by samThere is no doubt that link building makes up a colossal part of SEO strategy and is vital in boosting your SERP. It’s also pretty common knowledge that sending potential clients an endless stream of robotic-sounding emails will result in very little response, if not getting permanently blacklisted by the company.
So how do you go about doing this properly? It’s essentially a simple process of open, sustain, close, sustain, open. Okay, so let’s break this down a little:
Open: Long gone are the days of sending a monotonous and futile email to hundreds of potential clients. Instead, start by emailing them about something completely unrelated. You could, for example, compliment them on a recent blog post and give an opinion on it, then relate to another post that may be of interest to them. This opens the field of conversation and establishes the relationship on a topic that they will find interesting and are more likely to engage with.
Sustain: Assuming that they have replied to your first email, your next job is to sustain the conversation. That’s right, we’re not rushing anything at the risk of sounding like a heartless and robotic marketer. We want to continue to engage with them in a friendly and conversational manner, in a way that will make them eager to respond again.
Close: This part is key; you only want to mention a link-building relationship once the context and value have been established. Once the opening and sustaining parts of the process have been achieved, then lightly offer them something in return for writing a blog post or two that links back to your site. It may also be an idea to ask for their Twitter, telling them that you want to keep up to date with their posts. You’ve now got a boost to your SEO in a completely legitimate way that will likely build towards a lasting link-building process.
Follow this with a repeat process of sustaining conversation, leaving it ready to open conversation shortly for another linking opportunity. Of course, the vital thing to remember for this is that you need to be fun and interesting. If the potential client has a blog/Twitter, check out their interests and maybe their presence on other sites like Facebook or Last.fm. What are their main interests? What would speak to them personally? It’s this level of personalised online marketing that separates us from the robots that vastly populate the Internet of today.