Google used to say:

Have other relevant sites link to yours.

Now it’s guidelines recommend:

Tell the world about your site. Google

It’s clear. Google does not want you asking specifically for links because this is a clear attempt to manipulate their listings and this is as far as I think they go at the moment. It’s a bit poor advice when the key to ranking in Google is having other relevant sites link to your site!

Links are what the web is about though and it is why Google is the number 1 search engine. Links were about before Google. There’s nothing wrong with getting other sites to link to you as long as it doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb you’re looking for Pagerank or improved rankings for particlar terms.

Private discussions with people you know are another thing, but when I ask for links (which I don’t do very often), I never ask for specific keyword anchor text. If I send out an email, I’ll point someone in the direction of the page, and I’ll point out that linking to it might have some benefit to thier visitors. On some occasions in the past, I’ve offered to reciprocate the link IF it is of benefit to the readers of the other page. I never specify any attribute of the link either ie wether or not it is search engine friendly.

I would not go on record these days sending an email out saying:

Link to me using the following keyword text on a page with pagerank of minimum 2….

… and neither should you. You never know who will end up reading that and it makes it clear you don’t have a clue what you are on about and will take links from and link back to anybody.

If you want people to link to you in a particular way, make sure the title of the page your wanting links to has the keywords you want to rank for and generally speaking, a lot of folks will use those words to link to you. If, of course, the page is useful in some way!

And don’t send out spam email requests.

I get hundreds of bottom feeder link requests and don’t answer any of them. A waste of time.

There is many ways to skin a cat of course, but this is how my seo company does it – and I’ve said before, we’re a content focused seo agency. We don’t build links to crap (not even s!&t links). :)

PS – How do you tell the world about your site? Twitter. Stumbleupon. Press Ads. Articles. etc etc

Part of linkbuilding month for beginners At Hobo!

Did you know when you link to a Hobo SEO post we have search engine friendly links back to your site if approved? Our comments are also search engine friendly you know (once you've commented on a few posts)! Do you need any more encouragement to get involved in the conversation ;)