I have to admit that this post is a bit of a rant.
When training new link builders on our team I always emphasize that every link building email sent to a website owner or blogger should be personalized to the appropriate contact at the website/blog and every email should be checked before hitting “send” to ensure that your outreach makes sense and is persuasive to the receiver.
I’m aware that most people who do online work move at the speed of light (or try to) but attention to detail when outreaching to other people is really essential.
How *Not* To Craft a Link Building Email – An Example
I can’t help but share an email I received to my @ketchum.com address (which BTW is not associated as the webmaster or owner of a site or blog).
I’ve kept the names, but removed the links….
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From: Jonathan Adams [ mailto: [email protected] ]
Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2013 1:02 PM
To: Ong, Katherine
Subject: A Thought…
Hey! I checked out your site [url of website I don’t own, nor have I ever heard of here]. I wondered if you’d be interested in him having us write content or a guest blog for the site free of charge?
I’m a Canadian writer, and have a another talented guy (US based) working for me. I’m sure we could write you some great original content appropriate for the site. Of course, anything we write would be subject to your approval so there’s really nothing to lose. If you don’t like it, don’t post it! All we ask in return is that we can include one link somewhere in the page to our website http://linktohiswebsite. We can either put it in the author by-line, or work it into the content in an extremely appropriate manner.
Or…
If you’re not interested in having us create new content for you, we could just help each other out by exchanging links. This builds traffic and boost Google rankings (I’m an SEO guy). You would link to my website http://linktohiswebiste and I would link to you from another website I own which also has very high Google authority http://hisotherwebsite . It’s a Google Page Rank 5 if that means anything to you :) This indirect link exchange is much better than linking directly to each other which Google devalues these days. If you wanna do this just link to http://linktohiswebsite and email me the URL where you put it. I’ll put up your link on http://hisotherwebsite and email you back.
Basically, just hoping we can help each other out with our web-based businesses :-)
Let me know… certainly open to other ideas you might have also…
Jonathan Adams
mailing address here
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Effective, no?
He absolutely doesn’t know who he is sending to considering that my @ketchum.com email address is not connected as a webmaster of any site, and I am not affiliated with the website he mentioned. But I’ll be sure to look him up if I’m looking for link building expertise. *insert heavy sarcastic tone here*
I know we send link building emails via email and it seems anonymous, but link builders need to realize that there is another person on the receiving end of that email. And frankly, you want you that person to not only open and read the email, but also be persuaded to add to their “to do” list adding a link on their site to yours. It’s no simple ask. And you’re just wasting your time if you’re sending emails like the one above.