I can’t remember the last time I tried to manually email a webmaster to ask for a link. I steered clear of it because with more than one site it’s hard to automate, rarely yielded even a response and when I did manage to get a link it rarely gave much benefit.
Well get ready to throw that thought process out the window.
After reading the [tag] SEO[/tag] article I posted about in my SEO Advice post, I got to thinking about the factor they were calling “Relationship Of Site In Topical Community” – or how your sites are viewed by other sites in the SERPS for your keywords.
I started thinking what if I could get a link from a site with a good ranking for the keywords I’m targetting, how much would it ACTUALLY help. After reading the article we began testing. I sent out emails to 11 sites which I thought might give me the oportunity to exchange links, buy an ad, or submit some content to them. Out of I think 11 emails we got only 1 response back (so far anyway, it was only two days ago).
The guy who responded had a site in the top 6 results for my keyword (an extremely competitive niche, over 100 mill competitors for this phrase) and he said we could buy an advertisement – DONE I thought – it wasn’t even that expensive!
He informed me that his cousin also had a site that was in the top 15 results for this keyphrase, so before I knew it, I’d bought an Ad on his cousins site too. Ended up costing a few hundred bucks for both sites for three months of Ad placement.
The results?
Ok this is two days later but this is incredible.
Our site went from position 55 on this keyword to position 39 – in one day!
We’re now ranking #7 for the phrase out of 155 million in MSN for the phrase.
And our traffic has increased just from direct click throughs from those two sites.
Do you think I’ll be contacting webmasters for links more often?
The best thing to have come out of it though is that I’ve now built a relationship with this webmaster – he has another 200 sites in related niches to mine, alot of SEO experience, and he’s just a cool guy – again, you think it was worth spending some time to contact him manually?
Something to think about huh?
I want to know that this advice isn’t being wasted so leave me a comment here if you’re going to try this 
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Any time I get one of those automated link exchange emails I automatically delete it but when I get one that isn’t automated I will take the time to at least look through it. I think it is a lot better but slower to send a personally written email instead of the automated garbage that normally gets sent out.
Totally agree Lullabyes,
I think the other thing is we tend to think a site ranked higher than ours will have no reason to link to us or respond but if you’re creative with your approach, and offer something mutually beneficial, many doors can be opened
Andrew
I feel it doesn’t hurt to ask as you sometimes receive a reply from the most unexpected and to your great benefit.
Maybe keep a copy of your emails and send them to the one’s who didn’t reply a little later on, you never know second time around.
All the best, John
Hi Andrew,
I tend to think direct requests are the best. Even if the webmaster says no you at least are able to open up a communication with them.
I don’t like to flat out ask for a link, but rather tell them that I have a post or site that would be beneficial to their readers/visitors. People are always much more inclined to help if there’s something in it for them