A compelling link request that I as a blogger want to act on is as rare as hen’s teeth. Nearly all the ones I get are complete garbage, like this one. When making a link request, these are the sorts of statements to avoid, as they will doom your request to the recipients Trash folder. I’ve included with each statement a hypothetical response from the intended recipient to give you a sense what they might be thinking as they delete your email in disgust…
| Link Requester | Webmaster |
|---|---|
| “Hi, Let’s swap links!” (or similar) | “I’d like to swap links with you as much as I’d like to swap STDs.” |
| “I’ve already linked to you and here’s the location…” or similar | “Yeah, whatever. So you bought a $99 link spam robot that created ‘link farm’ pages and your evil little tool will undoubtedly remove my link several weeks later after I’ve forgotten about you.” |
| “Great site!”, “Loved your site!” and other catchall statements that could apply to anybody | “It’s obvious you didn’t even bother to look at my site before emailing me.” |
| “You already link to our competitor XYZ.com and we offer a better product.” or similar | “Yeah, that’s what they all say!” |
| “Please use the following text in your link…” | “Can you be any more obvious that you’re trying to manipulate the search engines? I’ll use whatever damned anchor text I choose that’s in the best interest of my users.” |
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