Dear Sirs and Madams: Please Link to Me!

This search engine optimization tip is brought to you by the Austin SEO Guy — search engine wisdom for Austin, Texas companies.

Here's an email I received today. Spelling errors, bad punctuation and weird grammar have been left intact.

---

Hi,

I have just visited your site and I wonder if we could exchange links with each other?

Link exchange with similar websites like us would promote both websites.I believe my website will have a very good pageview soon.

I'm sorry for that if you are not interested in this request.You can give us a mail to: sellerkey@gmail.com,so you will not recieve this request again.

With your permission,I will post your link on my website,and I hope you post a link to my site as well. If you are interested in this, Please do not reply this mail.Would you please contact us to this email for link exchanging affair: sellerkey@gmail.com and tell us your site's info or exact HTML code and which category do you want to add.

Here is our sites info:

Title: Dropship Wholesaler
Title Url: [Removed by Austin SEO Guy]
Description : Worldwide Wholesale art,ipod shuffle,car alarm,dvd players,ink cartridge,dropship wholesaler from China in small quantity

The exact HTML code is:
[Link removed by Austin SEO Guy] - Worldwide Wholesale art,ipod shuffle,car alarm,dvd players,ink cartridge,dropship wholesaler from China in small quantity

I would be glad to create a link partner relationship with you,and perform future links exchange with other sites I manage.

PS:We are a young company full of vigor.If you are interested in our wholesale business or if you want us to help you to find a product or a manufacturer in China. Please don't hesitate to give us a email to: sellerkey@gmail.com.

All cooperation or inquiry are welcome!

Best Regards
Hellen White
[Website name removed by Austin SEO Guy]

---

Here are my problems with this email:

1. It's spam. Judging by the email's header (not shown) it was blasted to hundreds of webmasters. Am I to believe that Hellen really spent time on my site and thinks it's a quality operation.

2. This person does not want a partnership. She wants to leech off my high-ranking website (this particular email came in through a top-ranked home buying website that I run). What partnership is there between a home buying resource and a drop-shipper of Chinese wholesale products?

3. And here's my caution to you. The higher ranking your website becomes, the more of these emails you will get. I get about six per week, and they are nearly identical in message and format. They are form letters blasted to hundreds or thousands of webmasters by somebody using a software program. They are a desperate attempt to acquire links from high-ranking websites.

99% of the time, these emails should go straight to your trash folder. 99% of the time, these emails come from sites that are (A) broken, (B) shady, (C) brand new and poorly ranked, or (D) operating on the fringes of acceptability (think online gambling sites).

Sure, inbound links to a website are important for SEO. But to scour the Internet looking for any and every high-ranking website for a linking opportunity ... it's just a huge waste of time.

So if you get emails like this, delete them. But what if you need links of your own? How do you get those?

Here's how:

1. Publish articles online through EzineArticles.com and SearchWarp.com.

2. Find well-established niche websites relevant to your topic and offer your articles to them.

3. Publish press releases online through PRWeb.com.

4. Submit your site to high-quality paid directories like Best of the Web, Microsoft Small Business Directory and more.

5. Submit your site to high-quality FREE directories like Jayde.com, Elib.org, Stpt.com and others.

6. Start a blog separate from your website and link to your website.

7. Participate in forums and use your signature to link to your site.

8. (And here's the powerhouse tip) Make something worth linking to in the first place. If people have no reason to link to your site and recommend you to their audience, they won't do it unless you pay them. But if your site contains helpful information, resources and tools, people will often link to you without even being asked. That's where SEO battles are lost or won.

Until next time...

-The Austin SEO Guy

Search Engines Won't Buy What You're Selling

This search engine optimization tip is brought to you by the Austin SEO Guy — search engine wisdom for Austin, Texas companies.

Whenever I coach copywriters on how to write for search engines, my lessons are pretty short. They usually go something like this:

Writer: How do I write for search engines?

Me: By forgetting about the search engines.

Writer: How is that possible?

Me: It's possible by pretending search engines don't exist.

Writer: But they do exist.

Me: But you shouldn't write for them, you should write for people.

Writer: Aren't you an SEO expert?

Me: Yes, that's why I'm telling you not to write for search engines.

Writer: This is exhausting.

Me: [Letting writer off the hook] Here's what I mean...

Search engines won't ever buy your products, so why bother writing for them? Instead, write about your topic in specific, detailed and helpful way. Explain the value of your product or service for people, since they're the ones who will (or won't) give you their business.

Write for people first. And then, when you're done writing for people, go back through and make sure you have the right phrases in your copy. Then have the webmaster add those key phrases to the title tag and description of each page. Then see what you can do about getting people to link to your pages and your site.

Write for people. Optimize for search engines. Take a passionate approach to your writing, and a technical approach to SEO.

Until next time...

-Austin SEO Guy