Link Building | SEM | Internet Marketing

How to manage your mailing campaign

linkguyz — Sat, 10 May 2008 18:45:07 +0000

1. Once you have your potential partner database, the first thing you need to do is build a “generic” email message.
2. Next, tailor each mail and make it as personal as possible.
3. Use names to address people you are writing to
4. Write things in the mail that would convince them that you actually visited their site and are very keen in partnering with them
5. Tell them about how your services are very relevant to theirs and how they can benefit from exchanging links.
6. Always make sure that you have their link on your site before you write to them
7. Always show then where their link is placed on your site, so they do not have to look for it. Make it very simple for them to find their link.
8. Look for the best person to send your mail to. It could be the Webmaster, the owner of the site or sales and marketing person.
9. If they link to you first, link right back. If they ask you to link first, do it right away and send them a mail.
10. If someone asks for something extra like putting their link in the top 5, ask them for a similar action on their side. If the PR of that site is much better than yours, just get linked anyways.
11. Always ask people if they have other sites they would like to exchange links with. If you’ve done a good job for them they’re much more likely to offer you any additional sites they may have.
12. Consistency and persistence are important but with good judgment. Pursue people who showed some interest but disappeared due to some genuine reason. They’re not likely to re-initiate contact, so stay in touch with them. Send them another e-mail in a few days or the Monday of the next week. Remind them that they were interested in an exchange and that you’d love to go through with it. Sometimes it takes three or four e-mails to get them to finally link to you, but it’s worth it, especially if their site has high PR. As for people who never responded in the first place, it may help to resend the e-mail one more time a week or so later.
13. Fridays and especially weekends are not a good time to send your first e-mail. Most people don’t work weekends and your e-mail is likely to get lost or buried. E-mailing Monday-Thursday is good because it gives you time to get your link that week or to follow up in a day or two if they haven’t linked back and still get your link that week.
14. Don’t be pushy, demanding or rude. Never say “you need to link to us here”, or “we want this or that”… Don’t turn anyone away. Good links are hard to get. Be clear in your instructions so there’s no room for confusion or misunderstanding. Send them your linking info in each email to ensure they have it and will use it.
15. Stay very organized and develop a good system that helps you keep on top of everything, timing can be crucial. Once you start accumulating hundreds of sites, it’s hard to keep track, so have a good system/spreadsheet and develop good daily habits of monitoring your progress and keeping on top of things.

Here are some canned mail templates. Replace the text between “<>” appropriately. Change the mails to suit the situation and based on the rapport you have established with the other party

i. First Time Request Mail:

1. Subject: now links to you!

2. Dear :

3. Message Body: I was surfing the net and came across your website . I noticed it was a quality site and decided to include a link in my list on my similarly related website . What I liked most about your site was

I believe our websites compliment each other well and would appreciate it if you could link back to me. The way search engines value link popularity and thematic linking should help us both benefit from higher rankings on Google.

I look forward to your reply.

ii. Reminder Mail (If no one responds to your first time mail, send this mail in the next week, after 7 days)

1. Subject: Just wanted to follow up on my link exchange mail of last week.

2. Dear

3. Message Body: I had sent you a mail last week about exchanging links to with our site. I am attaching the same mail for you reference.

I feel we could both mutually gain on Google page rank if we exchange links. I already have your link on my site and you can find it here .

Please let me know if you would be interested in exchanging links within the next 3 days.

Awaiting your reply.

iii. Respond to queries Mail: (If people come back to you asking questions about your site or your mail, then use the following template)

1. Subject:

2. Dear

3. Message Body: Thank you for your mail. Here are the answers to your questions ( OR ) Here are the clarifications you were seeking:

4. Message ending: I hope this has addressed all the points in your mail. Please do let me know if you need any further information.

iv. Thank you Mail: (Once people have linked to you, send them this mail)

1. Subject: Thank you for linking back to us

2. Dear

3. Message Body: Thank you for linking back to us. I am sure this will help us both in attracting more targeted traffic to our sites.

Now that we have our contact details and are link partners, let us stay in touch with each other on a regular basis.

4. Message ending: Thank you once again.

v. Keep in touch Mail/References: (This is a general “Hi there, how are things with you” mail. Try to find out what your partner has learnt new, share what you have discovered – exchange useful information and build a good rapport)

1. Subject: Catching up… There is this new tool you may like…

2. Dear

3. Message Body:

I came across this really good tool that . I thought it might be useful to you.

Our website traffic has increased over the last few weeks. We have added more link partners and will refer them to you if the sites have a theme such as yours.

How is business on your “site”?

Have you added new link partners that could be of use to my site? Would appreciate if you can refer some of those to me.

Thank you for your time.

vi. Removing their link from our site Mail: (If you find that your link has been removed from their site, then send this email)

1. Subject: Have you removed our link?

2. Dear

3. Message Body:

I was just browsing and running some routine checks on the status of our links on our partner sites, when I noticed that our link does not show up on your site.

Your link is still maintained on our site and you can see it here.

Has there been some mistake or has the link been removed? If you have removed the link, may I know the reason? If there anything we can do to get our link back on your site, I would be more than glad to do that.

Please do let me know, so we can work out a solution.

Awaiting your reply.

How to manage your mailing campaign

linkguyz — Sat, 10 May 2008 18:44:55 +0000

1. Once you have your potential partner database, the first thing you need to do is build a “generic” email message.
2. Next, tailor each mail and make it as personal as possible.
3. Use names to address people you are writing to
4. Write things in the mail that would convince them that you actually visited their site and are very keen in partnering with them
5. Tell them about how your services are very relevant to theirs and how they can benefit from exchanging links.
6. Always make sure that you have their link on your site before you write to them
7. Always show then where their link is placed on your site, so they do not have to look for it. Make it very simple for them to find their link.
8. Look for the best person to send your mail to. It could be the Webmaster, the owner of the site or sales and marketing person.
9. If they link to you first, link right back. If they ask you to link first, do it right away and send them a mail.
10. If someone asks for something extra like putting their link in the top 5, ask them for a similar action on their side. If the PR of that site is much better than yours, just get linked anyways.
11. Always ask people if they have other sites they would like to exchange links with. If you’ve done a good job for them they’re much more likely to offer you any additional sites they may have.
12. Consistency and persistence are important but with good judgment. Pursue people who showed some interest but disappeared due to some genuine reason. They’re not likely to re-initiate contact, so stay in touch with them. Send them another e-mail in a few days or the Monday of the next week. Remind them that they were interested in an exchange and that you’d love to go through with it. Sometimes it takes three or four e-mails to get them to finally link to you, but it’s worth it, especially if their site has high PR. As for people who never responded in the first place, it may help to resend the e-mail one more time a week or so later.
13. Fridays and especially weekends are not a good time to send your first e-mail. Most people don’t work weekends and your e-mail is likely to get lost or buried. E-mailing Monday-Thursday is good because it gives you time to get your link that week or to follow up in a day or two if they haven’t linked back and still get your link that week.
14. Don’t be pushy, demanding or rude. Never say “you need to link to us here”, or “we want this or that”… Don’t turn anyone away. Good links are hard to get. Be clear in your instructions so there’s no room for confusion or misunderstanding. Send them your linking info in each email to ensure they have it and will use it.
15. Stay very organized and develop a good system that helps you keep on top of everything, timing can be crucial. Once you start accumulating hundreds of sites, it’s hard to keep track, so have a good system/spreadsheet and develop good daily habits of monitoring your progress and keeping on top of things.

Here are some canned mail templates. Replace the text between “<>” appropriately. Change the mails to suit the situation and based on the rapport you have established with the other party

i. First Time Request Mail:

1. Subject: now links to you!

2. Dear :

I look forward to your reply.

ii. Reminder Mail (If no one responds to your first time mail, send this mail in the next week, after 7 days)

1. Subject: Just wanted to follow up on my link exchange mail of last week.

2. Dear

3. Message Body: I had sent you a mail last week about exchanging links to with our site. I am attaching the same mail for you reference.

I feel we could both mutually gain on Google page rank if we exchange links. I already have your link on my site and you can find it here .

Please let me know if you would be interested in exchanging links within the next 3 days.

Awaiting your reply.

iii. Respond to queries Mail: (If people come back to you asking questions about your site or your mail, then use the following template)

1. Subject:

2. Dear

3. Message Body: Thank you for your mail. Here are the answers to your questions ( OR ) Here are the clarifications you were seeking:

4. Message ending: I hope this has addressed all the points in your mail. Please do let me know if you need any further information.

iv. Thank you Mail: (Once people have linked to you, send them this mail)

1. Subject: Thank you for linking back to us

2. Dear

3. Message Body: Thank you for linking back to us. I am sure this will help us both in attracting more targeted traffic to our sites.

Now that we have our contact details and are link partners, let us stay in touch with each other on a regular basis.

4. Message ending: Thank you once again.

1. Subject: Catching up… There is this new tool you may like…

2. Dear

3. Message Body:

I came across this really good tool that . I thought it might be useful to you.

Our website traffic has increased over the last few weeks. We have added more link partners and will refer them to you if the sites have a theme such as yours.

How is business on your “site”?

Have you added new link partners that could be of use to my site? Would appreciate if you can refer some of those to me.

Thank you for your time.

vi. Removing their link from our site Mail: (If you find that your link has been removed from their site, then send this email)

1. Subject: Have you removed our link?

2. Dear

3. Message Body:

I was just browsing and running some routine checks on the status of our links on our partner sites, when I noticed that our link does not show up on your site.

Your link is still maintained on our site and you can see it here.

Please do let me know, so we can work out a solution.

Awaiting your reply.

Link Quality

linkguyz — Sat, 10 May 2008 18:39:20 +0000

Your link profile is potentially the most powerful aspect of your SEO efforts, especially in the eyes of Google. Quality counts over quantity, but it is important to get a good list of well-balanced links pointing to your site. Diversification really is the key. Try not to concentrate all of your efforts on gaining links from one source, and similarly try not to gain them using a single method. A number of tactics should be avoided wherever possible because they either offer you no benefit whatsoever or your page may be penalized.

This article looks at the acquisition of links purely from an SEO standpoint and, aside from the really bad linking methods, if a link will provide good-quality, direct traffic then it is definitely still a good link and well worth considering. You will have to use your judgment on this, to a certain extent.

Good Links

Directory Links: Directories are viewed as being a very positive source of links by a number of search engines. Obviously, some directory listings carry much more weight than others and some directories are hardly worth the effort. Be careful to drip feed your site with directory links at first because it is possible that too many too quickly will see your site penalized until your link profile becomes more natural.

Start with the major Internet directories and consider getting links from free general topic directories as well as niche directories and also look at paying for inclusion in one or two of the seriously large directories like the Yahoo directory and business.com. As your link profile expands you can add more directories to gain extra weight.

Reciprocal Links: You may have read that reciprocal linking is dead. While it is true that Google and possibly other search engines now place much less weight on a profile that is crammed with nothing but reciprocal links they still have a place. Keep the number of reciprocal links you use down to a minimum and certainly don’t base your entire link building efforts on this one tactic alone.

Again, balance is a big part of reciprocal linking but also of importance is relevance. Regardless of whether you offer a separate links or resources page, or you choose to include the links throughout your site you are still essentially endorsing the site. You will also gain much more credence from a link that is placed on a page containing information relevant to your own page.

Unique One-Way Inbound Links: These should pretty much be the staple diet of your link portfolio. An inbound link that is one way does not necessitate the inclusion of a link back to that page on your site. This can help to give your own pages the benefit instead of handing it out to your link partners. The more relevant and the more important that search engines deem the linking site to be the more weight they give that particular link.

Site Wide Links: Again, these should be used sparingly. Gaining a site wide link means that a link to your site or your pages is placed on a number of pages in a site. Search engines are known to give less weight to links that are procured on this basis but it does help to give your portfolio a more rounded appearance.

Press Release Links: Writing and submitting a digital press release can provide good links. Many press releases are used by other sites and industries related to your site and they may also be included on some major news websites. There are free press release distribution services available, but it is common to need t pay to make the link clickable and to use anchor text.

Article Links: Writing and submitting articles to article directories can provide a large number of links. Not only can you submit one article to numerous directories but each directory has the potential of generating a number of interested websites. These websites also publish your article (which includes an author bio section with your link). This can be a good way to get authoritative sites to link to you.

Community Links: Join forums and include your link in your signature. Post useful comments on other people’s blogs and include your link as your username. You should, under no circumstances, spam blogs or forums and only include links on the sites that allow it.

Presell Advertising Pages: Some websites will allow you to include an entire page on their site. In most cases you will either need to pay to have the page written or you, or write the page yourself. Generally the website will also include other forms of advertising but as long as you choose sites carefully this can generate some excellent links.

Bad Links

FFA Sites: An FFA, or Free-For-All page, is one that allows anybody to post any link they like on the page. Typically they are not only useless to your cause, because the search engines ignore them, but they will not generate any natural traffic but may attract the spammers to your doors.

Link Farms: A link farm is a page that contains an excessively large number of links. Some say a page with 100 links directed out of that page is a link farm, but in all honesty it is unlikely that a page will yield much benefit for SEO or non-SEO with more than fifty or so links.

Off Topic: Off topic links are something of a bone of contention. They may offer very slight weight with some search engines because it is quite possible that natural links from certain websites would point to any number of pages on any topic. This appears in the bad link section because they offer very little positive benefit and your efforts would be best placed gaining on-topic links.

Unindexable: Purely from an SEO standpoint, links that cannot be indexed by search engines are completely useless. A search engine spider must be able to follow the link to find your page and provide you with any benefit for that link. Avoid any page that offers to display your link in a frame, or includes the no index or no follow robots.txt tags. However, bear in mind that a site that is currently not being indexed by search engines may be a new site. It could also grow up to be the next Google.com and take your link with it.

Conclusion:
Your link profile should appear as natural as possible so vary the good links as much as possible and avoid the bad links. Collect links from as many sources using as many tactics as possible and use keyword variants in your anchor text. By following these guidelines you should be able to improve the appearance of your link profile and, therefore, improve your search engine rankings.

Top 15 Sites for Promoting Your Local Business

linkguyz — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 12:17:58 +0000

The advertising of the future is going online–and going local. This hot trend is growing rapidly and shows no signs of letting up. There is no drought that advertising is going online and local also. There’s no question that consumers are using the internet to navigate their way to local brick-and-mortar retailers.

Complete List of Social Media Sites

linkguyz — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 14:26:11 +0000

This resource for social media is a compilation of other great resources, tools, and Websites from around the Web to assist you in your social media efforts, efficiency, and comprehension. Whether your interest is in social media marketing or general social media participation this resource list is invaluable in assisting you in your journey.

Social Bookmark Tools

List of Social Bookmark sites

40+ Social News Websites

50 Top Niche Social Media Sites, and Their Power Accounts

Analysis What Type of Content Is Most Popular On Digg, Reddit, Propeller, Del.icio.us and StumbleUpon

Social Network and Bookmark MegaList V18

Joe Whyte’s list of social media sites by category

OnlyWire, SocialPoster, SocialMarker, PostToaster – Mass Social Bookmark Submission

50+ Social Bookmarking and Social News Sites

120 Social Bookmarking site by PageRank

40+ Social Search Engines

Ultimate Social Media Optimization List

Social Bookmarks Creator

Digg

Your Ultimate Digg Resource

Digg Toolbox

Amazing Digg Tools Collection

12 Must-Have Tools for Active Digg Users

Digg Tools – About.com

The Digg Toolbox: 70+ Digg-related Scripts, Tools, and Tutorials

380+ Digg-style Applications

Digg tools by Category

62 posts on how to squeeze the juice from Digg

Which Categories Make The Digg Home Page

Digg Stalker

Digg’s Top 1000 Users

Digg Friend Finder

Digg Suggest

Link Attraction Factor Title Check

Link Attraction Factor Keyword Tool

5 must-see Digg Tools

29 Super Awesome Tools Built on the Digg API

Top 10 Digg Tools to Enhance your Digg Experience

WordWeb – A Digg Visualization

The Essential Digg Tools

SocialBlade – Digg Front Page Data

Digg Entourage

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon Buttons & Tools

StumbleUpon Tools from around the Web

The StumbleUpon Toolbox: 40+ Scripts, Tools, and Tutorials

10 Tools to StumbleUpon websites with ease

StumbleUpon Alerter

StumbleRank

Del.icio.us

Absolutely Del.icio.us Tools Collection

Comprehensive Listing of Del.icio.us Tools, Plugins and Add-ons for Social Bookmarking

Del.icio.us Toolbox: 180+ Tools and Resources

Del.icio.us A-to-Z by Functions : All 150+ hacks

Essential Del.icio.us Tools

Flickr

100+ Flickr Resources

80+ Useful Tools for Flickr

Tools for Flickr

Flickr Bits and Pieces

The Great Flickr Tools Collection

Compfight – Flickr Search Tool

Flickr Tools

Flickr Photo Comment Tool

The Ultimate Flickr Tools, Scripts, and Hacks Database

Twitter

Follow Twitter Conversations

TerraMinds Twitter Search

Twitter Toolbox: 60+ Twitter Tools

5 Twitter Tools We Love

10 Best Twitter Tools for WordPress Blogs

All Twitter Tools and Mashups in One Place

Twitter Tools

Twitter Tools Collection

Twitter Tools, Tweaks, and Theories

My Essential Twitter Tools

8 Cool Twitter Tools

More Twitter Tools

Twitter Tips – Tools for your Tweets

Twitter Groups

Twitter Tools by SEOWife

YouTube

The Amazing YouTube Tools Collection

4 YouTube Tools you probably didn’t know about

TubeSpy

Search Engines

linkguyz — Wed, 16 May 2007 09:48:44 +0000

Hi PPl,

This is my very first post on any blog site. Actually have created this blog for sharing my experience in the field of SEO.
From past 3 years I am working in an SEO firm and have worked on various sites. During this period I have searched for SEO related books and information extensively on the web and found some intersting stuf regarding SEO which I would like to share with you all.

SEO means Search Engine Optimisation. This is an ongoing process of getting one’s site ranked in the search engines to boost its online business. Now what is a search engine ? There are around 70 major search engines across the Globe. However the major share is held by Google, Yahoo, MSN. These 3 has a well-deserved reputation as the top choice for those searching the web.

I am giving a brief information about all the search engines known to me along with these 3 giants. This information is derived from internt.

7Search
Acclaim Search
AOL
AllCrawl
All The Web
AltaVista
Amnesi
Ampleo
Ask Jeeves
Deja.Com
Deoji
Dewa
DevSearch
DirectHit
DMOZ
Excite
Findit2000
FindWhat
Frequent Finders
Funkycat
GenieKnows
Google
Go
Go2Net
GoshDarn!
HotBot
iBound
Info Hiway
Infomak
InfoSeek
Intelliseek
IXQuick
Jump City
Kanoodle
Link Centre
Link Master
Links2Go
Look Up
Lycos
MSN
NBCi
TheNet1
Nexor Aliweb
NorthernLight
Overture
Pathfinder
Reference.Com
Rocket Links
Scrub The Web
Search4Info
Search Hound
Search King
Snap
Splat Search
Subjex
Super Cyber Search
ToggleBot
TopClick
WebCrawler
Web Direct
WebSearch2K
WebVentureHotlist
What-U-Seek
Where2Go
WWWHunter
Yahoo!
Zen Search
Z Search

Something About me !!

linkguyz — Wed, 16 May 2007 09:22:35 +0000

Hi All,Welcome to the world of SEO/SEM. This is the first time I am writing something. My name is Mithil and from last 3 years I am working in this internet business(read search engine optimisation/marketing) .I was always fascinated by the world of computer and internet. However in my earlier days I didn’t get approtunity to work in this field. May be because of my qualification as I am just a diploma holder in mechanical Engg. After working in some good ‘manufacturing industries’ I got chance to enter in this web world. Since that, no look back for me. I became a net savey.Intially, I was working as a Link Builder. There was a huge pressure and we use to work for 12/12 hours. Those were crazy days. Alone I was handling 40 sites for reciprocal link campaigns and use to send about 500 request mails daily. Actually Our company was in its growing phase. That time we were only 5 link managers. In just 1 year we brought our new office and doubled our capacity. Being a senior and good track record holder, I was given a team of young and fresh guns to expand our business. I took it as a challenge and started training them. After some 2/3 months, they all became perfect in link building and started performing.

Since then, I am working hard to learn more in this field and know more new things. This blog is also for that purpose only.