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How Not to Do Link Emails

Nov
13
2006
By

There is a right way and a wrong way to solicit link requests. This is the anatomy of the WRONG way….

Dear Sir,

My name is [name removed] and I invite you to take a short break from your work and visit my new site at http://www.xxxxx.com http://www.xxxxx.in, http://www.xxxxx.com , http://www.xxxxx.com, http://www.xxxxx.com http://www.xxxxx.com/ http://www.xxxxx.com http://www.xxxxx.com

OK, first of all this isn’t a short break. Gaurav wants me to check out not one new site, but eight of them. I don’t think so.

Enjoy it for a while!…Ok, that is enough! What do you think? If you like itand if it fits to your link collection, please get back to work and exchange links with my http://www.xxxxx.com http://www.xxxxx.com http://www.xxxxx.in http://www.xxxxx.com http://www.xxxxx.com http://www.xxxxx.com http://www.xxxxx.com/ http://www.xxxxx.com

Hmmm. Nice attempt at some humor, but it fails. Secondly, I don’t have a “link collection”. You won’t find such a thing on my site, so I know he didn’t visit. Had he visited he would have known that we gladly exchange great article content, but not just links.

Another annoying thing, all the URLs above were linked. Why duplicate them? Did he think I forgot?

Please add my link on your site and let me know where I can find it (send me also your site details so I can link back as soon as possible).
Or send me your site details and I will take the first step in the link exchange process (but for that, you have to send me also the URL of the page where you intend to place my link).

Our reciprocal link page are

http://www.xxxxx.com/links.htm

http://www.xxxxx.com/links.htm

http://www.xxxxx.com/links.htm

http://www.xxxxx.com/links.htm

http://www.xxxxx.com/links1.php

http://www.xxxxx.in/links.php

http://www.xxxxx.com/free_links.php

etc.

Ug! Too many words, and more links! What are these instructions that I don’t understand?

If you agree with the link exchange I am proposing, please add the following details on your site:

Here is the site information for domainandspace.com:-

Title: Web Designers, 3dee technologies, ludhiana designing solutions seo
search engine promotions india optimization corporates punjab
URL: http://www.xxxxx.com
Description: web design development services india, freelance website
designers hosting provider company domains registration server space
ludhiana Punjab

Here is the site information for rajmetalbox.com:-

Title:- Raj Metal Box Manufacturers Exporters round rectangular metal tin cans containers for packaging, new delhi, india ludhiana punjab
URL:- http://www.xxxxx.com/
Description:- indian Tin cans manufacturing india, packers, pack, packaging Metal containers manufacturers exporters, spout closures, tin of hindustan, new delhi, round rectangular tin boxes ludhiana punjab.

Here is the site information for atamknitwears.com:-

Title:- sweaters, jackets, readymade ladies cardigans, Indian garments, t-shirts, tshirts manufacturers exporters ludhiana, punjab, india, ladies gents clothes
URL:- http://www.xxxxx.com
Description:- indian apparel tshirts, jackets, sweaters, t-shirts, hosiery garments exporters india ladies readymade cardigans garments manufacturers in ludhiana, punjab, india..

Here is the site information for bansalspinning.com :-

Title: Bansal Spinning Mills India Ludhiana Punjab Yarn Manufacturers, exporters,importers dealers,Fancy worsted yarn woollen woolen wollen
URL: http://www.xxxxx.com
Description: bansal spinning mills is indian manufacturers exporters importers of spinning fabric, Yarn, Textile Agents, Thread, worsted yarn, woollen, silks, polyester, nylon india punjab.

Here is the site information for paramtools.com :-

Title:- Manufacturers exporters hand tools accessories india punjab, agriculture motor auto parts implements india, machine tools parts cnc turning from ludhiana punjab india
URL:- http://www.xxxxx.com/
Description:- param tools indian manufacturers exporters of hand tool india, machine tools parts, autoparts, motor, auto parts, agriculture implements, hand tools accessories punjab, ludhiana, india.

Here is the site information for plasticdies.in:-

Title:- Manufacturers exporters of Plastic Moulds, ludhiana India Punjab.
URL:- http://www.xxxxx.in
Description:- Manufacturers exporters of Plastic Moulds, dies, PVC, nylon, moulds, moulding, sports products, automobiles, car accessories, zigs, fixtures, ruuber, …

Here is the site information for bhagyajyotish.com:-

Title: Free Indian Astrology, Jyotish, Online Horoscope, Vedic Astrology Ludhiana Punjab India
URL: http://www.xxxxx.com
Description: Ludhaina Astrolger Online Jyotish Shastra,www.bhagyajyotish.com, Zodiac Sun Signs Horoscope, hindu astrology,rashiphal, Consult your Astrologer, Astro Products, Consultancy,astrology.

Here is the site information for ludhianamart.com:-

Title:- Ludhiana Market Information Business Promotion, Online Yellow Pages, Web Directory – Website
URL:- http://www.xxxxx.com
Description:- Ludhiana business web directory information about manufacturers, indian exporters, business, india, punjab, ludhiana, textile, yarns, fabrics, exporters, importers, manufacturers, machine, tools, surgical, laboratory equipments, bulk drugs, Industrial, chemicals, auto parts, cycle parts, fasteners, ludhiana yellow pages, business pages,industry, industries, nanda marketing, hotels, hotel, restaurant, resorts, restaurants, tourist, business pages, yellowpages, yellow, pages, india

I will be waiting for your reply!
Kind regards,

[name removed]
Link Developer
links@xxxxx.com

This is way too much information for a first email. Seriously. This email is all about you. There is nothing here about why I should link to these sites. No reason is given why this would be beneficial to me or my visitors. This is the equivalent of someone standing on the road with a megaphone demanding that I care about their cause. Guess what? I don’t. Now, if you want to give me a reason to care, and even better, find out more about me so you know why I should care, well then, maybe you’ll have a chance at convincing me.

A Completely Useless Link Bait Article

Nov
07
2006
By

Editors note: When this article was originally published, every word was hyperlinked to a different source. This article now serves as an interesting anecdote about how the web changes. We have unlinked all words where the original page has been removed from the web since this article was originally published.

Just about everybody knows by now that links are an important and effective part of the search engine optimization process. The SEO community is abuzz with blog posts, forum threads and e-books attempting to demystify the link building process. Or at least to provide some general guidance on how to go about getting good quality links.

The process of link building certainly isn’t an easy one. While quantity links certainly can, and do, help a site gain notoriety, it’s quality links that really help things improve in the search engine landscape. As search engines have advanced their technologies to analyze links the process of obtaining them has advanced as well. Gone are the days of using “link monkeys” to perform your link building campaigns. Today’s link building efforts are much more about marketing than they are about process.

The recent growth in social networking has contributed to the continued evolution in link building. While not replacing other forms of link marketing, social networking has certainly added a new element to the process. It’s a world where popularity rules and quality information gets noticed and magnified across the various social networking sites. In order to survive in this current link medium you need to focus on quality, ingenuity, and simply making yourself stand out above the fray.

The surest way to excel in obtaining good links is to first be “link worthy“. Short of that, well, you’ll have to beg, barter and plead for links. Secondly, once you feel you are link worthy, get the word out and put your link worthiness out there in the right places and in front of the right people. And if it’s good, they will link!

Establishing Multiple Link Building Paths

Oct
10
2006
By

Link PathsIn just about any form of marketing, when something works it gets repeated to death until the strategy is no longer effective. Good product tag lines get over used (got milk?, got sand? got Jesus?), TV shows have to get more and more “cutting edge” (NYPD Blue, Family Guy, CSI), and movies have to be bigger and better than their predecessors (Matrix, Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean). It’s not long until yesterday’s big thing is today’s normal thing.

Online marketing, especially link building, is similar. While there is no replacing the concept of building a good site worthy of links and letting people know about it, there are actually numerous strategies available for attracting good links through solid marketing efforts. In any kind of marketing its good to have multiple strategies, or multiple paths, which one can travel to get to the goal. Putting aside the whole concept of persona marketing which understands that you need to reach different people via different means, it’s a good idea not to put all of your time, money or effort into a single marketing approach. Again, this is especially true with link building.

Over the past few years we’ve seen the rise and fall of single-path link building practices: automated reciprocal links, link swapping, link buying, link spamming, etc. I’m not suggesting that all of these methods are dead or useless, but their use as a quick and easy solution is extremely limited. Many times, when one finds a link strategy that works, they drop all else and run with it. This tactic gets broadcast on the online forums, others jump on the bandwagon and soon enough, that strategy becomes moot to the overall process of search engine optimization. It’s no longer effective, but out of habit (and ease) people continue to follow that single-path, until the next great path is discovered.

With online marketing there are many paths to the same goal. There may be well over 100 paths of link building alone but not all the paths lead to the goal for every client. You can’t just find one that works and run with it, you need to find several that work for one client, and several others that work for each other client.

For example, paths A, D, F and G may be great for client X but not for client Y which needs paths H, L and P. Then you might have client Z that will best be suited for link building paths D, P, S and V. Client Z’s link paths overlap with X and Y a bit but also has a couple paths unique to it as well.

That’s why link building isn’t so easy. Most people are comfortable working within their own boxes. They like to develop strategies and checklists that take them from point A to point B, but start to get confused when each client needs to take a slightly different path that hasn’t yet been mapped by the marketer, a path unique for that particular client’s needs. Well hey, that’s just like real marketing.

This is why single-path link building just isn’t very effective anymore. Each client can have a dozen link building paths that are unique to them alone. The job of the SEO is to determine which paths are right for which client. This can take some trial and error but ultimately each client should have a good handful of link building paths to choose from.

Be cautious of any new link building path you learn about. All paths may be legitimate, but not all paths are legitimate for every client. Each new path you learn, consider carefully whether its for you or not. Most of all, if you find a link building path that works, great. But don’t put all your links in that one basket. Find the other link building paths that work for you because you never know when one or more paths will become obsolete from overuse or abuse. Multiple path link building helps you keep your linking efforts on solid footing achieving a variety of link types. Too much of a single type of link looks like obvious manipulation, something the search engines don’t like and you should avoid.

SES SJ: Buying & Selling Links

Aug
30
2006
By

So there’s quite the debate about buying and selling links. What I heard from the experts from this session involved positions from more of a neutral perspective. You could tell that some hands were tied, as perhaps some of the panelists didn’t really like the whole idea of buying links, yet they avoided saying anything that would polarize them on the issue. Eric Ward broke it down like this: Are you buying links because you think the search engines will reward you with higher rankings? Or are you buying links because you want to advertise, without any intent on fooling the search engines? If your answer is to the previous, than you are playing with fire. In my opinion buying links for any reason is a short term strategy that will eventually hurt your site, not help it.

SES SJ: Linking Strategies

Aug
29
2006
By

Now we get into more about linking. This session covered a broad scope of link strategies ranging from directory submissions to some crazy link baiting tactics. Here are some interesting points and ideas that were brought forth in the linking strategies session.

  • As for directory submissions, it is best to avoid submitting to directories that have “excessive” search engine ads.
  • Eric Ward made a good point that I happen to agree with. When searching for sites to get links from, he said it is not good to totally get hung up on PR; look at the site for yourself and ask yourself, “how would a link from this site benefit my client?”
  • If you’re into the practice of buying links, do so from only sites that have a similar PR to sites within your industry
  • Then a fun and interesting idea came up, apparently one of the latest trends involves paying college kids to link to your site from their student page, thus getting a one-way link from an edu site. I talked to the guy sitting next to me in the session, and apparently what he does is put an ad in craig’s list aimed at college students, and he pays them $100 to link to him. In my opinion this could work for the short term, but seems far from being a solid long term strategy.

So from the looks of things, there are many people that are willing to do just about anything it takes to establish one-way incoming links that they consider to be valuable to their site. However, many of these people are not considering the long term effects, which in many cases can end up hurting your rankings instead of helping.

Should You Outsource Link Building

Aug
28
2006
By

There is a good thread going on over at Search Engine Watch forums about outsourcing link building efforts and if you should or not. This question was asked by another SEO but its relevant to SEO clients as well. You never know when your SEO might be outsourcing such a crucial component of your campaign.

In years past we have outsourced our linking efforts only to be extremely disappointed. While we had good people working on the links from time to time overall the quality control was difficult to manage. Not only that, but link building should work in conjunction with the optimization efforts. With links being so important it doesn’t make sense to have a disconnect between that and the SEO efforts. Not when you’re going after quality links anyway.

SES SJ: Link Building Basics

Aug
25
2006
By

Ahhh, how we all love the wonderful world of link building… a world of about 25% truth and 75% speculation. I was hoping that this session would change things. Here are some interesting points and ideas that came from the link building basics session.

  • Do not get links from just any website. It is best to get links from sites that are within your cyber community; that is, sites that are related to your industry in some form or fashion.
  • The search engines see a mix of .com’s, .edu’s, .co.uk’s, .net’s, etc., as much better then solely a bunch of .com’s.
  • Don’t link purely just for rankings. It would be foolish to pass up opportunities to link for publicity and exposure, even if they won’t help you in the rankings.
  • As for the aging reciprocal link question, one of the experts had this to offer, “excessive reciprocal linking has been determined by search engines as having very low trust factors”. Does this mean reciprocal links are bad?… no. Does this mean reciprocal links are good?… no. Are you confused yet?
  • Do not use the same anchor text over and over, this will raise red flags to the search engines.
  • Accumulating links rapidly is NOT OK, this will for sure raise red flags. Your link growth needs to be in line with the growth of your site’s content and traffic increases.
  • One of the experts made a very interesting point… edu’s are helpful but not because the .edu; they’re helpful because edu pages typically have a high page rank.

Some good points were brought to the table. However now I’m even more confused about link building. I think it’s now about 20% truth and 80% speculation!

Link Poor and Link Needy

Aug
17
2006
By

It’s easy to link to the authority sites, and there are also good reasons for doing so. But how about spreading some link love around to the needier folks? This was suggested by Aaron Pratt of SEO Buzz Box. I agree Aaron. Maybe we should have a “Hidden Authority Link Day”. Get people send some time posting to some of their less well-known blogs and resources which they enjoy. Until that’s organized… how about spreading some link love this way!

Everythign You Wanted to Know About Link Building*

Aug
16
2006
By

Here it is folks, the all inclusive guide to link building by Aaron Wall and Andy Hagans. Don’t spend it all in one place!

Linking Matters

Jun
22
2006
By

Linking Matters
How to Create an Effective Linking Strategy to Promote Your Web Site
Authors: Ken McGaffin and Archie Binnie
Paperback: 33pages, Free
Published: February, 2003

While several years old, the Linking Matters report is still highly relevant to today’s link building campaigns. It outlines some solid strategies for analyzing your current links, laying the framework for a new campaign and calculating the return on investment of links that drive good quality traffic.

The one area where Linking Matters lacks is the process of actually contacting sites to get them to link to you. Very little space is dedicated to this important aspect of the process and the only method they provide is build upon link exchanges and resource pages, both of which have lost relevance as of late.

Aside from this oversite, the report stands out as exceptional information that will help anyone organize and analyze their linking strategy.

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