Lessons from ContactOut's Link Building Strategy

When it comes to SEO, most people immediately think of optimizing website content, fixing technical errors, and polishing metadata. While all these are important, off-page SEO plays an equally powerful role in improving your search engine visibility and authority. At its core, off-page SEO is about building trust, relevance, and authority beyond your website—mainly through high-quality backlinks.

One solid example of this in action is the off-page SEO strategy implemented for ContactOut.com—a leading platform for finding professional email addresses and contact details. In this blog, I’ll walk you through how we approached their link-building campaign and why it worked.

What Is Off-Page SEO?

Off-page SEO refers to actions taken outside your own website to impact your rankings within search engine results pages (SERPs). These activities include:

• Link Building

• Brand Mentions

• Content Marketing (on external sites)

• Social Media Signals

• PR and Influencer Outreach

Among these, link building remains one of the most powerful ways to boost off-page SEO. Google uses backlinks as a vote of confidence. The more high-quality, relevant links point to your site, the more trustworthy and authoritative your domain becomes.

The Strategy for ContactOut

For ContactOut, the goal was clear: build high-quality backlinks that drive organic growth and establish thought leadership in the B2B and recruitment space. We targeted three key types of backlinks:

🏷️ Brand Mention Backlinks

These are natural links where ContactOut was included as a recommended tool or alternative in list-style blog posts or resource hubs.

Examples:

• Side Business Resources – RyRob.com

• RocketReach Alternatives – Close.com

• LinkedIn Lead Strategies – WUSchools

Why it matters:
Brand mentions not only build awareness but also pass link equity from authoritative sources directly to your domain.

🎯 Targeted Keyword Backlinks

We strategically placed links using specific anchor texts related to ContactOut’s core offerings, such as "LinkedIn email finder" or "email outreach tool."

Examples:

• Effective Content Distribution – ContentGo

• Optimizing LinkedIn Company Pages – Social Hive

• Email Marketing for Law Firms – BustleWeb

Why it matters:
Links with relevant anchor text help search engines understand what the linked page is about, boosting keyword rankings and topical authority.

✍️ Guest Post Backlinks

We wrote original, value-packed content for reputable sites, integrating ContactOut naturally into the content as a useful resource.

Examples:

• Transform Sales with Email Databases – eMarketing Hacks

• The 3Ps of Digital Marketing – M7B5

• LinkedIn Marketing Insights – Social Hive

Why it matters:
Guest blogging is a powerful way to not only get backlinks, but also demonstrate expertise and build relationships within your industry.

Results That Matter

By implementing this off-page SEO strategy, ContactOut saw:

• Increased domain authority over time

• Higher organic rankings for competitive keywords

• Broader brand exposure across niche-relevant websites

• Referral traffic from readers actively searching for lead generation tools