Start your own linking campaign!

how not to...

[Wired Suzanne]

I guess we all know the importance of linking.
I guess we all know how to start a linking campaign.
Then why do I meet so many webmasters that do not have their act together?

Here are some of the most horrible but very common frustrations:

E-mail address on site does not exist. Update it!

Add Link Form on site does not work. Test it!

You receive a linking request, but when you reply, the e-mail address does not exist or is blocked. How did you do that?

Hotmail mailboxes are full. Why using a hotmail address anyway?

E-mail templates, with the name of another link partner still in the place where your name is supposed to be copied. Check it

Questions as: "Which of your domains did I contact first?" Keep records

Reply's with: "Please go to mydomain.com and add your site to the most suitable section". Especially when they requested the link in the first place!

Automated e-mails stating that they couldn't find their link, while their link is surely there. Get a proper spider!

And not doing anything about it after 10 replies of HERE IS YOUR LINK! Why linking if you get those annoying mails anyway?

Asking for a linking request, while you are a link partner already. Keep records

Giving a code in your email requesting a link exchange and sending an email later on saying: " Please
check what's wrong." Please, check yourself!

I could go on like this for pages, but I still have some e-mails to answer. Just a grab of my current inbox:
"Yes I will do this but I'm not sure exactly to copy--that link cant be
opened"
"Your suggestion to swap links makes sense. The only problem is I don't have a clue of how to put your link on my web site. "
"Please can you reciprocate our pages? "

[Marketing Guy]

I really hate sites that have 3rd party link exchanges.

You click on "links", and get take to theirsite.3rdparty.com (and its usually a blank page with some basic text links on it).

Just looks so tacky.

Its like having a link on your main navigation to "news" but linking out to the BBC's news homepage. But then again in this case, you would be linking to a quality source and not some tacky auto-gen links page.

Im also starting to dislike carefully crafted link requests that are massed mailed out (I received the same one to both a web marketing site and a careers site at the same time, both emails claiming to be related to my site - and no, it wasnt a site about careers in web marketing! ;)).

Scott

[glengara]

I like - "We are emailing you because we can no longer find a reciprocal link from your website to our website or we have not seen one there at all. " - especially when I never agreed to a recip, and can't even find the original request in my log!

[adamas]

Requesting a link exchange with an unrelated site via a contact form that clearly states that the site has no interest in link exchanges does nothing to endear somebody to me.

(Although being kind enough to add details of the link text they want does at least make it that much easier to know just how unrelated the sites are (just in case I might have been tempted))

[dougs]

Agree with most points, but we have clients who believe why bother tracking everything, pruning emails etc etc, when they can send out 1000's and get some to repsond.

Do it massive and stop wasting time on the mistakes that happen.

Dougs

[jdancing]

Folks spend way too much time on link begging instead of improving their sites.

Hire a contractor at 50 cents per quality link to do it and/or get a link maintenance service and/or buy a few links and be done with it.

The web would be a much better place if link-begging time were replaced with site building time.

[Eltiti]

Do it massive and stop wasting time on the mistakes that happen.

Now that's *exactly* my attitude regarding, eh, "email marketing"... ;-)

[Eltiti]

The web would be a much better place if link-begging time were replaced with site building time.

That certainly sounds true. Unfortunately, the invisible hand that is the current Google algo seems to steer things in the wrong direction...

If you want to make a few $$, it is *much* easier to build a sub-par site, get every Tom, Dick and Harriet to become your "link partner" and get a page one ranking for your KWP, than it is to build a top-notch site that will eventually gather the links required for that ranking *without* your active link-hunting!

Long sentence, but you get the idea.

[dougs]

Eltiti

It works, our clients try to do everything clean, but they don't worry about the mistakes they make along the way. They just learn, move on and do it on an even more massive scale next time.

Judging by the amount of email requests I get they are not alone.

Dougs

[nakulgoyal]

Eliti and Dougs

I feel it's the same scenario evrywhere. Even I get a lot of emails and link requests everyuday.

Thank God I don't get a Link request via Fedex. :-)