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Some sites that failed to get a return link from me (I stopped adding new sites to this list in 2006. You get the point.) Feb.-Mar 2006 Nov. 2005 - Jan. 2006 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 Feb. 2004 Jan. 2004 Dec. 2003 Nov. 2003 Oct. 2003 Sept. 2003 |
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by Michael Bluejay
Like other webmasters who run popular, high-ranking websites, I get requests every day to link to someone's site, usually in the form of a "reciprocal link." And like many of my fellow webmasters, I trash 99.9% of those requests. Why? Take your pick:
Some readers might be thinking, "So what if I don't get every link trade I ask for? I get enough. Why should I change the way I do things?" The answer is that when you do things properly you'll have more success. You'll not only get more links, but you'll get higher quality links. The kinds of webmasters who are eager to agree to link trades usually have low-quality sites which won't help your rankings much. A link from one of my sites is worth a lot more than one from theirs. By soliciting links properly you can get more links and higher quality links at the same time. But actually, if you build a quality site you probably won't have to worry about requesting links, because your site will be a natural link magnet. My sites are at the top of search engines for competitive terms, and I never ask for links from other sites. I got to the top by building quality, not by begging links from other webmasters. We've looked at what you should do, so now let's look at what you shouldn't do. Here are various reasons why webmasters might reject your link trade request.
You ask for one.Link trading is offensive to me, because by offering you're suggesting that my site isn't worth linking to unless you get a return link, and that your site isn't worth linking to unless you bribe me. You might as well say, "Hi, your site sucks. If I thought it would benefit my readers then I would have linked to it already. But I want a link to my site so I'm willing to link to your crappy site if you link to mine. My site is pretty lame, also, and I know you wouldn't link to it unless you were getting a return link." Your site isn't worth linking to.I link to other sites for one reason only: I think the site will be of interest or of use to my visitors. That means that sites I link to must be (1) high quality, and (2) related to my own content. If so, I'll often link to it whether they link back or not. I don't exchange links, I link to sites worth linking to. Your site has nothing to do with the site you want the link from.Your site has to make sense to be linked to. I'm not linking to a site about timeshare condo rentals from my site about bicycle commuting. (That was one of the poorer requests I got recently.) Or a site about laundry equipment from my site about finding cheap airfare. (Hello?) You sent a form letter.Do you like form letters? No? Then why would anyone like yours? If you want a positive response, then send a personalized request, preferably one that provides some evidence that you actually looked at the site that you want the link from. If you must use a form letter then write it in a way that it doesn't look like a form letter. Don't use generic "personalization"; if you send me a boilerplate request that could apply to any site you're requesting links from, such as, "I was impressed by your site and you must have put a lot of work into it, blah blah blah," I'll trash your request for no other reason that you insulted me by thinking that I'm too stupid to realize that you're sending that same generic flattery to all the other sites you're requesting links from. You demanded a return link first.I don't have time for games. You're the one who wanted the link, remember? Am I happy about being treated so patronizingly? Am I supposed to be excited that I may get a return link when I meet your demands? Not. Delete. You didn't link to the other site first.Personally, I'll link to sites if I think they provide value to my visitors, whether or not they link back to me, because linking to quality sites enhances my own visitors' experience. Of course, top-notch sites aren't the ones spamming my email begging for links. You threatened to remove your link unless you get a return link.I'm not interested in helping webmasters who openly demonstrate their selfishness. The web is supposed to be about sharing information. I link to sites all the time which I find useful and which I think will be of interest to my readers, without demanding (or usually even asking) that they link back. Linking to other high-quality sites increases the value of my own site. I link to these sites because it's good for my readers, not because I'm getting a return link. You offer a pebble and ask for the moon.Today Martin Visser from Online-Casino.cc sent me an offer for a "Super link exchange!!" All I had to do was put a banner for his site on my home page, and he'd give me a simple text link without any description on his links page, among dozens of other undescribed text links. This might make sense if his site were eBay or Yahoo, but it's not -- it's just a boring run of the mill casino affiliate site with no real content. If you ever found webmasters eager to take you up on such a bad deal, forget about asking them for links -- ask for $100 and in return you'll give them a bright shiny new penny. You act like your site is just as important as the one you're writing to.The best sites are the ones getting most of the link exchange requests. That's because the link-requester is trying to find link partners in Google, and the best sites generally come up first. That means that all the successful webmasters are getting their doors beaten down for link requests by hordes of unsuccessful webmasters. What's amazing about this is that the unsuccessful webmasters don't seem to have any appreciation of that. Are they at all humble when they send their link request? Absolutely not. They'll start off by lecturing the successful webmaster about the value of link-trading, and then they'll proceed to offer a link if the successful site links back. You didn't read the Links page of the site you're writing to.Some of my sites get a lot of link requests and so on those sites I put my linking policy on the Links page, explaining which sites I do and don't link to and under what circumstances. But many webmasters don't bother to have even a cursory look at the Links page before firing off their link request. If you want to fail to impress a webmaster, demonstrate that you didn't even bother to look around the website you're writing about. You bark up the wrong tree.One of my sites gets so many link trade requests from worthless sites that on the contact page I put in bold red letters, "We do not trade links. Do not even ask." And I listed the email address as <We-Do-Not-Trade-Links@mydomain.com>. Amazingly, some webmasters actually write to an address titled "We-Do-Not-Trade-Links" to ask for a link trade! Guess whether they wasted their time or not. Do not write to us about link trades. Our email address:
You didn't bother to tell me what site you want the link from.I run several dozen websites, and if you ask for a link from "my site" I may have no idea what site you're talking about. I'm certainly not going to waste any time trying to find out. Of course, if your site is truly relevant to one of my sites I'll usually be able to figure it out, but what if I have multiple sites that could be relevant? Why make me guess what you're talking about? Remember, you're the one who's interested in the link, not me. Tell the site owner exactly what domain you're talking about, and what page you think the link would be best on. Someone wrote last week wanting a link to "your site". I told him that he'd need to bother to tell me which site he was talking about. He replied, "Your bicycling site." That still did me no good, as I run five different bicycling sites. He didn't get his link. You didn't tell me what page you want the link from.My sites generally don't have "Links" pages, because I link from content pages where the links are more relevant, and where readers can actually find them. If I have a 50-page site and it's not super-obvious what page your link should go on then you'd better tell me. I have over 9000 messages in my In Box and if I have to spend more than a few seconds on your message thinking about how to do you a favor then I'm more likely to just delete it and go on to the next message instead. And if you're asking for a link from the home page of the site, then (1) that really ought to be the very best page for the link, and (2) your site had better be the best thing since sliced bread. You pester me about it.On Sunday I got a request for a return link from an SEO company. It was a good request (since the site was worth linking to), and I was planning on putting a link up to them when I had time. Then on Wednesday they resent their message asking why they hadn't heard from me. You misspell my name.I'll never reject a request just because someone misspells my name, but if I'm already sitting on the fence about whether to grant the link, it could make the difference. It's not necessary to address a webmaster by name but if you do so then take the tiny amount of effort required to use the right name. My name is Michael, not Micheal, and not Mike. Your site is under construction.Just yesterday someone asked me to link to a site that had little more than a "Coming Soon" notice on the front. Sadly, they thought their site was so important with no content that I should link to it. Asking for a link to a site with no content is not only arrogant, it's insulting to the person the link is reqested from. Why would any webmaster will be eager to send his or her visitors to site with nothing on it? Finish your site and THEN ask for a return link. Your site uses popup windows.Yes, I covered this earlier, but I'm listing it again for those who are just skimming this article, so they'd see the headline. Plus, it bears repeating: I won't link to a site that shows its contempt for its visitors by using popup windows. Your mail is full of grammatical and spelling mistakes.If your message looks illiterate webmasters will assume your site is, too. If you don't put any effort into your message it will seem likely that you didn't put much effort into your website, either. And webmasters may feel that they'd be doing a disservice to their readers by sending them to a sloppy site. Your site is promiscuous.The search engines can penalize sites that link to other sites with no regard for quality. Such sites are considered link farms. And linking to a link farm can get my own site penalized. If your site is promiscuous and links to just anybody there is no way I'm going to link to it. The sites you link to you should be highly relevant for the content of your site, and high quality, and should not themselves be link farms. Your site is PR0.No competent webmaster is going to link to a site with no Page Rank according to the Google Toolbar. There's no way for me to tell whether your PR0 site is brand-new or whether it's been penalized by Google. (And you can't solve that by simply telling me that your site is new. Why should I believe you, a complete stranger, when doing so means I'm putting my own site at risk?) You put the link to the site you're writing to amidst a gazillion others, or the sites have no descriptions.A quality Links page stands on its own even if Google didn't exist -- it's actually attractive and useful to visitors who can benefit by seeing a good list of related sites. The page is nicely formatted, contains descriptions of the sites that are linked to, and if there are more than ten of them they're organized into appropriate sections. It's basically a useful directory. The engines can't get to your links page.If for whatever reason, intentional or not, your site is designed in such a way that search engine spiders can't get to your link to a webmaster's page, then don't expect them to link back to you. If the search spider can't find your outgoing link then you might as well have not linked out at all. Avoid dynamic and Javascript urls, use just plain urls. You fail to explain what your website is about.I need to know what your site is about before I know whether or not I want to check it out. The address alone is insufficient. Yes, I'm going to visit your site to see if it's worthy of being linked to, but I'm unlikely to visit it to make that kind of check in the first place if you don't even give me a clue as to what the site is about before I visit. Show that you respect my time by telling me what your site is about up front. This doesn't have to be lengthy; one or two sentences will do fine. You write a novel.Nobody wants to read a two-page description of your site, especially if it's filled with marketing-speak about how you're leveraging dynamic new paradigms and so forth. Nor do they want a babbling press release. Speak to me in brief, plain English. You mail-bomb me.Some webmasters are so eager to share info about their site they include multi-megabyte attachments of jpg's or PDF info, with no regard to the fact that the other webmaster might be on dialup -- especially if they're traveling, and might be paying per minute or even per second for their access. It's also presumptuous to include so much info, because you're forcing it on the recipient; this bespeaks an insecurity that the recipient won't check out your website themselves. Well, maybe they won't, but that's their choice. By mail-bombing them you're trying to take that choice away from them. In your message include only a good text description of your site, and one or more links to more info. The Subject of your message is poorThis alone won't usually make someone not link to your site, but a poor title can make them less interested in helping you. If they were sitting on the fence then that could lose them. I get many link requests whose subject is BLANK. Others say, unhelpfully, "Link", "Link Request", "Hey Michael", or, my favorite, "Reciprocal link not found". A better title is something like "GreenWidgets.com now links to BlueWidgets.com". Five words and you've said the world. You've told me you link to me, you told me which site you link to, and you've told me which site you link from. That title alone already makes me interested in linking to you. Someone's done me a favor by pre-linking to me, and spelling out exactly where the links are. This already makes me feel good about linking back, provided the site in question is high quality and relevant.
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Subject: Link on tours page Can we have a link please on this page? http://bicycleuniverse.info/touring/
BIKE TRIP IN FRANCE. DuVine Adventures: Experience a bike tour in France that is unique and personalized. DuVine Adventures offers a bicycle vacation through unspoiled villages in France, while staying in charming inns and chateaux, eating gourmet cuisine and tasting world-class wines. Our French cycling tours are a perfect balance between group and independent travel while providing first class service and great value. http://www.duvine.com thank you, andy |
What worked about that request? Simple: It's a high-quality site that's highly relevant to the page he wanted the link from. That's all that matters to me. Notice he didn't even promise to link back -- I don't care if he links back. I'm trying to serve my readers with my page about bike touring, and I serve my readers better by listing his site at the end of that article. Also note that didn't send me a lengthy form letter and he told me exactly which page within my site he wanted the link from. As for his site, his links page isn't too promiscuous, it's somewhat restrained, and it's very well organized. I did edit down his description quite a bit when putting it on my page, but he gave me lots of words to choose from for those I'd eventually use.
Notice something else: I didn't put his link on a links page, I put it on a content page. That was the most logical place for it. And the link is 100 times more valuable for him on the content page rather than a links page. And that works out a lot better for him, both for the number of clicks he'll get and for transferring Google PR power, which is what most link requesters are after in the first place.
Here's a fictitious request I made up, to illustrate an "ideal" request:
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Subject: Poker Fans now links to VegasClick Hi, I checked out your site at VegasClick.com. I linked to your article about how to play Texas Holdem Poker which I think my readers will enjoy. My site is PokerFans.info, which covers rules, strategy, and upcoming tournaments for poker fans. I hope you'll consider linking back if you think my site would be of interest to your own visitors. Here's a sample description: Poker Fans Thank you, Matt Trefoil |
If I thought the site was truly useful after checking it out, I'd definitely link to it.
WebmasterWorld has a great thread about how not to ask for a link.
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