Wed 21 Oct 2009
The Perfect Link Request Email (No, Not Reciprocal Link Exchange!)
Blurb by Shaun Anderson (Hobo)Did you know that linking to us will help your rankings lol? Yeah right. But getting links from other sites will help YOUR rankings – no arguement there.
First, there’s probably no PERFECT link request email. 
but here’s how I do it (for the Hobo site, every so often).
- I don’t send that many out – just a few a month.
- I keep the email short and to the point
- I use a title like “Organisation Website Name” Website
- I never automate them – each one is crafted personally and (much like the blog) in a laid back manner.
- I CORRECTLY IDENTIFY the exact PAGE I want a link on (after identifying it’s a good page (and yes, Pagerank comes into it regardless of what others say but I also look to see if that page ranks high, gets traffic and is itself internally (at least) well linked to.
- It’s never JUST a links page with no content I want my link on, and it’s never on their home page.
- I also correctly IDENTIFY if they have a habit of linking out to relevant articles.
- I NEVER ask them to link to my home page.
- I always provide them with the URL I desire them to link to
- I ALWAYS have a piece of content that’s of value and WORTH linking to – after all, I wouldn’t link to pap.
- I NEVER specify anchor text that should be used.
- I NEVER even mention reciprocal links
- I only contact them once
Most importantly – I am honest about why I want a link. I don’t tell them it will help them, I tell them (usually) it’s more up to date information than they currently link to and it will help us and might be useful to their readers. And it is. I don’t tell them it will help their rankings, or that I was “browsing the web and came accross their site”.
I’m not exactly sure what above is the ‘killer’, but this method works more often than not.
Lastly, if I spot something amiss on their site, I’ll point it out in a friendly manner, and tell them to contact me if they need any assistance in the subject of what I do – SEO.
Not exactly rocket science is it.
Edit – This post was set to publish today – but I noticed Julie Joyce had a good recent article on the subject of link request emails too. For me, link requests are from dead, you just need to be relevent, linkworthy, polite and honest!
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 ;)
I have heard some link builders do what is termed a “co-citational” analysis of other sites to see who the competition is getting links from. Have you heard of this? What do you feel is the best tool for this? Do you feel this is a good strategy?
I would think “honesty” is the killer here.
You already mentioned on Twitter that you estimate your success rate to be roughly 75%. Such a great success can be achieved by building a great website and putting a lot of effort in selecting the webpages you want a link from. Obviously, you’ve succeeded in that when it comes to building links to Hobo Web. But, do you achieve the same success rate for your clients’ websites? Is branding (i.e. linking to well-known websites) a major factor in the success rate?
To Ulana Illiano: Finding the valuable websites that your competitors are getting their links from (a.k.a. link hubs) is one of most important aspects of link-building. If your looking for a tool check out Cemper.com’s new hubfinder.
Co-citation is a cool theory, and yes, I do consider it – but many of the clients I work with just need links from real websites and that’s what I spend my time trying to get them while I encourage them to get newsworthy buzz surrounding their site so they can generate top quality links from news sources etc that can’t be reverse engineered. Then again, others in the office are charged with getting other kinds of links I know change rankings – sort of crappy links, but less crappy links than the competition has. Do I achieve the same success? Depends entirely on the quality of the company and their website content. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Excellent question