace.
I'd love to be featured in your article!
John Smith Business Coach johnsmithcoaching.com
Why it fails:
Good pitch:
I've run a fully remote team of 12 for 4 years. Our biggest productivity lever wasn't software or schedules — it was eliminating all recurring meetings under 3 people and replacing them with async Loom videos.
Our team productivity scores (we survey quarterly) went from 6.4 to 8.1 out of 10 within 6 months of making this shift.
Happy to expand on any of this.
Sarah Chen, CEO, Relay Studio (relay-studio.com)
Why it works:
Most HARO deadlines are same-day or within 24 hours.
Journalists typically scan responses as they come in. If you're one of the first 10 responses and your pitch is strong, your chances are much better than if you're response number 150 sent at 4:58pm.
Check HARO emails as soon as they arrive. Have a process for quickly deciding which queries to respond to. Write fast.
If you're serious about HARO, treat it like a real-time task, not something you batch-process once a week.
I'll be direct.
HARO is not a 50% conversion machine. For most people starting out:
So if you respond to 20 queries in a month, you might get 1–4 mentions.
That sounds low. But if those 4 mentions are from publications with DR 60+, that's a very strong month of link building with relatively low effort compared to other tactics.
As you improve your pitching — getting better at reading queries, tightening your writing, recognising which queries match your credentials — your hit rate improves significantly. I've seen consistent HARO pitchers reach 20–25% hit rates.
The smart HARO strategy is not just chasing one-off mentions.
When a journalist uses your quote, respond to thank them. Not with a pitch. Just a genuine "thanks for including me, I enjoyed reading the piece."
Then follow them on Twitter/X or LinkedIn. Engage with their work. If you see them posting about a topic you know well, add value to the conversation.
Journalists work on multiple stories. A journalist who used you as a source once is far more likely to reach out directly for future stories — bypassing HARO entirely — if they remember you as a reliable, expert source.
Some of my best ongoing link building relationships started as a single HARO response.
Beyond the HARO platform itself:
Qwoted — Similar to HARO. More B2B-focused. Worth adding to your stack.
Featured.com — Another HARO alternative. Growing fast.
Twitter/X HARO hashtag (#journorequest) — Many journalists post their own requests on Twitter. Monitor #journorequest and #PRrequest daily.
SparkToro — For finding journalists who cover your niche so you can build relationships proactively rather than just reactively.
Hunter.io — For finding journalist email addresses when you want to pitch proactively rather than waiting for HARO queries.
HARO is a low-cost, medium-volume strategy that produces very high-quality links.
It doesn't scale the same way that digital PR campaigns scale. You can't buy HARO links or automate them. But every link you earn is genuinely editorial, and those links carry real weight in Google's eyes.
HARO fits best as part of a broader link building strategy — alongside digital PR for bigger campaigns and more targeted tactics for niche publications.
If you run a link building service or manage multiple client accounts, HARO can be run in parallel across clients. One person monitoring and responding to HARO for 3–5 clients is realistic with a good system.
Responding to queries outside your expertise. Journalists can tell. Don't pitch cybersecurity if your expertise is in food and beverage. Your credibility is on the line.
Writing too long. Journalists get hundreds of responses. If yours requires scrolling, it's already lost.
Not reading the full brief. Journalists sometimes say "please include the word 'pineapple' in your response to prove you read this." That's an attention filter. Read the whole brief every time.
Following up aggressively. One follow-up email is fine if the deadline hasn't passed and you haven't heard back. Sending three follow-ups is a quick way to get blacklisted.
Pitching from a personal email. Use your professional email address. It signals credibility.
Forgetting to include your bio. The link comes from your bio. If you don't include it, you might get quoted without any link. Always add: Name, Title, Company, Website.
Use this every time you respond to a query.