Share your favourite link exchange template email with us!
-
Hey Mozzers,
I've been working on a bunch of different templates lately to approach various companies in our industry for link exchanges. But I'm somewhat stumped on what the best approach would be. I want to convey the message that a link exchange would be beneficial to their ranking in search engines, but I don't want to come off sounding overly spammy.
Do you have a template that you have found worked well for you? Share it with us!
-
I agree with staying away from the link exchange page idea. However, I would think that you could find legitimate links from local sources, especially if you have any existing offline partnerships with them. Do you sponsor any little league teams or do any charity work? Do you offer free storage for women referred from the battered women's shelter (I know of movers that provide free moving for battered moving)? Anything like that you can ask for a link back from the people as a way for them to show their support. Natural links would also come from people involved in real estate, property management, student housing -- anyone that frequently deals with people that move and need a place to store things.
-
Ah, gotcha. In my experiences dealing with SMB clients, some great links for local businesses are from:
- Local directories (these also help build citations for local SEO purposes)
- Guest blogging on industry-related blogs (in your author bio, you can include a link back to your Wisconsin Cheese company - or whatever business it is that you are promoting)
- Sponsoring local events or finding other ways to get your company local press (links from newspaper websites, press release websites, and charity/event websites)
I don't mean to steer you away from link exchange requests as a tactic. It can certainly be useful, and you're right, it can be an easy method for small businesses to obtain links from other local companies or websites. I just get frustrated by the low response rate and oftentimes relatively weak link opportunities that I see with this tactic. Usually local competitors' websites are just like your own before you start working on SEO - weak, unoptimized, and with few backlinks.
I'd rather spend my time to get a guest post published on an authoritative website in my industry. It might not be as relevant of a link as one of my competitors in the area, but I can guarantee that it is going to have a ton of authority and link juice behind it.
-
Thank you for the advice. We do have many other campaigns that are currently running and very successful at link building. In this particular case we are looking to contact other local businesses in our area and offer them a link exchange. They are not websites that blog, nor do we regularly blog, it just doesn't suit a small business profile.
So suffice to say, the only way i have ever been successful getting other local businesses to link to us is with the classic "link exchange" format. Although it seems outdated, it still does work for this particular situation.
-
I don't really do any formal reciprocal link exchanges via e-mail, but I do have a ton of success with the following method:
1.) Write a great blog post or piece of content for your own website. Include in it links to other great blogs or resources about the topic you're writing about.
-
When the post is published, Tweet at the people whose websites you linked to and let them know that you mentioned their amazing, helpful resource in your latest post.
-
This generates a TON of retweets, and once in a while a great link back to my website from the blog/website that I mentioned. It also helps me establish a line of communication with authoritative figures in my industry. In short order, it puts me on their map, making future link requests much easier.
I know this isn't exactly what you're looking for, but I thought you might find it interesting. Just my $0.02!
-
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Is link exchange a reliable source to get back links?
I read a latest post on seomoz that _“Do not buy or exchange link with anyone who contacts you. This is completely against Google's policies and if they were to find out, you could be penalized." So I went through Google's ''Link Schemes'' and found that ''Excessive link exchanging ("Link to me and I'll link to you")'' can negatively impact a site's ranking . _ So is it the ''excessive'' link exchanging that can cause a negative impact? Exchanging links with good quality, cached sites (without excessive doing) can do good or bad? Can anyone please explain to me in detail?
Link Building | | semvibe0 -
Why my twitter handle link is not getting counted in links, though for other sites it is counting!
My twitter handle page link is not getting counted, though it is getting counted for other sites
Link Building | | EG0CENTRIX0 -
Finding links online that already exist as link juice based on search results
I'm curious about this, I can't find anything on the net that talks about it. I wrote an article about it on squidoo and have had no responses so I am thinking this is very rare subject. The question is I have done some backlink research with my competitors with linkdetective.com and found many links (even follow ones) related to sites that provide search results. Here are a link about what I am talking about as an example, I have found many more besides this one. http://search.lphant.com/es/webResults.html?q=free%20scrabble%20dictionary&hl=en&page=1&src=hmp_es&ref=1 My site appears in those results. When looking at the source there is no "nofollow". I found this page because linkdetective.com had this link listed pointing to my competitor. Are these valid backlinks? What I have been doing is adding these links to http://www.google.com/addurl so that Google knows about them. Is there something I am missing or are these valid?
Link Building | | cbielich0 -
Link exchange with nofollow bad for ranking?
Hi, I wanted to give my EMD (Exact match domain) some more links and added it to some general start pages, just as my competitors did. The disadvantage of such link sites is that you have to add a link back to them. So I created a new page in my footer "links" and added a link back to those who requested that. However, I made all links a nofollow because I don't want them to benefit from my rankings. Those sites really have nothing to do with my subject and are just interested in a link to give them some boost I guess. I'm sure not everybody like my approach, but my question is. Will those nofollow links on my page back to the ones that requested it affect my rankings?
Link Building | | severtservice
Or should I remove the nofollow? Thanks!
Dennis0 -
Links and keywords
A rather simple question, If i have a paragraph and have the words cat, dog and bird would it be a good idea to have them all linking to the same url? or is better to have them all going to different urls?
Link Building | | Vetshopgroup0 -
What to do with some good links I have?
I have some pretty strong links from relevant sources linking to the homepage of a site I deal with. The links are usually from a PR3-5 pages and display specific result about the linking site. Sometimes they come from badges. We offer several services, so sometimes the page is about one service and next time about the other. Currently all of my pages link to the homepage. Would it not be better to link to the specific product page related to the page I have? Also I can do a canonical to the service pages? Which would be best?
Link Building | | Svetoslav0 -
New Links added
I have added a number of quality inbound links to my site. How long does it take to see the effects of these links into my seomoz statistics?
Link Building | | molachef1