Are you looking for ways to expand your link building strategies and improve your SEO campaign? Then HARO is something that may have crossed your mind.
HARO link building has helped many people for years, including brands and businesses to build their name but, at the same time, improve their online presence.
But with thousands of people using it and reporters looking for sources, multiple pitches are made, which increases competition, and motivating people to use alternatives similar to HARO.
Let’s get into it in more detail!
What is HARO?
Help A Reporter Out, abbreviated as HARO, is a PR tool that helps reporters and journalists find resources, enabling them to connect with industry professionals to get expert insights for their content. By sending emails to the relevant sources, they can get mentioned in their websites or publications while also getting a social media mention and link to their website.
Through its ability to reach many famed and trusted media outlets and publishing houses, HARO has proved to be a great link-building tool for several online marketers who want to enhance their brand awareness and get relevant links back to their site.
Why Use HARO Alternatives?
When HARO is known for providing the most reputable, well-known, and quality sources, why should you switch to other similar tools?
• Since HARO has millions subscribers, PR tools similar to it have fewer competitors.
• Gaining a backlink through HARO can be quite time-consuming, but with the alternatives, it can be done in a lot less time.
• You can explore many niches through HARO-like tools and break them down to make them relevant to your industry.
• Some even have filter options, making finding the right audience and sources easier.
10 Best HARO Alternatives
Listed here are ten alternatives like HARO that you can use for your business:
1. Source Bottle
First up on our list is Source Bottle, which is a perfect platform to use by bloggers, journalists, podcasters, or small businesses to look for sources for quotes without much effort.
Users can access detailed case studies and receive giveaways when they review a particular product. Sourcebottle is a free tool but only up to 2 “Drink Up” emails daily. If you want to take extra benefits, you can always upgrade to its “Expert Profile Plan” at $25 per month, a paid subscription.
The best feature of this platform is that whenever journalist and bloggers or any user looks for any information in your field of expertise, it notifies you, letting you know that your content is being seen.
2. Terkel/ Featured
Best for content publishers, agencies, professionals, and small businesses, Terkel, now known as Featured, is a community-based content creation platform that lets users connect with experts to get knowledgeable insights and the best answers.
Terkel provides full-length articles as answers to the users to distinguish itself from HARO. The “Lite” version is free to use, with five answers a month. However, to use more features, users can select between paid membership for “Premium” at $99 and “Team” at $199 monthly.
Brands like GoDaddy, Calendly, and many more can post a question for which the experts can voice their answers. The ones that are relevant and are the best among the rest are then turned into an article. Finally, before publishing it, the partner brands are supposed to approve the article.
3. Muck Rack
Muck Rack is similar to HARO but has more PR features and tools. As a user, you have much more control over connecting with the experts and managing your connections, which HARO fails to do.
With the supposed price of $ 5,000 annually, users, such as journalists, influencers, reporters, etc., can get more attention by making alerts for specific topics that experts know about and work with each other.
The tool will then send interesting pitches to a group of interested people. The contact details of reporters will also be included so companies can easily get in touch with the right person for the job.
The curated media list is updated regularly to work according to the needs of the clients, unlike HARO, where the users have to go through the list manually to figure out what the client needs.
4. PitchBox
If you are looking for a tool similar to HARO, PitchBox will do a similar job for you but with tons of other features.
With pricing ranging from $200 to $1500, this tool is highly effective for your link prospecting practices. The process involves using pre-made email formats to email publishers. If they don’t reply after a while, the system sends more emails on its own. This makes finding potential clients much easier and saves a lot of time and effort.
To get a proper plan according to your needs, you must use a demo to know the price you have to pay for the service before signing up on the platform.
5. ProfNet
ProfNet and HARO are managed by the same company, Cision, so they function quite similarly in many aspects.
But while HARO lets you find journalists to the experts, ProNet goes beyond that. ProfNet also connects PR agencies and PR professionals with journalists and experts that benefit everyone by increasing their visibility and assisting them in getting their work published. The entire process is done through an email-based system that sends out requests for experts to provide input on various topics.
Unlike HARO, the users have to pay a high amount of $1500 per month after the free trial to use its services. This can be quite a holdback for businesses, especially the budding ones, as they won’t be able to chip in this huge amount at their initial stages.
6. Qwoted
Qwoted is a platform that’s easy to use and that does the same job as HARO: connecting journalists with experts. But one of the biggest differences and the most important feature it has is giving journalists the option to mute when they’ve found what they need.
This tool is completely free to use, with multiple features that can be used without paying any extra penny. However, they have two plans: “Pro” at $149.99 and “Teams” starting at $750 monthly if you want to use more advanced features.
Whether you are using its free plan or paid version, with its filtering process and stating the categories you are concentrating on, you can rest assured that you’ll be getting an authentic audience as the tool rejects any fake personas.
Through this tool journalists can also create personalized pitches according to their requirements, to help them curate content as per the responses they get.
7. Meltwater
Meltwater’s features are focused to get more media opportunities such as media marketing, PR, and communication tasks rather than on sources looking to enhance their credibility or expand their visibility. It provides tools specifically designed for media interaction, analysis, and monitoring of extensive press coverage.
At a price paid of $4000 annually, the tool keeps all its sources and trends up-to-date, helping the users to know which pitching angle will be the most successful.
You can opt for weekly or daily newsletters to know what’s trending in the media, along with contact details of the reporters to build a targeted database for your business and track your media mentions across different platforms.
8. JustReachOut
Want to connect with journalists, bloggers, and podcast hosts in a single PR platform? JustReachOut is the answer to it! This tool shows you details of all the experts and relevant journalists you are looking for according to your niche and industry field.
With its plan starting from $199 every month, you can pitch your articles to reporters writing stories or other sources relevant to your business. However, if you see yourself as a confident speaker, you can pitch to become a podcast guest to be interviewed. Apart from that, you can also target those with your articles who accept guest posts.
This is an excellent link-building tool that can be used to contact those who have broken links on their websites and offer them your content.
One of the most exciting features you can get here is that you can track the pitches you’ve made, showing whether or not the journalists or others have seen them helping you to monitor your overall brand awareness.
9. Help a B2B Writer
This tool, specially built for B2B writers by a B2B writer herself, Elise Dopson, helps the writers get in contact with industry specialists.
You can register as a source for free to use this platform, select the area of expertise, and soon, you’ll get source requests that match your requirements. When you share your insights with them, there are good chances that you might get a free backlink to your website.
Once you check the industries you are offering content or want to get source requests from, the tool will prevent any irrelevant request from reaching your inbox and show only the exclusive quotes.
Using this tool as your content marketing strategy will allow B2B writers include expert opinions in their writings, which can eventually help their page and content rank better on SERP.
10. Twitter/ X
If you thought Twitter was just a social media networking platform, think again! With Twitter rebranded as X, you can get many link-building opportunities and ways to improve your PR campaigns. With just a simple hashtag like #journorequests #prrequest, you can search for journalists and many other who are seeking expert source and opinions to help them with their content.
Just remember to use keywords related to your industry, to see results only from the relevant sources. Also, since these hashtags are not visible to a broader audience, you will face less competition compared to HARO.
You can sign up for free on Twitter and use these search options to get featured on relevant, high-quality content in your industry.
Get Ready To Explore Other HARO-like Tools!
HARO remains one of the best tools out there that has truly helped businesses build their name in the online market for a long time. But we cannot ignore the fact that the competition is becoming fierce, with more businesses coming up in the industries. Therefore, improving your chances of being seen can be done effortlessly with these best alternatives.
While choosing HARO for link building is always the first option for many content marketers, it is not good to just stick to one tool; instead, discover multiple options to fasten the link-building process.
So, start exploring these PR tools, and who knows, you could find something relevant to your needs that is better than HARO!
FAQ
Is HARO free to use?
Yes, you can enjoy multiple benefits offered by HARO for free. However, if you want to use more features, it offers three paid plans: “Standard” for $19/month, “Advanced” for $49/ month, and “Premium” for $149/month.
What is the equivalent of HARO?
Among all the alternatives, ProfNet is something that is very close to HARO as both are run by Cision.
How does HARO help in getting backlinks?
HARO is a PR and outreach platform that allows you to look for journalists to share your content for better brand visibility. Most businesses use it to get referral traffic, which helps them get quality backlinks.
