Building quality links that refer back to the website play a vital role in any SEO campaign. Whether you are in the SEO industry for a long time or you are a beginner, you probably have a fair idea that a SEO campaign is incomplete without these links.Generally it is considered that link building is nothing but dropping some links into directories, forums, blogs etc., however, in my opinion building quality links is an art that requires time and effort.
Gone are the days when linking from directories, forums and blog comments were working,in fact over practicing these tactics can now take you to penguin penalties. Today, in order to build links you need to have:
- Expertise in understanding how eco-system works
- Great communication and networking skills to build audience around your website and get links from them
If you are unaware of the basic SEO practices then these 25 SEO tips are a great start for you. Once you are done with these, Link Building is the next step you should consider
- Communication Skills:
No quality link can be built without some level of communication and networking. Here comes the communication skills, that are emailing and networking to targeted audience and influencers using social media platforms.
There are different kinds of emails that you draft for various purposes and sometimes your email will land into the mailbox of those people who don’t really know you. Usually the response rate of emails is around 30% but if email is efficient and contain everything what is required, then the rate of response will increase to a greater extent.
How to write email to get a better rate of response
When it comes to link building every tactic is different and so is the email style. In the rest of the post I will tell you how to write an email letter that is appropriate for certain link building strategies.
- Guest Blogging
Nowadays, many people think that Guest Blogging is dead; however there are many instances where bloggers were able to attract the audience. Matt Cutts is worth mentioning here. I think Matt Cutts in his post was talking to certain group of people. The bottom line is, if you know how to go right with guest blogging this may benefit you.
I receive many emails every day that ask for a guest blogging opportunity on my blog, but I hardly respond to any of them. This is mainly because the emails look something like this:
There are some clear indications which prove that the sender didn’t even try to check my blog for a second.
Here is the right email template that I believe should be used:
Hello <Name>,
I was stumbling upon the internet when I found your blog and after looking into few posts that you have published recently I can say that the quality of content is very powerful. (Discuss a little about the post)
I am also a blogger who writes on similar topics. I am recently planning to write on (topic you are planning to write) and would love to publish on your blog as a guest contributor, mainly because you have a wider audience who might be interested in similar subject.
Please let me know if it is possible for you and I will send you my piece for review purposes.
Looking forward to hearing from you!
Regards,
<Your Name>
*Red areas in the post will probably change in every email you are going to write.
- Broken Link Building
I haven’t seen many people using this method and I guess this is the reason that low quality emails in this area are way lesser than in Guest Blogging.
The idea behind this is to find a broken link on the website. You can do it either by using tools like Broken Link Builder by Citation Labs or in case you are not planning to invest in a paid tool, I have mentioned some free tools to do the same work in one of the examples in this post.
Once you have the list of broken links, now it’s time to email it to your targeted prospects.
| Wrong Way: |
| Hello Admin,I was finding few websites related to my industry when I find your website. It looks amazing but while looking in to your resource page I find some links that are going to 404 pages. I have some pages that are similar to that so can you please link back to these pages?Link:Link2:Link 3:
Looking forward to hear from you!
Regards, |
If you closely look at the email it looks like a general email. There is almost no point of personalisation and engagement that encourages the receiver to respond to it. Plus the email does not discuss any benefit of the receiver.
| Right Way: |
| Hello James,I noticed a resource page on your website and it looks pretty informative. I also noticed that around 4 links that are mentioned on your resource page are linking out to the pages that are not available anymore.I have attached the list of links that are broken with alternate links that will equally help your users. Please take a look and see if you can use them as an alternate resource.Hope this helps.
Regards, MoosaHemani. |
- Helping people to get Links
Like broken link building, this is another way people can easily get high quality links with a little effort. But this requires a good amount of networking skills.
Try to be active on forums, social networking websites (twitter usually works best in that case) etc., so that you can find people who are in need of relevant information. Once you find those people the next step is to email them and offer them free help.
| Wrong Way: |
| Hello Admin,I was visiting your website when I find out that your websites contain formatting issues that was stopping me from reading your website.Please fix this problem and if you want to link back to my website as a favor , here is the link (link)Looking forward to hear from you!
Regards, |
| Right Way: |
| Hello Ryan,While stumbling upon twitter, I found your blog and figured out that you have some formatting issues on your blog.The reason why I am writing this email to you is because those formatting issues stop me from performing desired actions and can also hurt others experience.As your blog offers valuable information on continuous basis, I thought it is important for you to know how your blog looks like to others. Actually, I am a developer and can easily fix this problem so let me know if this is something you can’t do at your end.
Looking forward to hear from you.
Regards, |
Once you do them a favor, it is easier to ask for a favor back in the form of a link.There are multiple tactics where you have to communicate with other REAL people (bloggers). For every strategy, the email design will be different.
In the above mentioned post I discussed the right and the wrong ways of writing an email.
Here are a few things that you should ideally include in your email:
- Name of the recipient. No blogger will respond if you use the words like “Admin” or “Team” as an alternate
- Do not write too short or too long an email
- Give the recipient a reason to respond back to your email
- If you are asking for something (for instance a link), try to explain its benefit as well as yours
- Use your real name and email address when sending the email
There is no perfect formula to get a response from the bloggers so you need to keep testing your email templates and see what’s working and what’s not.
What is your outreaching experience?Please share it in the comment section and I would love to help.