At what stage in the development of your site do you ask for links

[marvin]

At what stage in the development of your website do you generally start sending off link request emails? (eg. only when the site is "finished", once all "essential" areas of your niche have been covered, when you have 100 or so pages of high quality content, once 10 pages are online)?

I have a content based website in a fairly large niche, I have been working on the site for over two years and have over 300 pages of high quality original content. I would estimate that it's going to take me another year or so to cover all of the "essential" areas of my niche to a reasonable degree of detail. It will take many more years for the site to be "finished".

Every page I have uploaded so far has been of a significantly higher quality than anything else available on the web in terms of quality of content, original photographs + videos, usability and presentation. I firmly believe that my site can become the "best in the niche" if I ever manage to finish it!

I was originally planning to wait until the site is "finished" before requesting links (the theory being that the better my site is the more likely people are to want to link to it). However, I'm starting to wonder if this is the best approach to follow.

I'd really value the thoughts and experiences of other Webmaster World members.

[cnvi]

Get your site as finished as possible. Webmasters will scrutinze your site when you ask for a link so make sure your site is presentable. Make sure they can easily navigate to the page(s) where you are going to be publishing links.

[ken_b]

I was originally planning to wait until the site is "finished"

It may never be completely "finished", and that's ok. What matters more is that what you have online now is worth linking to.

If you've got 300 pages online now, you might as well give it a go and see if other webmasters think it's as worthwhile as you do.

Don't worry about not being completely finished. As long as you keep adding new content that's just a good reason for people to revisit the site, and for other webmasters to link to it.

[julinho]

I would look for links to your pages, not to your site.

If you have a couple of pages (or even a single page) which cover comprehensively a sub-topic, look for sites which may be interested on that sub-topic and ask for links.
Then, repeat for the next sub-topic, and the next...

I have a site about a city. I write about environment issues of the city, and ask for links in sites about ecology. I write about laws of my city, and ask for links in sites about Law.

I presume your site must have a general topic. Use internal links to drive traffic/trust/Pagerank/whatever from your sub-topics to your main topic.

Of course, when your site is finished, ask for links to the main homepage too (and don't forget Yahoo and dmoz, which seem to consider linking to only one page of a site).

[marvin]

Thanks cnvi, ken-b and julinho

Julinho - i'd like to ask you a little more about your strategy.

I imagine that there are 100s of general websites about the city you cover (say, "City X").

I would also imagine that there are far fewer websites about certain aspects of City X (eg, ecology, law etc).

Does this mean that you only request links from a handful of sites after completing each sub-topic, then it is only when you have finished your site that you will go for the "mother load" of on-target links from sites about City X?

[Oimachi2]

Hi Marvin,

It depends on what kind of incoming links you are looking for.

I'm in the process of starting a service that will distribute an article you wrote to over 400 article banks.

In this case the article bank owner will NOT look at your site to evalutate it, they will however in some but not all cases look at the quality of the article. In your case that shouldn't be a problem.

So if you are interested in my service, doing it now is fine and recommended because it takes so long for Google and the other search engines to pick up on your incoming links.

[julinho]

I imagine that there are 100s of general websites about the city you cover (say, "City X").

I would also imagine that there are far fewer websites about certain aspects of City X (eg, ecology, law etc).

No.
Suppose you want to get ranked for City.
You don't have to get linked from sites about 'City AND Laws' (which are, indeed, fewer); instead, you try to get links from good sites about Laws, in the section about City.

For example, go to Harvard Law, introduce your pages about City Laws and ask for a link in the State/City/other_category where your site fits; then go to other Universites, regional BAR sites, big law firms, etc. If your content is really good and unique, you should get a few links.

The links you will get will be more relevant to Laws than to City, but if the sites about Laws are authoritative, the links will be helpful; then, you get links related to City and Ecology (from authoritative Ecology sites); then you get links related to City and History (from authoritative History sites); etc.

Then you will have several authority links, all with a theme in common: City.
If you then place internal links wisely, you can funnel link juice to where you want it most (maybe Hotels in City is more profitable than City History).
The end result will be that you will have a site which is very strong for City, and competitive for a lot of long tail terms related to City.

Does this mean that you only request links from a handful of sites after completing each sub-topic, then it is only when you have finished your site that you will go for the "mother load" of on-target links from sites about City X?

Of course, if your site is good enough to gain links to sub-topics, it probably should be capable of getting a few strong links related to the main topic. As soon as you think you can get them, go for them.