new to link development

best approach

[HelenDev]

I have a small website selling widgets which I want to promote.

I've identified some other websites which are about these widgets, but are not selling them, so I assume these would be a good starting point to request links from?

So I am planning to draft some nice emails asking them to link to my site. Should I be asking just for this, or should I offer to link to them as well (link exchange)? I would imagine that offering them a link in return would yield better results, but I've read that one way links are more valuable. Which should I ask for?

Any advice on the above would be much appreciated.

[justdave]

In my opinion, doing a link exchange would be your best bet initially. Unless you have some money to spend to buy links from "authority" directories. Buying text links from link brokers is another option if you have the funds. Good luck.

[martinibuster]

Sites that are selling something will have a harder time garnering one way links than sites that are informational in nature. It does happen but not as often as you would like.

I sometimes word my link request as a request for a one-way, and people who are interested in an exchange will actually request one from you. Meanwhile I have picked up some one ways along the way.

Unfortunately, many webmasters will resist linking to you if you have a whitebar as they might think you are penalized, regardless if you explain that your site is new. Even if you have a website full of outstanding content, it won't make a difference.

Many webmasters (not all), don't care how nice your site is, nor that it's new, as much as they like your gtb green. Of course, a link from a webmaster who doesn't know about gtb might be a better one, so go ahead and get those recips.

You may want to browse the Link Dev Library for some helpful tips, too.

[Chiulauta]

Link building is a tedious task and most of the emails you sent out may be regarded as spams and some of the link exchange partners which you have been linking to might somedays delete your links without notice.

I think one of the better ways is to build a community of true link exchange friends and each and every member bring new friends to the community and interconnected with a type of messenger such as msn or gmail.

[martinibuster]

>>>build a community of true link exchange friends

That's a closed network. They are easy to spot and are often smacked down. They are fairly common.

It will help to seed the backlinks to a new website, but don't depend on a network like this for your ranking needs. You will still have to go out develop some links.

[adeel shahid]

I think you should just give out the email for two way linking and firstly put there link in your directory for a while even if they dont put your link in there directory. Also search inside link directories for other to find potiential link partners.

[sugarrae]

>>>I sometimes word my link request as a request for a one-way, and people who are interested in an exchange will actually request one from you. Meanwhile I have picked up some one ways along the way.

Agree.

>>>most of the emails you sent out may be regarded as spams

Not if you make it obvious that you, a human, have visited their site (love your butterflies in your background graphics).

If these are good sites and you have a good commercial site, try giving them a call and initiating contact and asking for a link.

[HelenDev]

Thanks for all the tips guys :)

[Lilliabeth]

I have an established site (been online since 1998). I used to get nice notes from webmasters asking if we're interested in recip links. Not any more - now we get long boring automatically-created personality-less spam link requests. I would not want to send my good customers to some one with no better sense, so no links for them.

[martinibuster]

>>>long boring automatically-created personality-less spam link requests.

I agree. If you're sending out mass amounts of link requests, it's probably a good idea to keep thems short and put a little personality in them. And never be boring.

[sugarrae]

>>>If you're sending out mass amounts of link requests, it's probably a good idea to

And please, for the love of all things good in the world, don't try to teach them about SEO and pagerank in your request. ;)

[martinibuster]

...don't try to teach them about SEO and pagerank

Amen! No need to corrupt anybody.

Although it seems like I'm being humorous about it, I'm actually serious. To my way of thinking, the people I want linking to me are the ones who don't know anything about SEO and PageRank. That way I'm more assured that they'll be in better, more natural neighborhoods. Well, that's the hope at least. ;)

[adrock31]

How many links makes a difference. Obviously, this is tedious work to do correctly, and if you've got a good site, people will want to link to you. But in the end, is 5, 50, 500 enough? What numbers will make a difference (I know it depends on the quality of the site the links come from, but let's assume that all links were from PR4 sites)

Am I going to get a benefit from one PR 4 link? 30 links? What if the originating site is a PR 6?

Also, I've heard that if you get too many links at once, you look suspicious, but what if a site puts your link in their sidebar and it appears on every page? Still bad?

[zpeed]

"What numbers will make a difference"

As you pointed out the quality of those links matter, but even more does the competitiveness of your keywords!

For example, fighting for "Web hosting" is not possible for someone without a fat bank roll or a genius marketing mind.
But if you're trying to get #1 for "red special widgets in city" you might get there with only a few links, if any at all.

Some 100k result keywords are allmost impossible to get while others with millions of results are easy.
It all depends on the field to which the keywords belong: financing, insurance and things like that might have a far higher competitiveness per result than other fields.

To answer your first question: Every link counts.

[sugarrae]

>>>But in the end, is 5, 50, 500 enough?

Depends on your industry. A few links can be enough to seriously move you in small niche areas. Thousands may not budge you one inch in high competition areas - quality aside as you said.

Check the backlinks of your top ten to twenty competitors and you'll get an idea of how many links you'll need to rank (again, quality aside).

[adrock31]

Thanks for both of your responses. And a great idea to check the backlinks for competitors to see how many they have.

(apologies if this is the wrong place for another question, but the conversation evolves...)
What about age of URL? If my competitor has been around for a year, and my site is one month old, will links be enough, even if I have more, and better quality?

[sugarrae]

There is really nothing you can do about age of url, aside from buying a site and taking forever to change it little by little. Yes, IME, age of a site certainly does matter (as does age of a site's inbound links) in some engines. But, being a new site isn't a "death sentence" and with work and a good site, assuming you're not in an area drenched by authority sites from 96 (kidding) you'll be fine in time.