Your SEO Plan: Sample Link Building Letter

So you want to start a link building campaign? You need a good link request letter, one that’s friendly and professional, and that won’t be offensive or annoying to site owners or webmasters.

Inbound links to your website are one of the most important factors in search engine ranking algorithms today. In our book Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day , we tell the story of how one of our link requests got into the hands of a vengeful blogger, and how his attempt to humiliate us fell flat because we wrote a “bulletproof” link letter.

Here’s a sample link building letter that you can adapt to your own needs:

Dear Ms. Alphabeth, [always use the person’s real name if you have it],

I've greatly enjoyed looking through your pet plankton website, especially the “Plankton of the Month” photos. I have a website on a related subject and I think it might be of interest to your readers. It's "Care and Feeding of Pet Plankton" on ZappyCo.com. This page provides a detailed plankton care plan, including homemade algae snacks, tank maintenance, and even a section on how to set up a trust fund for your plankton. The page is located at http://www.zappyco.com/planktonics [use the exact URL that you want the site to link to].

I thought a good place on your site to link from would be on your "links" page, here: http://www.planktonlove.com/links [use the exact URL that you hope the site will link from].

Here is a description that you can use if you like:

ZappyCo’s Plankton Care and Feeding Tips
Recipes, tank cleaning instructions, and tips for keeping plankton pets happy.

I hope you find this link appropriate and useful. We at ZappyCo would certainly appreciate a link from your site. Please feel free to contact me with any questions.

Sincerely,
Harlan Zappy
Web Marketing Manager, ZappyCo
[Use your full name, title, and if possible, use an email address from the site requesting the link.]

What’s good about this letter? For starters:

It doesn’t employ hard-selling techniques.
It’s personal and specific. It doesn’t require any guessing or composing should the recipient want to provide a link.
It doesn’t promise a link exchange. If the link is appropriate and your site has high-quality content, you shouldn’t need a link exchange.

In Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day we give additional pointers on writing a bulletproof link letter and making your site more “linkable.” We also walk you through the steps of starting and maintaining a long-term successful link building campaign. Follow these pointers and you’ll be sure to bring in those red-hot inbound links that your website needs and deserves!

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posted 4/28/2006

Like what you see here? Our book, Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day, is full of similarly easy-to-follow advice about organic search, pay-per-click advertising, and conversion tracking. See inside the book here.

Do you have an interesting SEO-related story to tell? Would you like to be interviewed? Please contact us and let us know.

Sample Link Building Campaign Letter

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So you want to start a link building campaign? You need a good link request letter, one that’s friendly and professional, and that won’t be offensive or annoying to site owners or webmasters.