How to Turn High-Volume Informational Keywords into Backlink-Earning News Articles

Everyday, news outlets publish articles using the format “I’m an X expert, here’s Y.” These articles aim to rank for a high-volume keyword by combining the newspaper’s authority with an expert’s unique commentary.

This media trend presents website owners with an opportunity to earn backlinks and gain features in the press. All they have to do is:

• Find high-volume keywords in your niche
• Create a click-worthy headline and a few hundred-word commentary
• Send it out to journalists who are currently writing about your industry

This article provides a step-by-step guide on how exactly you can replicate this backlink-earning strategy for your website.

There’s a trend in mainstream news at the moment for journalists to publish articles with the structure: “I’m an X expert; here’s how to do Y.”

We can see how often these article formats are published by putting the keyword intitle:I’m expert into Google News:

As we can see from the above screenshot, four articles with this format have been published in the last 7 hours. This is a typical result, demonstrating how keen journalists are to publish these types of articles.

If we click through these articles, they usually feature an “expert” and link back to their website.

The massive demand for this type of “news” means that site owners can build press links to their website by:

1. Finding topics of interest to people and which they have expertise.
2. Building a list of journalists who are likely to write about this topic.
3. Pitching answers to this topic using the headline format: “I’m an X expert; here’s how to do Y.”

Here, we will go through exactly how to do this:

1. Find High-Interest Topics that You Are an Expert In

The best way to find topics journalists will want to write about is to look for keywords with high search volumes.

Journalists are often KPI’d by the number of unique visitors to their stories. Since newspapers have very high domain and page authority, many of their visitors come through organic search.

In other words, journalists want to publish stories on topics with a high visibility potential. 

Many newspapers provide their staff writers with keyword tools, so they are often aware of the high-search-volume topics within their expertise.

Identifying High-Volume Keywords

Conducting keyword research is the key to finding these high-volume keywords. Use a keyword tool that shows search volume and put in a general seed keyword (one-word keywords work best here). After the results appear, configure the tool to arrange keywords in order of highest to lowest search volume.

Let’s say, for example, that I am in the real estate industry. I will put “house” into my keyword tool and set it to rank keywords from highest to lowest search volume.

I’ve found that any keyword with more than 150 monthly search volumes usually has enough mass appeal to turn into this type of news story.

Search volume isn’t enough to make a keyword suitable for this type of angle. It also needs to have the following characteristics:

1. It needs to have a complex answer: You can’t make a story out of a question that has a simple answer. For example, the keyword “How tall is Kim Kardashian?” might have a lot of search volume, but since it can be completely answered in a sentence, it is not suitable for this type of angle.

2. You need to give a better answer than what’s immediately available online. If you can’t provide more insight than what can be found with a quick Google search, a journalist has no reason to publish your quotes. This makes a keyword like “what is my house worth” unsuitable, as Googling this keyword immediately surfaces searchable databases with house prices. Commentary rarely trumps data.

3. It can’t have been recently covered in the news: Topics that have recently been covered with “I’m an expert” type articles aren’t a great option because journalists want to publish original, novel stories. Put your topic into Google News, and if it has been covered by an “I’m an expert” story in the last three months, you’ll want to exclude it from consideration.

With the property example, a good keyword I found was “unexpected costs when buying a home in the UK.”

This keyword has a complex answer, as buying a home involves several unexpected costs. It also can’t be answered by a searchable database, calculator, or other interactive content.

So long as this topic hasn’t been recently covered in the news, it will be an excellent topic for this type of campaign.

2. Build A List of Journalists Who Will Likely Cover Your Topic

Once you have a topic in mind, you want to build a list of journalists who are likely to cover your topic.

Journalists can be segmented in two ways:

1. Geographically: Journalists typically cover one geographic area, be it a city, region, or country. So, if your insight is relevant to a specific area, you only want to build a list of journalists who work there. For example, insights about buying and selling property can only be relevant to one specific country as the rules about buying property differ from country to country.

2. Topically: Journalists tend to focus on one topic. There’s no point pitching insights about how to do well in a job interview to a journalist who writes about real estate. Fortunately, newspapers are divided into sections, which makes it easy to find journalists who write about a specific topic.

With our “unexpected costs when buying a house UK” keyword, we want to target journalists in the UK who write about property.

There are two techniques for finding these journalists. I call them the “topic first method” and the “outlet first method.” 

Let’s go through them in turn now:

The Topic First Method

This involves putting your topic into Google News, setting Google News to the last six months, and then using Google’s results as your long list, which you filter through to find relevant journalists.

Going back to our “unexpected costs when buying a house UK” keyword, we can use keywords like: “property ladder,” “buy a home,” “buy a house,” and “house prices”:

You then want to look through these articles and find the journalist who wrote them.

The journalist’s name is usually at the top of the article, such as this one:

Put the journalist’s name back into Google and check their author bio on the outlet they work for or visit their Muck Rack profiles. Both of these will show you lists of that journalist’s recent articles.

REMEMBER: You want to only pitch to journalists who have written about your topic recently.

A good rule of thumb is that a journalist should have written about your topic at least five times in their last 50 articles.

Exclude journalists who have written about your exact topic in their last 50 articles. They are not going to want to write the same story twice in such a short space of time.

The Outlet First Method

The second way of finding journalists likely to cover your topic is to get a list of outlets that cover the location you’re writing for (the UK, in our case), go onto the newspaper’s section that is most relevant to your chosen topic, and sift through the journalists who have recently written articles in that section.

Wikipedia is my go-to resource for finding newspapers that cover a specific country, region, or city. If you search Wikipedia for “newspapers in the UK,” you’ll get a list of UK newspapers:

Put these newspapers into Google, navigate to the section most related to what you’re pitching, open the last 20 articles, and look at who the author is.

In most cases, four or five journalists will have written the last 20 articles in one section of a newspaper.

These are the best journalists you can contact, as they are covering your topic right now.

Journalists’ “beats” (the topics they write about) change frequently, so it is imperative to get journalists who are covering your topic right now.

How Many Journalists Should I Reach Out To?

I aim for at least twenty journalists for an “I’m an X expert, here’s how to do Y” angle.

It’s rare that I manage to find more than one hundred journalists who regularly write about my topic.

That said, I tend not to aim for a specific number of journalists. I just work my way through all the relevant keywords and outlets, and the number of journalists I find who regularly cover my topic is the number of journalists I end up pitching.

3. Pitching to the Journalists

Your pitch should follow a specific formula:

• Subject line: This should be the headline of the article you want written. It generally follows the formula: “I’m an X expert, here’s how to do Y.”

• Hook: The first sentence should contain a fact or a statistic that explains why you are dispensing this advice. Example: “A recent Zoopla survey suggested that 39% of us faced unexpected costs when buying a home.” 

• Key points broken up into subheadings: This is the body of your pitch, you generally want it to be 400-600 words and broken up into subheadings of no longer than 3-4 sentences each. Think of it as akin to writing a listicle or a HARO response.

• Links to supporting documents: Provide the journalist with links to your/your client’s headshot, a featured image for the article, and (if you want to make your pitch as strong as possible) a video of you summarising the points you make in an article. Newspapers make a lot of their money from video adverts, so journalists are pressured by their editors to include video content in their stories. Providing journalists with a relevant video means they have to put in less time and effort to publish your story.

• Call to action: Tell the journalist that you are happy to provide more quotes upon request. This helps overcome one of their objections to running your story (that they might have to source more quotes).

Here’s a pitch for our example keyword: “hidden costs when buying a home UK”.

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Subject line: I’m A Property Expert, Here Are Three Unexpected Costs When Buying A Home

Hi {{first}}

A recent Zoopla survey suggested that 39% of Brits faced unexpected costs when buying a home. 

Estate agent Joe Bloggs at Joe’s House Shop offers three unexpected costs that can crop up when buying a home.

1. Mortgage Booking Fee (£100-£250)

“Mortgage brokers generally require you to pay a fee for applying for a mortgage. This typically costs around £150.

Remember that this is a fee, not a deposit. 

So, if you are more likely to be denied a mortgage (say, you’re self-employed or have recently started a new job), you might have to pay this fee more than once.

2. Legal Fees + Disbursements (£300-£600)

“The legal fees involved in buying a home can be hard to predict, and these fees have risen by 7% in the last 12 months.

It’s worth remembering that quoted conveyancing fees sometimes do not include “disbursements.” These are extra fees for things like property searches and bank transfers.

These disbursements can add up to £600.”

3. Survey Reports (£500 – £1000)

“In addition to a conveyancing survey, it’s also generally advised to carry out your own survey. This is to flag up any underlying damage to the property that could lower its value before you pay for it.

Please bear in mind that a surveying company cannot be held liable for any underlying damage that they fail to flag up.

In other words, a clean survey report does not guarantee that your soon-to-be house will not need any significant repairs.”

Here is Joe’s headshot, along with two featured images and a video of Joe explaining these costs:

<link #1>

<link #2>

<link #3>

I hope this helps. Do let me know if you need anything from me. I can turn around extra quotes within 3 hours.

Thanks

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It’s worth remembering that the point of these types of articles is to provide readers with precise, actionable information. Give exact figures where possible and try to leave the reader with information they can use.

What Separates a Winning Pitch From A Losing Pitch?

With expert commentary campaigns, you want to achieve three things:

Generate A Clickbait-y Headline

Journalists want to drive as many clicks as possible to their articles (they are often given bonuses based on clicks). 

You want your headline (and subject line) to evoke a sense of urgency or surprise in your reader.

 A really good example of this that went viral recently was: 

“I’m a Boiler Expert, Here’s Why Turning Your Heating ON in Summer Could Save You Money”. 

This headline is unexpected, as we associate leaving appliances off with being energy efficient. Think about how you can “bust myths” with your insights to create a surprising headline.

Provide Helpful Advice

The best angles are ones that help a reader:

• Make Or Save Money: I’m a Plumbing Expert, Here’s How to Save Money On Your Heating
• Become More Healthy, Beautiful or Athletic: I’m A Fitness Expert, Here’s How to Get A Six Pack in Eight Weeks

• Gain Social Status: I’m a Psychology Expert, Here’s How to Create An Excellent First Impression

• Save Time: I’m a Customer Service Expert, Here’s How to Reduce Your Time On Hold

While keyword volume helps you ascertain interest in a topic, you should also balance this with what practical value a reader will gain from having you answer a question.

The best topics are ones that marry high keyword volume with solving a big pain point.

Have A Complete Story

You want your pitch to provide everything a journalist needs to write their story.

The more content a journalist has to source to write a story, the less likely your story will be published.

Most news stories contain:

• A headline
• A hook – A sentence that explains why the story is important or timely
• 200 – 800 words of content broken into subheadings. 
• Imagery and video components

The more of these components your pitch has, the higher it will convert.

Conclusion

You can get your website featured in the news and earn valuable backlinks by finding high-volume informational keywords that you can comment on and providing commentary with a click-worthy headline.

If possible, try to tie your commentary to a reader’s wealth, health, vanity, or social standing. These topics tend to generate clicks.

Find journalists who have covered topics similar to what you’re pitching several times in the last 6 months and send them a pitch that provides them with everything they need to write the story.

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