It’s like death and taxes: inevitable. The bigger a company gets, the worse its content marketing becomes.

HubSpot teaching you how to type the shrug emoji or buy bitcoin stock. Salesforce sharing inspiring business quotes. GoDaddy helping you use Bing AI, or Zendesk sharing catchy sales slogans.

Judged by content marketing best practice, these articles are bad.

They won’t resonate with decision-makers. Nobody will buy a HubSpot license after Googling “how to buy bitcoin stock.” It’s the very definition of vanity traffic: tons of visits with no obvious impact on the business.

So why does this happen?

There’s an obvious (but flawed) answer to this question: big companies are inefficient.

As companies grow, they become more complicated, and writing good, relevant content becomes harder. I’ve experienced this firsthand:

• extra rounds of legal review and stakeholder approval creeping into processes.
• content watered down to serve an ever-more generic “brand voice”.
• growing misalignment between search and content teams.
• a lack of content leadership within the company as early employees leave.

Similarly, funded companies have to grow, even when they’re already huge. Content has to feed the machine, continually increasing traffic… even if that traffic never contributes to the bottom line.

There’s an element of truth here, but I’ve come to think that both these arguments are naive, and certainly not the whole story.

It is wrong to assume that the same people that grew the company suddenly forgot everything they once knew about content, and wrong to assume that companies willfully target useless keywords just to game their OKRs.

Instead, let’s assume that this strategy is deliberate, and not oversight. I think bad content—and the vanity traffic it generates—is actually good for business.

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There are benefits to driving tons of traffic, even if that traffic never directly converts. Or put in meme format:

Programmatic SEO is a good example. Why does Dialpad create landing pages for local phone numbers?

Why does Wise target exchange rate keywords?

Why do we have a list of most popular websites pages?

As this Twitter user points out, these articles will never convert…

…but they don’t need to.

Every published URL and targeted keyword is a new doorway from the backwaters of the internet into your website. It’s a chance to acquire backlinks that wouldn’t otherwise exist, and an opportunity to get your brand in front of thousands of new, otherwise unfamiliar people.

These benefits might not directly translate into revenue, but over time, in aggregate, they can have a huge indirect impact on revenue. They can:

• Strengthen domain authority and the search performance of every other page on the website.
• Boost brand awareness, and encourage serendipitous interactions that land your brand in front of the right person at the right time.
• Deny your competitors traffic and dilute their share of voice.

These small benefits become more worthwhile when multiplied across many hundreds or thousands of pages. If you can minimize the cost of the content, there is relatively little downside.

What about topical authority?

“But what about topical authority?!” I hear you cry. “If you stray too far from your area of expertise, won’t rankings suffer for it?”

I reply simply with this screenshot of Forbes’ “health” subfolder, generating almost 4 million estimated monthly organic pageviews:

Many companies scale their output through networks of freelancer writers, avoiding the cost of fully loaded employees. They have established, efficient processes for research, briefing, editorial review, publication and maintenance. The cost of an additional “unit” of content—or ten, or a hundred—is not that great, especially relative to other marketing channels.

There is also relatively little opportunity cost to consider: the fact that energy spent on “vanity” traffic could be better spent elsewhere, on more business-relevant topics.

In reality, many of the companies engaging in this strategy have already plucked the low-hanging fruit and written almost every product-relevant topic. There are a finite number of high traffic, high relevance topics; blog consistently for a decade and you too will reach these limits.

On top of that, the HubSpots and Salesforces of the world have very established, very efficient sales processes. Content gating, lead capture and scoring, and retargeting allow them to put very small conversion rates to relatively good use.

Even HubSpot’s article on Bitcoin stock has its own relevant call-to-action—and for HubSpot, building a database of aspiring investors is more valuable than it sounds, because…

But for the biggest companies, this principle is taken to an extreme. When a company gears up to IPO, its target audience expands to… pretty much everyone.

This was something Janessa Lantz (ex-HubSpot and dbt Labs) helped me understand: the target audience for a post-IPO company is not just end users, but institutional investors, market analysts, journalists, even regular Jane investors.

These are people who can influence the company’s worth in ways beyond simply buying a subscription: they can invest or encourage others to invest and dramatically influence the share price. These people are influenced by billboards, OOH advertising and, you guessed it, seemingly “bad” content showing up whenever they Google something.

You can think of this as a second, additional marketing funnel for post-IPO companies:

These visitors might not purchase a software subscription when they see your article in the SERP, but they will notice your brand, and maybe listen more attentively the next time your stock ticker appears on the news.

They won’t become power users, but they might download your eBook and add an extra unit to the email subscribers reported in your S1.

They might not contribute revenue now, but they will in the future: in the form of stock appreciation, or becoming the target audience for a future product line.

Vanity traffic does create value, but in a form most content marketers are not used to measuring.

SEO can quickly create a moat of backlinks and brand awareness that can be virtually impossible to challenge; left unchecked, the gap between your company and your rival can accelerate at an accelerating pace.

Pumping out “bad” content and chasing vanity traffic is a chance to deny your rivals unchallenged share of voice, and make sure your brand always has a seat at the table.

Final thoughts

This is not an argument to suggest that every company should invest in hyper-broad, high-traffic keywords. But if you’ve been blogging for a decade, or you’re gearing up for an IPO, then “bad content” and the vanity traffic it creates might not be so bad.

Whatever the reason, in this article, I’ll share some alternatives to HARO and a few extra ways to get expert quotes and backlinks for your website.

My experience of Connectively so far mirrored Josh’s experience of old HARO: The responses were most likely automated.

Although I was off to a bad start, looking through most of the responses afterward, these two were the only blatant automated pitches I could spot.

These responses weren’t included in my survey, and anyone who saw my pitch would have to copy and paste the survey link to complete it—increasing the chance of genuine human responses—hopefully.

So, without further ado, here are the results of the survey.

Price: Free.

Help a B2B Writer was the #1 alternative platform respondents recommended. In my survey it got 22% of the vote.

Help a B2B Writer is a platform run by Superpath that is similar to HARO but focused on connecting business-to-business (B2B) journalists with industry experts and sources for their stories.

Price: Free and paid plans. Paid plans start at $99 per month.

Coming in joint second place, Featured was popular, scoring 18% of the vote.

Featured connects journalists with experts and thought leaders. It allows experts to create profiles showcasing their expertise and helps journalists find suitable sources for their stories.

Price: Free and paid plans. Paid plans start at $99 per month.

Qwoted is another platform that I’ve heard talked about a lot. It came in joint second place, scoring 18% of the vote.

Qwoted matches journalists with expert sources, allowing them to collaborate on creating high-quality content. It streamlines the process of finding and connecting with relevant sources.

Price: Free for ten pitches per month

Despite being the “new HARO,” Connectively came 4th on my list, scoring 12% of the vote—surprisingly, it wasn’t even the top choice for most users on its own platform.

Connectively connects journalists with sources and experts. It helps journalists find relevant sources for their stories and allows experts to gain media exposure.

Price: Free and paid plans. Paid plans start at $5.95 per month.

SourceBottle is an online platform that connects journalists, bloggers, and media professionals with expert sources. It allows experts to pitch their ideas and insights to journalists looking for story sources. It scored 9% of the vote in my survey.

Price: Free.

JournoRequest is an X account that shares journalist requests for sources. UK-based journalists and experts often use it, but it can sometimes have international reach. It scored 7% of the vote in my survey.

Price: Paid. Plans start at $1,150 per year.

ProfNet connects journalists to expert sources. It helps journalists find knowledgeable sources for their articles, interviews, and other media content. It helps subject matter experts gain media exposure and share their expertise. It scored 5% of the vote in my survey.

Price: 7-day free trial and paid plans. Paid plans start at $147 per month.

JustReachOut is a PR and influencer outreach platform that helps businesses find and connect with relevant journalists and influencers. It provides tools for personalized outreach and relationship management. It scored 3% of the vote in my survey.

Price: 14-day free trial and paid plans. Paid plans start at $50 per month.

OnePitch is a platform that simplifies the process of pitching story ideas to journalists. Businesses and PR professionals can create and send targeted pitches to relevant media outlets. It scored 3% of the vote in my survey.

Price: Free.

PitchRate is a free PR tool that connects journalists and highly rated experts. Useful for subject matter experts looking for free PR leads, media coverage, or publicity. Or journalists looking for credible sources. It scored 1% of the vote in my survey.

Price: Free and paid plans. Paid plans start at ~$105 per month.

A UK service that connects media professionals with expert sources, press releases, and PR contacts. It scored 1% of the vote in my survey.

Price: Invitation-only platform.

Forbes Councils is an invitation-only community for executives and entrepreneurs. Members can contribute expert insights and thought leadership content to Forbes.com and gain media exposure. It scored 1% of the vote in my survey.

Price: Free.

Yes, you read that right.

HERO was created by Peter Shankman, the original creator of HARO, who said the platform will always be free. It scored 1% of the vote in my survey.

Peter set up the platform after receiving over 2,000 emails asking him to build a new version of HARO.

Price: Paid. Sign up for details.

Meltwater received no votes in my survey, but I included it because I’d seen it shared on social media as a paid alternative to HARO.

It’s a media intelligence and social media monitoring platform. It provides tools for tracking media coverage, analyzing sentiment, and identifying influencers and journalists for outreach.

Price: Free.

Expertise Finder also received no votes in my survey, but it was included as I saw it had been recommended as an HARO alternative on LinkedIn. It’s a platform that helps journalists find and connect with expert sources from universities.

We’ve already seen that JournoRequest is a popular X account that shares journalist requests for sources.

But you can also follow hashtags on X to access even more opportunities.

Here are my favorite hashtags to follow:

I used to track the #journorequest hashtag to find opportunities for my clients when I worked agency-side, so I know it can work well for quotes and link acquisition.

Here are two opportunities I found just checking the #journorequest hashtag:

Here’s another example from the Telegraph—a DR 92 website:

We tested this with our SEO statistics post, and as you can see, it still ranks number one in Google.

Another method is to use the Linking authors report in Ahrefs’ Site Explorer. This report shows the authors’ names who link to any website you enter.

You can see which authors link to their site by entering your competitor’s domain. Some of these authors may represent outreach opportunities for your website as well.

1. Head to Site Explorer, click on Linking authors
2. Type in your competitor’s URL
3. Contact any authors that you think may be interested in your website and its content

When I was about to wrap up this article, I was contacted by Greg Heilers of Jolly SEO on LinkedIn.

He said he’d sent 200,000+ pitches over the years and wanted to share the results with me.

These are his top three platforms over the last 1,000 pitches he sent. Interestingly, we can see that it’s similar to my much smaller-scale survey.

Hopefully, the data here speaks for itself. The high-quality links and traffic from HARO alternatives is considerable.

This research shows that Featured gained the most link placements in this campaign.

We have compiled some helpful content related to link building that you can get your teeth into. These hand-picked guides will take you from beginner to expert in no time.

Here are my favorite resources on this topic:

Final thoughts

There are many options for sourcing expert quotes and getting links for your next marketing campaigns. HARO may be dead, but its legacy lives on.

My highly unscientific survey suggests that most “new HARO” users liked Help a B2B Writer the most, but for HARO purists, there really is only one choice—HERO.

Give your favorites from this list a whirl, and let me know if you have any success. Got more questions? Ping me on X. 🙂

OpenAI content deal will enhance ChatGPT with the ability to show real-time content with links in response to queries. OpenAI quietly took steps to gaining more search engine type functionality as part of a content licensing deal that may have positive implications for publishers and SEO.

Content Licensing Deal

OpenAI agreed to content licensing with the Financial Times, a global news organization with offices in London, New York, across continental Europe and Asia.

Content licensing deals between AI organizations and publishers are generally about getting access to high quality training data. The training data is then used by language models to learn connections between words and concepts. This deal goes far beyond that use.

ChatGPT Will Show Direct Quotes With Attribution

What makes this content licensing deal between The Financial Times and OpenAI is that there is a reference to giving attribution to content within ChatGPT.

The announced licensing deal explicitly mentions the use of the licensed content so that ChatGPT could directly quote it and provide links to the licensed content.

Further, the licensing deal is intended to help improve ChatGPT’s “usefulness”, which is vague and can mean many things, but it takes on a slightly different meaning when used in the context of attributed answers.

The Financial Times agreement states that the licensing deal is for use in ChatGPT when it provides “attributed content” which is content with an attribution, commonly a link to where the content appeared.

This is the part of the announcement that references attributed content:

“The Financial Times today announced a strategic partnership and licensing agreement with OpenAI, a leader in artificial intelligence research and deployment, to enhance ChatGPT with attributed content, help improve its models’ usefulness by incorporating FT journalism, and collaborate on developing new AI products and features for FT readers. “

And this is the part of the announcement that mentions ChatGPT offering users attributed quotes and links:

“Through the partnership, ChatGPT users will be able to see select attributed summaries, quotes and links to FT journalism in response to relevant queries.”

The Financial Times Group CEO was even more explicit about OpenAI’s intention to show content and links in ChatGPT:

“This is an important agreement in a number of respects,” said FT Group CEO John Ridding. “It recognises the value of our award-winning journalism and will give us early insights into how content is surfaced through AI. …this partnership will help keep us at the forefront of developments in how people access and use information.

OpenAI understands the importance of transparency, attribution, and compensation…”

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Brad Lightcap, COO of OpenAI directly referenced showing real-time news content in ChatGPT but more important he referenced OpenAI exploring new ways to show content to its user base.

Lastly, the COO stated that they embraced disruption, which means innovation that creates a new industry or paradigm, usually at the expense of an older one, like search engines.

Lightcap is quoted:

“We have always embraced new technologies and disruption, and we’ll continue to operate with both curiosity and vigilance as we navigate this next wave of change.”

Showing direct quotes of Financial Times content with links to that content is very similar to how search engines work. This is a big change to how ChatGPT works and could be a sign of where ChatGPT is going in the future, a functionality that incorporates online content with links to that content.

Something Else That Is Possibly Related

Someone on Twitter recently noticed a change that is related to “search” in relation to ChatGPT.

This change involves an SSL security certificate that was added for a subdomain of ChatGPT.com. ChatGPT.com is a domain name that was snapped up by someone to capitalize on the 2022 announcement of ChatGPT by OpenAI. OpenAI eventually acquired the domain and it’s been redirecting to ChatGPT.

The change that was noticed is to the subdomain: search.chatgpt.com.

This is a screenshot of the tweet:

Big News For SEO and Publishers

This is significant news for publishers and search marketers ChatGPT will become a source of valuable traffic if OpenAI takes ChatGPT in the direction of providing attributed summaries and direct quotes.

How Can Publishers Get Traffic From ChatGPT?

Questions remain about attributed quotes with links in response to relevant queries. Here are X unknowns about ChatGPT attributed links.

• Does this mean that only licensed content will be shown and linked to in ChatGPT?
• Will ChatGPT incorporate and use most web data without licensing deals in the same way that search engines do?
• OpenAI may incorporate an Opt-In model where publishers can use a notation in Robots.txt or in meta data to opt-in to receiving traffic from ChatGPT.
• Would you opt into receiving traffic from ChatGPT in exchange for allowing your content to be used for training?
• How would SEOs and publisher’s equation on ChatGPT change if their competitors are all receiving traffic from ChatGPT?

Read the original announcement:

Financial Times announces strategic partnership with OpenAI

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