🥸 HARO Is Back

I’ve been selling HARO links (expert quote links) since before I ever had an official agency.

And when I recently saw someone saying HARO is back, you best believe I was paying attention.

It’s the same domain name (https://www.helpareporter.com/).

Maybe the same logo.

Is it for reals?

It is not

If you dig into the Terms of Service on the site, you’ll immediately know that while helpareporter.com is back, HARO is not back.

The domain has been purchased by Terkel/Featured.com 

If you’re not familiar with them, Featured offers a HARO-style product where you get a couple of free replies a month, otherwise you gotta pay to play.

Recently, a Growth Cupid client noticed that some of our earned expert quote links looked like they were part of a PBN.

So, I investigated.

The domains are owned by Featured/Terkel. Even worse, is they are 301ing aged articles on the Featured.com blog to these new aged/expired domains.

That inflates the DR…and if you had earned that link on the Featured.com blog (DR 63) you’re now left with a much lower authority (and quality?) link pointing at your site.

Once I discovered this, I began noticing that a LOT of the “opportunities” in Featured end up on their own collection of sites.

Wow, right? Super shady.

You don’t encounter this problem on Qwoted, which we also use at Growth Cupid.

Anyways, the first emails for the new helpareporter.com are set to go out on Monday. Can’t wait to see if it’s the same “opportunities” on Featured.com.

I also wonder if there will be a paid feature.

Coming up…

More on what I’m working on and how it’s going.

Stay awesome,

Shawna

P.S. If you’re looking for high level discussions or tips on things like local SEO and Rank & Rent, I highly recommend Jacky Chou’s Advise community. I’ve been in it for several months and there’s tons of value in it, including a SOP for local SEO.

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