How to Use HARO to Earn Local Links for Your Business

Help a Reporter Out (HARO) is one of the most reliable ways for a local business to earn editorial backlinks from high-authority publications – without writing guest posts, running ad campaigns, or hiring a PR agency. The platform connects journalists who need expert sources with business owners and professionals who have relevant knowledge to share. When a journalist uses your contribution, your business earns a cited backlink from their publication, often from sites with domain ratings above 60.

For small and local businesses, those links carry significant weight. A single placement on a respected regional news site or industry publication can lift your local search rankings, build credibility with potential customers, and signal to search engines that your business is a trusted authority in its field.

Step 1: Create Your Account on HARO (or an Alternative Platform)

HARO has rebranded and now operates under Connectively. The sign-up process is straightforward: visit the platform, select "I'm a Source," and complete your profile as a subject matter expert.

Your profile is the foundation of your HARO presence. Fill it out thoroughly. Include your business name, your area of expertise, your professional credentials, and a brief biography of no more than 50 words. Journalists scan profiles quickly; a clear, specific profile earns more responses than a generic one.

If Connectively's query volume feels limited for your niche, consider supplementing with alternatives:

Qwoted

Qwoted connects journalists and subject matter experts across business, finance, and professional services. It offers a cleaner interface than legacy HARO and tends to attract established media outlets.

Source of Sources

Peter Shankman, HARO's original founder, launched Source of Sources after HARO's rebrand. It follows the original model and maintains a strong community of journalists seeking expert input.

SourceBottle

SourceBottle is particularly popular in Australia, the UK, and parts of Africa. For local businesses in those markets, it can surface media opportunities that larger platforms miss.

Running accounts on two or three platforms simultaneously increases your volume of relevant queries without significantly increasing the time you spend.

Step 2: Configure Your Alerts for Relevant Queries

Once registered, configure your preferences to receive only queries relevant to your business. Most platforms let you select broad subject categories such as business, retail, hospitality, real estate, health, or finance. Select every category where you have genuine expertise.

Create a dedicated email label or folder for HARO digests so they do not get buried in your inbox. HARO sends three digests per day: morning, afternoon, and evening. Queries close quickly, and many journalists select their sources within hours of sending a request. A buried email means a missed opportunity.

For niche or city-specific queries, monitor the "General" and "Business" categories even if your business is highly specialised. Journalists writing about local economic conditions, small business challenges, or industry trends frequently post in those broad categories and welcome responses from local operators.

Step 3: Evaluate Each Query Before Responding

Not every query deserves a response. Submitting pitches outside your expertise wastes your time and damages your credibility with editors. Before drafting a response, check three things.

Relevance: Does the journalist's question directly relate to what your business does or what you know from direct experience? A hotel owner can credibly answer queries about hospitality trends, accommodation pricing, or guest expectations. That same owner cannot credibly pitch a query about pharmaceutical supply chains.

Publication quality: Check the domain rating of the outlet before you invest time writing. Domain ratings above 50 generally pass meaningful SEO value. Ratings above 70 are excellent. Avoid outlets with thin content or no editorial standards; links from low-quality sites can actually harm your profile.

Deadline: Most queries have a response deadline, but journalists typically make their selections long before that date. Aim to respond within two to four hours of receiving the digest.

Local businesses operating in competitive markets – restaurants, clinics, real estate agencies, law firms, salons – often find that building local backlinks through editorial placements like HARO provides compounding returns on search visibility that paid directories cannot replicate.

Step 4: Write a Pitch That Gets Selected

Journalists receive hundreds of responses to each query. A pitch that earns a backlink is not the longest or the most enthusiastic; it is the most useful, the clearest, and the easiest to drop directly into an article.

Structure every pitch using this format:

1. One sentence establishing your credentials. Name your role, your business, and the specific experience that qualifies you to answer this question.
2. Two to four sentences of direct, specific insight. Answer the journalist's question plainly. Include a concrete example, a specific figure, or an observation from your own business experience that no one could find by searching Google.
3. A brief closing line. Offer to provide additional detail or a follow-up if needed.

Keep pitches under 200 words. Write in plain, grammatically correct language. Use short paragraphs. Journalists are editing on deadline; a pitch that reads like a press release will be skipped.

Avoid generic advice that could have come from any online article. Journalists are looking for the insight that comes from running an actual business: a real pricing example, a customer behaviour they have observed, a market trend they have seen in their city. That specificity is what gets selected.

For a restaurant owner in Lagos, a dentist in Nairobi, or a real estate agency in Cape Town, the competitive advantage is local knowledge. National publications writing about African business, tourism, or consumer trends regularly need sources with on-the-ground experience. That is exactly what your business offers.

Destinali helps local businesses across 32 countries – including 27 major African markets and markets in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and the Philippines – build the kind of structured online presence that makes their expertise credible and findable when journalists search for sources.

Step 5: Track Your Pitches and Measure Results

Create a simple tracking sheet with five columns: publication name, query topic, date submitted, status, and outcome. This helps you identify which categories and publication types respond to your pitches, and which do not.

When a pitch is accepted, you will typically receive no formal notification. Check periodically by searching for your business name in quotation marks on Google, or by setting up a Google Alert for your name and your business name. When the article goes live, confirm that the backlink uses the do-follow attribute. Tools like Ahrefs or Moz will show new backlinks pointing to your domain within a few days of publication.

Tracking your local search rankings before and after earning a significant placement gives you a clear picture of the impact. A single link from a publication with a domain rating above 70 can produce a measurable ranking improvement for targeted local keywords within four to eight weeks.

Beyond rankings, monitor referral traffic from each placement. Some HARO links produce little direct traffic but carry strong authority value. Others – particularly placements in listicles or "best of" articles that get updated regularly – can deliver consistent referral visits for months.

Step 6: Build Relationships and Repeat

A journalist who includes your quote once is far more likely to contact you again if you were easy to work with and delivered exactly what they needed. When an article goes live with your contribution, send a brief, professional note thanking the journalist and letting them know the piece was excellent. No ask, no pitch – just a simple acknowledgment.

Over time, this positions you as a reliable source. Journalists under deadline pressure return to sources they trust. Some will contact you directly for future stories, bypassing HARO entirely and offering you editorial mentions that are not publicly available to competitors.

Content published through earned media also reinforces your authority in AI-powered search tools. When your business is cited by credible publications, AI systems such as ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity are more likely to recognise your brand as a reliable source and surface it in relevant responses – a dimension of local search visibility for AI tools that most local businesses have not yet factored into their strategy.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Is HARO and How Does It Work for Local Businesses?

HARO (Help a Reporter Out), now operating as Connectively, is a platform that connects journalists seeking expert sources with business owners and professionals willing to provide insight. A journalist posts a query; you respond with a relevant pitch; if selected, your business earns a cited backlink in their published article. Local businesses benefit because they offer specific, on-the-ground knowledge that generic industry commentators cannot provide.

How Many Pitches Should I Send per Week?

Sending five to ten targeted pitches per week is a sustainable starting point for most small business owners. Quality matters far more than volume. A well-researched, specific pitch to one relevant query outperforms ten generic responses sent to loosely related queries. Track your acceptance rate by category so you can focus effort where it produces results.

Do HARO Backlinks Help With Local SEO Specifically?

Yes. Backlinks from authoritative publications are one of the strongest signals Google uses to assess domain credibility, which directly influences local search rankings. A placement in a respected regional news outlet or industry publication carries particular weight for local search because it associates your business with relevant geographic and topical signals.

How Long Does It Take to Earn Your First HARO Backlink?

Most businesses that pitch consistently and target relevant queries earn their first backlink within four to eight weeks. The timeline depends on the volume of relevant queries in your niche, the quality of your pitches, and how competitive your category is. Businesses in clearly defined professional categories – medical, legal, hospitality, finance – tend to find relevant queries more frequently.

Are HARO Links Free?

Yes. Submitting pitches through HARO and its alternatives is free. You invest time rather than money. The resulting backlinks, if earned from high domain rating publications, carry the same SEO value as links that other businesses pay content agencies significant fees to acquire through guest posting or sponsored placement.

What Makes a HARO Pitch Get Rejected?

The most common reasons for rejection are poor relevance, generic advice that lacks specific expertise, pitches that are too long, and responses submitted after the journalist has already made their selection. Pitches that sound like marketing copy – rather than genuine expert commentary – are also passed over quickly. Write as a knowledgeable professional, not as someone promoting a product.

Can a Small Business in Africa or a Developing Market Use HARO Effectively?

Absolutely. Journalists writing for international publications about African business, emerging markets, hospitality, real estate, or consumer trends actively seek sources with direct local experience. A hotel operator in Accra, a law firm in Nairobi, or a clinic in Cape Town has genuine expertise that national commentators based elsewhere cannot provide. That specificity is an advantage, not a limitation.

What to Do Now

1. Create your account on Connectively and complete your profile with your full credentials, role, and area of expertise.
2. Set up a dedicated email folder for HARO digests so you see queries as they arrive.
3. Identify three to five topic categories where your business has genuine, experience-backed knowledge.
4. Send your first pitch this week – target a query where your local or industry knowledge gives you a clear edge.
5. Build a simple tracking sheet to monitor submissions, placements, and ranking changes over time.

Consistent participation in HARO over three to six months builds a backlink profile that most local competitors will not have the patience to replicate and the authority signals compound over time.

To extend that authority across more discovery channels, local businesses can create a free listing on Destinali to strengthen their structured online presence alongside the editorial links they earn through HARO.