What I learned from "link requests"..
- SEO |
Hey guys,
I just made somesort of "case study" of asking links from different webmasters and I implemented 3 different strategies...
Just to let you know, I have legit website that has tutorials on specific topic. In the past month I sent out approx. 400 e-mails to different webmasters using myname@mydomain.com address... I'm not sure how many of them were opened, how many of them were marked as spam, but here's my results:
Strategy nr1 - simple link request..
Sample of e-mail:
It had a conversion rate about 5%-6%. It means that after every 20 e-mails I got approx. 1 link.Which is actually pretty good, I think...
Strategy nr2 - creating a relationship
This is was somewhat time consuming, but it had pretty good results in term of links on high PR pages... The thing is, I first e-mailed to the webmaster by saying that your site is great and I'm a regular reader. I pointed out some suggestions and said that he or she should post even more often, because the quality is just so great. At the end of the e-mail I said something like
"All the best,
Your truly passionate reader,
Phil"
As you can see, I didn't asked for ANY links at all. I simply waited until they responded. Most of them were flattered to receive such e-mails and they were really thankful. One guy even said something like that "Is there anything I can do for you?" However, some of them didn't answer at all which was the downside of this strategy.
Anyhow, once they answered I kindly made a suggestion for them that they should add my blog to their "xxx" section and I also pointed out that I made a tweet on twitter for their website - which I actually did (but I have heckload fake followers).
The conversion for that wasn't too good. Approx 12% of people actually changed and added my link... BUT I only sent such e-mails to webmaster who I really wanted that link (PR3-PR4 pages)
Strategy nr3 - Broken link
This was the most effective strategy since the conversion rate was about 20%. I simply found out some pages that had links to the sites that no longer exist or the URL was changed. However, those broken links had to had the same niche or tutorials as my site have.
The e-mail I wrote was quite simple:
"Hey xxx,
I just came across your website and I found out that there is a broken link here: hxxp://blalbla.com. The hxxp://xxaaxaxa.com does no longer exist. While you editing, you might want to replace this URL with my site here: hxxp://blabla.com since it has the same tutorials as the previous site had.
All the best,
Phil"
Conclusion
The conversion rate could have been a lot better, because the e-mails I wrote consisted some grammatical errors... Some of the e-mails went straightly to the "junk" since I had 2 or 3 links inside it.
Final results are here: 2xPR4 links, 4xPR3 links, 11xPR2 links, 13PR1 links, 17 n/a links. Pretty good since they are all contextual and most likely all permanent.
However, the most important thing while asking links is that you have to be personal. Try to find out who is behind the blog, what is his/her name and so on... Copy/paste e-mails can work though, but I believe such conversion rate can be extremely low.
If you guys have implemented to use similar strategies then you might want to share you e-mail samples for me. And if you have any suggestions about the e-mails, please feel to criticize and give me some suggestions.
Thanks
I just made somesort of "case study" of asking links from different webmasters and I implemented 3 different strategies...
Just to let you know, I have legit website that has tutorials on specific topic. In the past month I sent out approx. 400 e-mails to different webmasters using myname@mydomain.com address... I'm not sure how many of them were opened, how many of them were marked as spam, but here's my results:
Strategy nr1 - simple link request..
Sample of e-mail:
"Hey, _insert_person_name_
How's going? I have been reading your blog for a while since I'm a huge fan of _insert-blog-niche_ and you might know me, because I have left many comments under your articles. Anyhow, I just came across your page here: hxxp://blalbla.com/tutorials
And I have suggestion for you. You might want to add my site to this page since it fits perfectly there. It's about how to bla bla bla and I'm more than sure that your readers will benefit from that. Here's my site: hxxp://blabla.com"
How's going? I have been reading your blog for a while since I'm a huge fan of _insert-blog-niche_ and you might know me, because I have left many comments under your articles. Anyhow, I just came across your page here: hxxp://blalbla.com/tutorials
And I have suggestion for you. You might want to add my site to this page since it fits perfectly there. It's about how to bla bla bla and I'm more than sure that your readers will benefit from that. Here's my site: hxxp://blabla.com"
It had a conversion rate about 5%-6%. It means that after every 20 e-mails I got approx. 1 link.Which is actually pretty good, I think...
Strategy nr2 - creating a relationship
This is was somewhat time consuming, but it had pretty good results in term of links on high PR pages... The thing is, I first e-mailed to the webmaster by saying that your site is great and I'm a regular reader. I pointed out some suggestions and said that he or she should post even more often, because the quality is just so great. At the end of the e-mail I said something like
"All the best,
Your truly passionate reader,
Phil"
As you can see, I didn't asked for ANY links at all. I simply waited until they responded. Most of them were flattered to receive such e-mails and they were really thankful. One guy even said something like that "Is there anything I can do for you?" However, some of them didn't answer at all which was the downside of this strategy.
Anyhow, once they answered I kindly made a suggestion for them that they should add my blog to their "xxx" section and I also pointed out that I made a tweet on twitter for their website - which I actually did (but I have heckload fake followers).
The conversion for that wasn't too good. Approx 12% of people actually changed and added my link... BUT I only sent such e-mails to webmaster who I really wanted that link (PR3-PR4 pages)
Strategy nr3 - Broken link
This was the most effective strategy since the conversion rate was about 20%. I simply found out some pages that had links to the sites that no longer exist or the URL was changed. However, those broken links had to had the same niche or tutorials as my site have.
The e-mail I wrote was quite simple:
"Hey xxx,
I just came across your website and I found out that there is a broken link here: hxxp://blalbla.com. The hxxp://xxaaxaxa.com does no longer exist. While you editing, you might want to replace this URL with my site here: hxxp://blabla.com since it has the same tutorials as the previous site had.
All the best,
Phil"
Conclusion
The conversion rate could have been a lot better, because the e-mails I wrote consisted some grammatical errors... Some of the e-mails went straightly to the "junk" since I had 2 or 3 links inside it.
Final results are here: 2xPR4 links, 4xPR3 links, 11xPR2 links, 13PR1 links, 17 n/a links. Pretty good since they are all contextual and most likely all permanent.
However, the most important thing while asking links is that you have to be personal. Try to find out who is behind the blog, what is his/her name and so on... Copy/paste e-mails can work though, but I believe such conversion rate can be extremely low.
If you guys have implemented to use similar strategies then you might want to share you e-mail samples for me. And if you have any suggestions about the e-mails, please feel to criticize and give me some suggestions.
Thanks
~