I don’t know anything about the new tool. I haven’t tried it. But after recently trying HARO, I can’t say I’m surprised or saddened by its passing. He was a walking corpse for a while.
I have used HARO in the past to create links. It worked. But a couple of months ago, I experienced the platform from the other side when I decided to try providing some “expert” insights for our posts.
After just a few minutes of work, I received hundreds of proposals:
So, I grabbed a cup of coffee and started working on it. It didn’t take long before I lost the will to live. Every other proposal seemed like nothing more than lazy AI-generated nonsense from someone who decidedly he was no expert.
Here’s one:
Seriously. Who writes like that? I’m a self-confessed dullard (any guy Dull Men’s Club members here?), and I’m not either That boring…
I don’t think I looked at more than 30-40 responses. I just couldn’t do it. It felt like having a conversation with ChatGPT… and not a very good one!
Although I only reviewed a few dozen of the many submissions I received, one stood out to me:
Believe it or not, this response came from a past client of mine who runs an SEO agency in the UK. Given his level of knowledge and experience (he actually taught me a lot about SEO back when I pestered him with questions on Skype), this presentation set off alarm bells for two reasons:
- I really doubt he spends his time answering HARO’s questions
- I know for a fact that he is not a fan of Neil Patel (sorry, Neil, but I’m sure you’re aware of your reputation at this point!)
So… I decided to face it 😉
Here’s what he said:
Shock.
I pressed him for more details:
I’m getting a great deal and I’m paying per link rather than the typical £xxxx per month for X number of proposals. […] The answers you’ve seen aren’t ideal, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take since I realistically don’t have the time to do it myself. He’s not a native English speaker, but I had to talk to him a few times about clear use of AI. I don’t care about the low cost ones but on the authoritative sites you have to be more refined.
I think this pretty much sums up the state of HARO before his death. Most of the “proposals” were simply AI responses from SEOs trying to build links for their clients.
Do not get me wrong. I’m not throwing shade here. I know it’s hard to find good links, so you have to do what works. And the reality is that HARO Done Work. Just look at the example below. You can tell from the anchor and surrounding text in Ahrefs that these links were almost certainly built with HARO:
But that was the problem. HARO worked so well in the past that it was only a matter of time before spammers and the #scale team ruined it for everyone. This is what happened and now HARO no longer exists. AS…
If you are a link builderI think it’s time to admit that HARO link building is dead and move on.
No tactic works well forever. His the law of shitty clicks. This is why you no longer see SEOs having huge success with tactics like broken link building. They have moved on to more innovative tactics or, dare I say, they are simply buying links.
Side note.
Speaking of link buying, here’s something to think about: If Connectively charges for proposals, are the links built through those proposals technically paid for? If so, are they violating Google’s spam policies? It’s a dark old world, this SEO joke, huh?
If you are a journalist, Connectively it might be worth a try. But with experts paying for submissions, you probably won’t get as many responses. That could be a good thing. You may receive less spam. Or you may simply be spammed by SEOs with deep pockets. The jury is out for now.
My advice? Look for alternative methods such as finding and contacting experts directly. You can easily use tools like Content Explorer to find people who have written a lot of content on the topic and are likely experts.
For example, if you search for content with “backlinks” in the title and go to the Authors tab, you may see a familiar name. 😉
I don’t know if I would call myself an expert, but I would be happy to give you a quote if you reached out to me on social media or sent me an email (here’s how to find my email address).
Alternatively, you can get your audience to give you their opinions on social media. I did this recently with a survey on X and included many of the responses in my guide on toxic backlinks.
Both of these options are faster than using HARO because you don’t have to sift through hundreds of answers looking for a needle in a haystack. If you disagree with me and still love HARO, feel free to tell me why on X 😉