What's wrong with this link request?

a classic among those I've gotten

[Robert Charlton]

In order to comply with the TOS, I'm paraphrasing this link request received by one of my clients. On the essential point, I've changed the wording, but not really all that much. ;)

Dear site owner,

I see you have a site with a topic similar to ours. We offer Snake Charming. I'm looking for sites to swap links with me. I'd be interested in linking to your site and getting a link from you. Please let me know if you're interested.

[diamondgrl]

Cool, I run several large snake charming portals. Could you send me a sticky with all the details?

[Crush]

It is probably someone who has done an email crawl for their keywords and somehow there was a link to your clients' site.

Law of averages unfortunately. Mail enough you will get a response.

[jaffstar]

I see this often, and basically comes downs to two approaches:

1. They mail you with your link already added to their site.

2. They send you a mail like above, with their intention to trade links.

Option 1 converts better.

[nuevojefe]

or option 3, they mail you with your link already up and say "awhile ago we traded links, you link is located at URL. We can't seem to find our link. Could you please email us the URL or add it if it has mistakenly been taken down?

Link info:
...

[tbear]

What's wrong with this link request?

It got past your spam filter?

[Robert Charlton]

It got past your spam filter?

;)

[Liane]

Aside from getting past your spam filter ... there are too many things wrong to list, but I'd start with:

Dear site owner

At that point, I'd stop reading and hit delete!

[PatrickDeese]

I swear some of these people plug in "the" as the search term for their link-partner-matic software.

[alexisb]

Agree, "Dear Site Owner" sounds like the regular spam.

I think that somebody interested in exchanging links with other site should do his homework and at least write a more personal and unique email.

It would be fine to see some good examples of link requests.

Regards!

[EVOrange]

Doing their homework, just a bit, would make the difference on my site. My reciprocal links are automated and anyone who would just look at the links pages would see that.
Outside of the ones who feel their "snake charmer" sites are compatible with mine, even the ones who might make a good link partner are not getting a response from me these days if they don't bother to look at the site first.

EVO

[larryhatch]

The writer could have said "your site(s) is/are .."
which allows for both singular and plural.

I consider my site unique in its (rather dotty) field.
I am amused when somebody thinks their site is in any way similar.

Jack or Jill may have a junk site, but I always respond as politely as
possible to a personal, individually written link request.

Saying "nay" as gently as time allows, I refer those people to
Webmasterworld for a wealth of information on how to promote websites.

More than one has emailed back, thanking me up and down,
even thought I basically farted them off.

Thank you WWorld, sincerely. - Larry