How to approach getting links to your site from other sites

Getting good quality links to your website is critical for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). But how do you go about finding good quality links, as well as actually securing them from the relevant site owner?

Some guides:

• Getting a link from a site that has nothing to do with your industry or business will do very little.
• Sourcing links from “low quality” websites can do severe harm to your ranking.
• Buying links, or participating in “link schemes” may work in the short term, but it is highly likely you will get penalised by Google at some point.
• As a rule of thumb getting a huge number of links in a short period of time can also do harm to your ranking (as Google looks this as “unnatural”).

Where to find / source good quality links

If you are a client of TMD, and we are handling your SEO we will help you find these links. In addition, you should look at any links you can get from:

• Industry Bodies
• Any events or community organisations your company may sponsor
• Customers / clients
• Public forums (someone might ask a question, and if you answer you may be able to add a link to your site if appropriate). Be cautious here, you should only provide a link within a post if it’s relevant, and you should only participate in good quality (moderated) forum sites.

In addition, you may want to consider creating content that might be highly informative, witty or viral, that may entice other site owners to link to it.

You have found a website that you want to get a link from. How to proceed?

When someone creates a link on their website to another website there has to be something in it for them. Some valuable strategies:

1. Before requesting a link, do your research on the site you want the link from. When requesting a link, you don’t want to lodge a “generic” request as these will be ignored. Try to find out who the best person to talk to about securing a link is (this might even involve a phone call).
2. Identify where on the site you want the link placed, and the text you would like.
3. If possible offer something in return. This might be an offer for a reciprocal link, or some free content, or it might form part of a paid membership (many industry bodies do this).

Example

There is an example below of a good link outreach email to a fictional company, Acme Industries. Note, before sending this I would have done my research:

1. Called Acme Industries and recorded the name of the person who answered the phone
2. Tried to find out the name of the best person to address the email to
3. Researched ACME Industries website, and identified the best place to ask for a link
4. Offered something in return

Hi John,

I spoke to your receptionist Andrew today, and she said you were the best person to talk to about this.

I noticed that your site has an active FAQ page (www.acmeindustries.com.au/faq/), and I can see that you’ve provided links to external parties.

I was hoping you may want to consider adding a link to our business (XYZ Consulting).  Ideally it would say something like “for additional information regarding service XYZ, we suggest you contact XYZ Consulting”. Alternatively, we’ve got a great article on service XYZ, which you may want to consider adding to your blog?

In return we can look at offering a reciprocal link (or article) to your business.

My contact number is : 0400 999 999, or you can reply to my email.

I will give you a call later this week, to see if we can help each other.

Cheers

Steve.