Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Of course, I might want to test it (but I send out very personalized ones, thus it would be hard to get a significant sample size any time soon), but maybe some of you have had experience with that.
My guess would be that Friday is a bad time, because people are about to start the week-end...and that sending them out on the weekend and/or early monday is even worse, because people will have their inbox cluttered with spam from the weekend they havent sorted out, yet (depending on what kind of webmaster it is, of course. Im referring to people whose website is part of their work).
"We own and operate [my_domain] .. a lot of our users would be interested in [your_product_name_here]. Would you be interested in linking with us?"
Otherwise it doesn't matter what day of the week.
@martinibuster: thanks. Have you asked college professors or teachers for links? I assume in that case, it would be a good idea to find out when they have to grade exams/when holidays are, etc..
I was thinking a college professor operating his own site might actually be easier to contact during holidays (if it's about his personal website) than during the semester.
Not really. Most of them are on vacation. Non-faculty staff may still be on campus but students and faculty are for the most part gone. Pretty much every university publishes a calendar with holidays and breaks. Important to be aware of this if soliciting university links. That's why I recommended not sending requests during spring break or summer. ;)
<edit> in addition: Tuesdays are catching up times, Wednesdays are good, but Thursdays are weekend planing time :) OK sounds like a joke but if there is more than a few employees my statement is pretty much true.
so mid-week is the target</edit>
Get 'em first thing in the morning on the work week and get it out of the way.
Anytime after 9am and I find that people's energy just isn't there.
[edited by: BaseballGuy at 2:19 pm (utc) on April 18, 2009]
[edited by: MrHard at 10:45 pm (utc) on April 18, 2009]
How about if your site is something that might actually be useful to their visitors?
You must have much time to care about other people sites and whether their visitors are getting what they need. I think not.
What you are really up to. Not linking back in order to improve you rankings and pagerank with an unreciprocated incoming link, probably with your suggested anchor text dropped into the conversation somewhere by accident.
Were not dumb here.
Machiavellianism (the use of cunning and deceit in politics or generally).
[edited by: MrHard at 4:18 am (utc) on April 20, 2009]
@MrHard:
Reciprocal links don't do much for anyone anymore these days. If your link building strategy focusses on getting "two-way links", that probably means you are very new to this (which I dont mean in a negative way, at all) and are thinking that giving a link and getting a link every time is a great win-win approach. In reality it's more of a lose-lose approach (time / opportunity cost).
Simply because somebody is trying to improve their search engine rankings doesn't mean they're trying to deceive anyone. They know link exchanges don't do much for anyone, and the majority of websites/webmasters that are worth getting links from know that...which is why it isn't easy to get good links these days...and why the majority of link requests is denied (or not even replied to).
However, those that do work usually work because they have content the other webmaster finds very useful. That webmaster on the other end will decline the majority of link requests (or not even reply to / read them), however if he does indeed give a link back, it probably was because he thinks linking out to what he links out is useful content for his website's visitors.
Of course attention wh*ring type of "link bait" work, too, but you should be fair enough not to assume that everybody who tries to build links to their websites engages in them.
people might go through the first 20 e-mails and reply to the most important ones, and then be tired and reply to less and less of the stuff they sort through.
and less and less of the stuff sent from those they don't know.
It's a numbers games. So, you might get 1 or 2 responses for every 10 you send out.
You make a good point JdBnd. We have all been so brain-washed to follow our SEO God's, "Lord G" rules, that we have forgotten what the web was like in the 1990's when linking to sites for the common sense of it was...well...common sense. It's ashame really. The web would be a much more connected place if it wasn't for Lord "G".
Makes me think of "WhoVille" in the Grinch Stole Christmas. They joined hands ANYWAY even though "G" stole christmas. How ironic they both have the letter "G" at the beginning of their names.
One way links are really a great idea...except the only sites who will do it usually have nothing to lose.
Also, ask for links from relevant sources, and don't mention PR or search engine rankings. Add value to their visitors and you will have success.
