Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Please let me know how to improve this email backlink request
-
Hello,
How can I improve upon this email request:
Your "Links" section contains a lot of good websites, and we would like our site to be added to the list.
Our pagerank 4 website, which carries (Here I said what we carry) You have similar sites located in the "Other" Section on your link page. We would greatly appreciate being added to this list.
Sincerely,
BobW
Webmaster
Our Site Name Here
Email Address Here
Phone Number Here -
No worries - Glad I could help out.
-
Derek,
I meant to click on "Good Answer" for your answer. You really helped. I apologize, and I will click yours first next time.
- topic:timeago_earlier,21 days
-
Try this guide. Some templates here:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/broken-link-building-guide-from-noob-to-novice
Customize and tailor each email as much as possible. Really look at the target site, follow them on twitter, learn about them, etc
For example, I recently started following a target. I was going to do a broken link email, but soon enough, they were ranting in a blog post about their brand usernames being taken by squatters and inactive accounts on twitter/facebook. I used that to reach out to them and suggest what to do to claim their usernames since I actually had the same problem. I didn't even mention or request links, but they are now linking to our homepage and referencing other pages on my site. All I did was sign my emails with my domain name, so they know who i am, where i'm from.
Essentially I made a friend by offering value, and asking for nothing in exchange. That target would have been tough to get a link from otherwise.
In case that hadn't worked out, I WOULD have eventually asked directly for the link after having made a great first impression.
-
In the past, I have offered a variety of benefits to the sites I am contacting. Here are a few I can think of off the top of my head:
-
Relevant and original blogs or articles
-
sharing their site or advertisement on social media profile
-
writing a testimonial for businesses or individuals that I have worked with
-
"how-to" articles
-
Infographics or visual guides
-
Bringing typos or broken links to webmaster's attention
-
A reciprocal link
-
-
Hi Klarke,
What would the title and first sentence of the email be if I'm doing "broken' link building?
-
Hi Derek,
What could I offer to benefit them in my case?
-
In my experience with sending out link request emails, they always want to know how it benefits them. Whether you are offering content, infographics, guest blog post, broken link corrections, reciprocal link, endorsing them on a social media or providing a testimonial for their business, I have seen the best results by telling them how it will benefit their website.
Create a compelling title that mentions the benefit so you have a higher open rate. Getting them to open is half the battle.
Also, try including your website url in the body of the message so it easy for them to click through and review your site:
"Our pagerank 4 website - http://www.example.com - which carries (Here I said what we carry) You have similar sites located in the "Other" Section on your link page."
Make sure your request is short, clear and direct. Possibly rewording your opening sentence to:
"Would you consider adding our site on the "Links" section list?"
-
Yes, they work ok - best to keep an excel sheet to track who you have emailed. If you dont get a response after a couple of weeks resend. If you still dont get a response then move on.
You can pick some links up, but just make sure you don't spam web-masters and that your requests are relevant.
-
Try using 'broken' link building.
There's several guides and posts here on Seomoz. Just search.
Basically, you scan through the list of links, and you'll probably find a few broken or 404 pages. Point those out and also recommend the addition of new resources, including your own. It works extremely well, and you don't come across as the typical emailer that the webmaster probably encounters everyday.
Round off that strategy with a regular guest posts, link bait and other content marketing ...and you're solid.
-
Michael, do you have experience using emails like the one you outlined? How well do they work?
-
Possibly this:
Hi,
Bob here from the ** * * and I wanted to drop an email to you and compliment your site. Nice layout, good info, good resources.
I was looking around at a few different sites for product/service information and I thought your's was one of the best.
That being said, I also noticed you guys have some great content related to product/service. I currently work for a company that maintains a website that offers product/service, www.domainname.com.
We are a nationally recognized, reliable source for product/service on the web and I was wondering if you'd be interested in exchanging/advertising via links between your site and mine?
If not, thanks for the time and keep up the good work!
Thanks,
Bob -
Yes, I read that. I could not locate a name for who I was writing to. I tried to structure the email according to that article. Do you have any specific suggestions?
-
Hi,
There was actually a great post on this subject a few days ago, worth taking a look. I think based on this, you could improve the structure of your email. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-write-email-to-get-a-better-response-rate
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
-
Need some help understanding SEO - Please help before I lose [pull out] all my hair
I'm new to SEO, and am stubbornly trying to educate myself. I have a telescope shop in Canada, it's a small business that we run on the side. We're driving lots of traffic through FB and our outreach programs but I really want to increase our presence on search. We released a new website back in January and it killed some of our rankings. We're working our way back with a very specific set of efforts on regular SEO: Metadata and titles, although it seems that's not super relevant Building high quality backlinks and eliminating any spammy backlinks Rewriting product listings so that they are original content though I'm not sure how important this is in e-commerce Writing high quality articles and blog posts Working relevant keywords into our product pages and titles I understand that good SEO is about pushing on all the levers, and trying to make sure that your site is as valuable to the end user as possible. We're making some good progress, but I'm puzzled by the #1 shop in Canada. They don't put any apparent effort into SEO and they still rank #1 on every key product we compete with them on. I've worked with two separate, highly ranked and regarded SEO firms on this and neither has been able to tell my why this other site ranks so highly. Here's a specific example on a popular product that we both sell, the Celestron NexStar 8SE. Here’s the link to Telescope Canada’s page for their Celestron 8SE: https://telescopescanada.ca/products/celestron-nexstar-8se-computerized-telescope-11069 Here’s a link to the Celestron 8SE page from the manufacturer website: https://www.celestron.com/products/nexstar-8se-computerized-telescope Telescopes Canada has just copied and pasted. There is no original content aside from adding the shipping and return policy to the tab, and having some options for selecting accessories on the page. Here is our page: https://all-startelescope.com/products/celestron-nexstar-8se We have higher page authority, higher domain authority, and they keyword analyzer in moz says that our page is higher quality than the Telescopes Canada page. I can’t find a single metric on any tool (ubbersuggest, Moz, ahrefs, semrush) that says Telescopes Canada is a better site, or has a better NexStar 8SE product page. But they keep ranking ahead of us, and right at the top of google search. Our titles are good, our metadata is good (but I don’t think that’s been a serious ranking factor for about ten years). Our text is original, it’s relevant, we have healthy internal links to the page. According to Moz's page ranker it's 20 points higher than Telescope Canada's page. We have invensted in some excellent blog content, we’re adding new products to the website so that we rank for more keywords. All of those things are helping, but I fundamentally don’t understand why Telescopes Canada is #1 almost across the board on every key product in our market. There is something that I’m not seeing here. Can you see any metric, any tool in your toolbox that indicates why they rank at the top, or even higher than we do for in these search terms specific to that product: Celestron NexStar 8SE
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Oct 20, 2023, 4:19 PM | nkennett
NexStar 8SE
Celestron NexStar 8SE Canada
NexStar 8SE Canada I have a feeling it's something technical that I'm missing, but I'm not sure how obvious it is with two 'professional' firms not finding it. I'd really appreciate any help or insight that you can offer.0 -
Changing Url Removes Backlink
Hello MOZ Community, I have question regarding Bad Backlink Removal. My Site's Post's Image got 4 to 5k backlinks from unknown sites and also their is no contact details on their site so that i can contact them to remove. So, I have an idea for which i want suggestion " If I change the url that receieves backlinks" does this will remove backlinks? For Example: https://example.com/test/ got 5k backlinks if I change this url to https://examplee.com/test-failed/ does this will remove those 5k backlinks? If not then How Can I remove those Backlinks? I Know about disavow but this takes time.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Dec 1, 2020, 12:57 AM | Jackson210 -
Backlinks from old domain
Hi, We have gone through a change of company brand name including a new domain name.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Oct 6, 2016, 10:26 AM | Agguk
We followed google recommendations at: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/83106?hl=en and it seems to have worked really well, the new domain has replaced the old in the google search results. My question: Still most of our backlinks, both anchor text and links use the old brand name and domain and it´s a slow process trying to update all references. Although they get redirected fine to the new domain (also following google recommendations), I wonder if the current scenario is doing any harm, SEO wise (other than the missed visual exposure of the new brand name) ? ...since the old brand name is not present at the new site I´m thinking of including "New brand name - previously old brand name" somewhere just to provide some sort of connection to all old backlinks, would that be unnecessary? I should mention that the old brand name actually includes our most important keyword but the new brand name does not. Thanks!0 -
Blog comments - backlinks - question
Hi, I see that many good websites have backlinks from very good blogs/sites which are relative. What I noticed that everyone use their real name or generic name in comments. They do not use the keyword for the name. So later they get backlinks with anchor text of their names... So, my question is this good technique ? Do I have any benefits from these backlinks for my website ? With such a technique, whether it is enough just to leave your real name or may I periodically put the keyword for the name ? Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Apr 28, 2014, 9:43 AM | Ivek990 -
H2 Tag Backlink - is this safe?
I have found that my site is getting a link from a good site, but my concern is that the link is in a H2 tag in the footer of the front page of the site Would getting a link from a site wrapped in H2 tags be safe? The anchor is my sites brand name
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Dec 14, 2012, 11:41 AM | JohnPeters0 -
How does Google know if a backlink is good or not?
Hi, What does Google look at when assessing a backlink? How important is it to get a backlink from a website with relevant content? Ex: 1. Domain/Page Auth 80, website is not relevant. Does not use any of the words in your target term in any area of the website. 2. Domain/Page Auth 40, website is relevant. Uses the words in your target term multiple times across website. Which website example would benefit your SERP's more if you gained a backlink? (and if you can say, how much more would it benefit - low, medium, high).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Dec 7, 2012, 5:18 PM | activitysuper0 -
Infinite Redirect Loop without trailing slash, please help
I've been searching for an answer all day, I can't seem to figure this out. When I Fetch my blog as Google(http://www.mysite.com/blog) WITHOUT a trailing slash at the end, I get this error: The page seems to redirect to itself. This may result in an infinite redirect loop **HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently** When I Fetch my blog as Google WITH the trailing slash at the end(http://www.mysite.com/blog/), it is fine without errors. When I pull it up in a browser comes up fine both with and without the trailing slash. My .htaccess file in the root directory contains this: RewriteEngine On
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Sep 25, 2012, 9:25 PM | debc
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index.htm\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^index.htm$ http://www.mysite.com/ [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mysite.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mysite.com/$1 [R=301,L] My .htaccess file in the blog directory contains this: BEGIN WordPress <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /blog/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^./index.php/. [NC]
RewriteRule ^index.php/(.*)$ http://www.mysite.com/blog/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /blog/index.php [L]</ifmodule> END WordPress Do I have something incorrectly coded in these .htaccess files that could be causing this? Or is there something else I should look at? Thank you for any help!!0 -
Google penguin penalty(s), please help
Hi MozFans, I have got a question out of the field about www.coloringpagesabc.com.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Aug 13, 2012, 5:33 PM | MaartenvandenBos
Question is why the rankings and traffic are going down down down the last 4 months. Costumer thinks he got hit by google penguin update(s). The site has about 600 page’s/posts al ‘optimized’ for old seo:
- Almost all posts are superb optimized for one keyword combination (like … coloring pages) there is a high keyword density on the keyword titles and descriptions are all the same like: <keyword>and this is the rest of my title, This is my description <keyword>and i like it internal linking is all with a ‘perfect’ keyword anchor text there is a ok backlink profile, not much links to inner pages
- there are social signals the content quality is low The site to me looks like a seo over optimized content farm Competition:
When I look at the competition. The most coloring pages websites don’t offer a lot of content (text) on there page. The offer a small text and the coloring pages (What it is about :-)) How to get the rankings back:
What I was thinking to do. rewrite the content to a smaller text. Low keyword density on the keyword and put the coloring pages up front. rewrite all titles and descriptions to unique titles and descriptions Make some internal links to related posts with a other anchor text. get linkbuilding going on inner pages get more social signals Am I on the right track? I can use some advise what to do, and where to start. Thanks!!</keyword></keyword> Maarten0