11 Ways to Improve a Suggest a Link Campaign via @martinibuster
The Suggest a Link method for gaining links is an effective way to obtain links. But the work can be so difficult. These tips can maximize your success rate and minimize the amount of wasted time.
1. Best Link Building Template
The emphasis is on sending well-targeted emails vs. a lot of quick emails. Scaled link building is easy. But it results in wasted opportunities.
Email templates can be laughably irrelevant and appear to be obviously automated to an email recipient. Email addresses obtained from scraping a web page or the domain registration can often result in sending an email to the wrong email recipient.
Creating a template is a good thing. But being able to customize it for a specific website is best.
Being relevant is super important, something automation has a tough time doing.
2. Be Relevant to the Email Recipient
The more similar/knowledgeable you seem to the email recipient, the better the success rate. I think they get a lot of junk inquiries in general, so it helps to stand apart and appear to be someone who is a part of their community.
3. Contact Relevant Sites
This sounds like a no-brainer but doing what’s easy and expedient leads to bad decisions.
Don’t contact forums, directories, or sites that are off-topic.
Always contact websites whose site visitors will be interested in what your site offers.
4. Contact the Most Relevant Person
Always try to contact an actual person and use their name in your outreach. Sometimes this will require a bit of poking around in old newsletters or even on other websites.
5. Suggest a Link to Your Most Relevant Page
If appropriate, don’t suggest a link to the home page. Sites tend to find individual pages to be useful. So it’s best to suggest a link to a useful page, not to the home page. The reason is because people respond favorably to following a link and finding something useful. The home page requires a person to click around and investigate. Don’t make people work, give them what they want.
6. Avoid Sites with Irrelevant Outbound Links
Don’t contact sites with problematic outbound links. Sites that link to SEO, gambling, pay day loans, and pharmaceutical related sites can generally be considered low quality. Another signal of low quality is if the site you want a link from links out to small local type businesses in a random city.
An example could be a page about car maintenance that links to an El Paso, Texas Auto Body shop. That’s not only weird but probably a paid link, a sure sign that the site is low quality.
7. Avoid Sites that Sell Links
Don’t obtain links from a site that sells links. If a publisher solicits you for a paid link, it’s likely they’re already selling links to spam sites. It’s important to not associate your inbound link profile with the profiles of spam websites.
8. Avoid Sites with SEO Articles
Sites that are not about SEO don’t generally need links from sites that link out to SEO. Outbound links to SEO websites is a sure sign of a low quality website. Do not obtain links from a non-SEO website that publishes articles related to SEO. That is a signal that the site may be involved with link selling or other shady activities.
9. Proofread Before Sending Your Email
Proof read your email before sending. It is easy to make mistakes such as emailing a person you have already contacted. Don’t forget to check the email address, contact names, links, etc.
10. A/B Test Your Email Template
Create variations of your outreach email and test which ones get the best response. Discard variations that do not receive responses.
11. Concise Link Building Email Templates Receive the Best Response
Keep your outreach email short. Be direct. Don’t waste time with superfluous apologies for contacting someone, etc. Just get to the point. Communicate why the suggested links are useful.
Link building is hard. These tips should help optimize your time so that you are obtaining more and better links. Link building will still be difficult but these link building tips should improve your success rate.
