April 20, 2010
The Human Factor in Link Building
Many new SEO’s are often surprised by just how much human interaction is required in link building. In particular, it is often easy to forget the importance of (1) persuasion, (2) subtlety, and (3) specificity in link-building communications.
(1) Persuasion
In a recent link-building-related post on SEOmoz, Rand Fishkin suggests that a link requester should not only cite specific content that they “like” from the site, but should also read that content, formulate questions, and ask questions in regard to the content.
(2) Subtly
In that same post, Rand also suggests that link building requests not be the first contact between the link requester and the site; rather, once there is some familiarity between the parties, then the link should be requested. Although this is a really requires a substantial amount of time and effort, there will likely be substantial ROI because quality links are exponentially more valuable than non-quality links.
(3) Specificity
For example, a link request was sent to a site that had a blogroll of more than 100 sites but the site also contained sponsors. Unfortunately, the link request did not specify that it was for a link in the blogroll and not sponsorship. To make long story short, the lack of specificity in the request did not make a good impression on the webmaster and was quickly dismissed as SPAM.
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