Creat links automatically for RANK #1

 Link building is a time suck. You have to find prospects, vet them, find theiremails, verify them, and send outreach emails plus some follow ups. But half of these steps can be semi-automatedusing Zapier. So if you want to learn how to automate these3 steps of the link building process, then stay tuned. [music] If you haven't heard of Zapier it's a toolthat lets you connect web apps together using "If... Then" statements. When you create a combination of web apps,they're called "zaps." For example, this zap says: "If you get anew customer through Stripe then add them to an onboarding sequence in ActiveCampaign. 

Or if you have a paid account with Zapier,you can create multi-step automations. So lets add on to our previous example,which now says: "If you get a new customer through Stripe then addthem to an onboarding sequence in ActiveCampaign and send them an SMS through Twilio. Zapier has over 2,000 apps you can mix andmatch, so there are virtually an infinite number of automations you can create. But hey, this tutorial is about automatinglink building. So to prepare our link building automation, weneed to do some of the manual work first like getting a list of link prospects, vetting them and findingthe first and last name of authors or editors. 

To do this, I exported backlinks reports fromAhrefs' Site Explorer and had someone vet the list of prospects. Now, the only thing manual left to do is tofind the first and last names of the people we should be contacting. Now, two quick sidenotes: #1. I've already had someone find these peopleand I've recorded their names in a note. And the reason why I'm not entering them inhere yet is because the automation requires a trigger in order to start. So we'll talk about this in a second. And the second sidenote is that you needat least one row of sample data in order to actually build and test the automation. So for that reason, I've entered the first and lastname of the person in the last row of the sheet. And in this case, I used my own informationto protect the privacy of others. Let's start building our zap. Alright, so the first thing we need to dois set our trigger. Basically, Zapier needs to know when it shouldrun the automation. 

So the first step in any automation will beto choose an app and then a trigger event. So I've chosen Google Sheets as my app, andbased on the selections from the dropdown, I want my automation to start when there'sa new or updated spreadsheet row. Next, I gave Zapier access to my Google Driveand this is something you'll need to do with any third-party app you want to integrate. In the next part, I chose my spreadsheet, selectedthe worksheet, and I also set a trigger column. The trigger column is basically a morespecific condition that needs to be met in order for the automation to run. So this is what I was referring to in my sidenoteand as you can see I've set the zap to run after the Last Name field is updated in the sheet. So I'll go to Find Data and expand my datasample to make sure everything looks good and I'm going to select that row forthe rest of our testing.

 Alright, so the next step is to set our first action. And looking back to our initial 5-step listof link building steps, the first action we need to do is find emails. So as you can see here, I've set the app toHunter and the Action Event to Find Emails. Now, for the custom settings, you'll needto map the Domain, First Name and Last Name fields with the columns in your sheet. Otherwise the app won't work using the FindEmails action since these are all required fields. Now, let's pause for a second and go overa couple email-finding scenarios you may run into. Scenario one is if you can't find a firstand last name.

 In this case, the zap won't be triggered becausewe set our event to only happen if the Last Name column is updated. So in this case, you'll have to find the email manually. Scenario 2 is if you have the first name butcan't find the last name. This is the same deal as scenario one. But since a lot of people and companies useemails like firstname@domain.com, you can try entering the letter "a" in the last namefield to run the row through your automation. Worst-case scenario, you get an invalid emailthat won't even be sent. And the best-case scenario is you find their email. Alright, the next step is to update your spreadsheetwith the found email. But before we can do that, we need to setup a separate step to find the correct spreadsheet row to update. Otherwise, Zapier might update the wrong rowsand we don't want that. So, here I've chosen Google Sheets as my appand Lookup Spreadsheet Row as the event action. For the custom options, I've selected theSpreadsheet and Worksheet as usual.

 But you also have to set a Lookup Column anda Lookup Value. For the Lookup Column, select the Referring Pagesince there shouldn't be any duplicates there. And for the Lookup Value, just click the dropdownand find the corresponding referring page value. Now, I'll click on the Send Data tab and click Testand Review to make sure everything looks good. Okay, so now we need to actually update theemail into our spreadsheet. So I set up a new step and I've chosenGoogle sheets as my app. And now that we're creating an Actioninstead of a Trigger, we have the option to update a spreadsheet row. So for our custom settings, I've selectedmy Spreadsheet and Worksheet as required, and for the Row, you actually have to choosea custom value. So just click on the dropdown, then choosethe Custom tab, and then select the Row from the third step. By doing this, Zapier will dynamically choosethe row it's working on for future tasks. 

And all we need to do now is go to the email fieldsince that's what we're updating, click the dropdown, click on the Hunter dropdown and choosethe found email address. Now, when we go to the last step and click Testand Review, you'll see that the data is correct and if we look at our spreadsheet, it should have been automatically updated withthe email address that Hunter found. Alright, the next step in our list is to validate the email, meaning, is the email Hunter found deliverable? Now, in order to verify an email, you needan email address to validate. The thing is, Hunter won't always find an email. So we need to add a filter step before connectingour email validation app. If you're not familiar with Zapier filters,they're just conditional operators. So by setting one, we're telling the automation:"Only continue If a specific condition is met." So I've chosen Filter by Zapier as my app. 

And then I set a condition that says: "Only continue if the Email from Hunter containsthe @ symbol. Reason being, all email addresses have an@ symbol and if Hunter didn't find an email, then the automation should stop and run againon the next row of data. So I'll click Continue, and Zapier confirmsthat this zap would have continued because Hunter found an email. Now, that our filter is good to go, I'll choosemy email validator app, which is NeverBounce. And I've selected the action to Verify Email Address. And customizing this is really easy. Just click the dropdown, choose Hunter, andthen select the email field. So we'll test and continue on with our automationto make sure the data is being pulled in correctly. 

And in this case, the email is valid. Now, the next step in our automation is to updateour spreadsheet with the NeverBounce status. So in this step, I've chosen Google Sheets as my app,and set the Action to Update Spreadsheet Row. And since we had previously set up a lookupstep to find the row we need to update, I'll click on the Row textbox, then the Custom tab,and choose the correct row number from step 3 again. Finally, I've mapped the NeverBounce text resultcode to the Verify column in my Google Sheet. And you can quickly find that by just clicking onthe textbox and searching for "text result code." Finally, I'll hit the Test and Review button,and then look back to my spreadsheet to make sure the correct row was updated. 

And everything looks good here. Now, if you haven't worked with NeverBounce,they generally send back one of four status codes. Valid, catchall, invalid, and unknown. From my experience valid emails are deliverablearound 98% of the time, catchall emails are around 80-85% correct, and then invalid andunknown emails are almost always undeliverable. So to make sure we're not sending emails toinvalid addresses, the next step is to set a filter. So I chose "Filter by Zapier" as my app. And for the conditions, I've set it to say: "Only continue if NeverBounce's text result codeis valid OR if the text result code is catchall. Otherwise stop the automation." And if I click Continue, you'll see that this particular taskwould have continued because the email was valid.

 Alright, the next step is to actually sendthese emails and follow-ups. And the tool that I use to do this is Mailshake. Mailshake is an email outreach tool that lets yousend personalized emails and automated follow-ups. Now, I won't bother going through setting up Mailshakesince that's outside of the scope of this tutorial. So within Zapier, I've added another Do thisaction and chose Mailshake as my app. And for the Action Event, I set it to adda recipient by email address which will add the prospect to one of my campaigns that I'vealready set up in Mailshake. Now, we need to customize the settings for Mailshake.

 First, I chose my Mailshake campaign whichis called Ahrefs Sample Campaign. For email, I clicked the dropdown and chosethe one found directly from Hunter. And then I choose the first and last namefrom my Google Sheet. The last thing I added here is a Text Replacement,more commonly referred to as a merge field. These are just snippets of code you can addto your email template, which will dynamically replace them for each contact. And the primary purpose is for personalization. So as an example, I'm feeding the referringpage from my Google Sheet into Mailshake. To complete this step, I'll go to Send Dataand click on Test and Continue. Now, if I head on over to my Mailshake account,you'll see that one contact was added. And if I go to the email preview, you cansee that the contact's referring page URL was inserted into the email since that's howI set up my sample template. Ok, the final step is to update your Google Sheetwith some data from Mailshake. And this is more for tracking purposes. Again, I chose Google Sheets as my App andUpdate Spreadsheet Row as my Action Event. I chose my Spreadsheet and Worksheet, then I chose the dynamically selected row that we found in step 3. 

And finally, I set the step to update the status IDcolumn with Mailshake's Check Status ID response, which confirms that Mailshake has receivedthe request. If I run the Test and Continue, then you'll see thatthe final column in the sheet gets updated. So the entire automation is setup and allwe need to do now is turn on the zap and then start entering in first namesand last names into our sheet. And as the zap runs, it should slowly but surely fill in the blank spaces for you when the last name column is updated since that's our trigger. And now you have yourself a semi-automatedoutreach and link building system.

 Now, keep in mind that this is a system - it's meant to work for you over time. And with the time you save, you can spend that onpersonalizing your emails and improving conversions. Now, I'd love to know if this is something you'regoing to try when doing outreach for links. Let me know in the comments, and if you enjoyedthis video, make sure to like, share and subscribe for more actionable SEO and marketing tutorials. So keep grinding away, and I'll see you inthe next tutorial.