Linkbuildr Wordpress Plugin Review - Is it useful for Bloggers in 2020

The new SEO plugin in-town is called Linkbuildr. This is useful if you want to send “shout-out” emails to website owners. It cannot be said a pure web outreach plugin, but it can substitute for some of its job.

It is common to link to external resources which are relevant to the article.

But are you sure whether they are notified that you are linking to them?

This plugin does the neat job of notifying them and also asking them a return favor.

Related

Link Building is one of the top most ranking signals in 2020 also. Though (Page Rank) PR algorithm is not revealed by Google, it is still working behind the screens.

How I Tested this Plugin

I left all the default settings with the default email template. I chose an existing post which had two external links. My assumption that it would automatically find the blog or website owner’s name. So without changing the content, I just clicked on “Update” button.

Immediately I found a message at the top that “ linkbuildr found 2 websites in your post that need contact details added: Add Details”.  I clicked the last label. But to my dismay, this method is not totally automated. I had to find the domain author details and add them manually.

But I could see in Contacts, that the domains were added. This is at least useful to know which domains you are linking to. Once you find their email contact address, you can send them a good outreach email.

Linkbuildr Plugin – Options Available

1. Dashboard


2. Contacts


3. New Contact


4. Import Contacts


5. Ignored Domains


6. Email Templates


7. New Email Template


8. Settings

We shall discuss those below.

Dashboard

A summary of two items is listed here.

1. Contacts


2. Email Templates

A default email template is created once you install the plugin.  You can see the template name, sender, subject, content and tweet. If you have created any custom email template or imported any contacts from a CSV file, it is also visible here.

Contacts

You can add new contact here. Once you click “Add new”, it will take you to the New Contact item. You have to provide the following details.

1. Domain (Use full root domain including http://)


2. Site Name


3. Contact Name


4. Email


5. Message Template

You can also uncheck the “Unsubscribed” option to remove the contact from the list.

Import Contacts

This is useful if you want to do normal web outreach email for link building. Generally you need to the website owner email address and good email template to reach out to them. The conversion rate is between 1 to 2%.  So if you send 100 emails, only 2 to 3 owners will take action.

This is where automation comes in. So if you can add all the contacts of the web owners as a list, you can send out a “shout out” email once you publish a post. If at least a few link back to you or promote your post as a social campaign it’s a blessing in disguise.

There are certain CSV file requirements to import the contacts.

• First row should be column headers


• Column headers should include the following values to specify corresponding data:
  
  • “domain” – full url, including “http://” or “https://”
  
  
  • “site” – the name used to reference the site
  
  
  • “name” – the name of the contact
  
  
  • “email” – the email address for the contact.
  
  


• There should only be 4 columns in the file.


• The file should not exceed 2995 rows.

Ignored Domains

You can add a list of domain that you want to be ignored while sending the email outreach. This is helpful if you have domains like amazon, google, microsoft etc, which have very less chances of linking back to you.

Email Templates

This is where you create a new email template for sending emails to blog owners. Since the default email template may not work all the times. You have to create new creative methods each time you reach out to the blog owners you link in your article. They should be able to understand the mutual benefit of linking back or providing any social signals.

You can give an email template name, sender email (defaults to post author if left blank), email subject, message template and tweet template. There can also be shortcodes that can be included in the email like posturl, contactname, author etc.

Settings

This has the following items.

1. 
   

   General Settings

   
   

Send Linkbuildr Emails on Publish by Default.

2. 
   

   Notification Settings

   
   

Settings for notifications displayed within the WordPress Admin.

Display New Contact Notfications

Unsubscribe Settings

The unsubscribe link text and landing page for unsubscribe link can be set here. The unsubscribe message template and already unsubscribed message can also be set here using the shortcodes mentioned above.