Build a prospect list and send personalised requests that offer something useful.
Open your spreadsheet and add a new tab with six columns: site, contact, why it is relevant, what you will offer or ask, date contacted, and outcome. Put the 10 opportunities from Lesson 6.3, "Ways a small business earns links", into the site column. This tab is your prospect list: 15 relevant sites, each with a contact, a reason and an offer.
Most link requests read something like "Dear webmaster, I came across your website and loved your content... would you consider adding a link?" Site owners delete these, because the sender has clearly not read the site and wants something for nothing. The messages that get answered are short, written to the person reading them, and offer something useful before asking for anything. You can only write that kind of message to a site you have looked at properly, so the list comes first.
Add sites until you have 15. Three kinds are worth looking for. Sites that link to your competitors but not to you are good prospects. You can find them with a paid tool, or by searching for pages that list several businesses like yours. Local directories and community sites relevant to your customers are good too, as are writers or bloggers who have covered your topic recently.
For each site, write one sentence in the relevance column on why it matters to your customers. If you cannot write that sentence, drop the site. As Lesson 6.1, "Why links still matter, and which ones", explains, one site that is relevant to your readers is worth more than three that are not.
Next, find a real contact for each site. A named person from the contact or about page is best. Use a general inbox only when there is no named person. Then fill in the offer column with something you can give that site's readers: a checklist, a guide, an expert quote for an upcoming article, an event they could list, or a correction to outdated information on their page. Where a site already mentions you, the offer can be a thank-you for the mention plus a request to add a link.
Priya runs a small maths tuition centre in Tampines (an invented example). Her customers are parents of primary pupils preparing for PSLE maths. Three rows from her list show how the columns fill in.
Row 1 is the neighbourhood community club. It is relevant because it runs family events for parents in her area. Her offer is a free parents' workshop on helping with P5 (Primary 5) problem sums, which the club could list on its events page. Her contact is the events coordinator named on the club's site.
Row 2 is a parenting blog that recently published a post on choosing a tuition centre. It is relevant because its readers are her customers. She offers her PSLE heuristics checklist as a free resource for their readers, plus a quote for any future post on PSLE maths. Her contact is the editor, Wei Ling, named on the about page.
Row 3 is a primary school PTA page that already mentions the talk Priya gave there last year but does not link to it. Her message thanks them for the mention and asks for a link to her parents' resources page.
Pick your three strongest prospects. A good pitch has four parts and fits on a phone screen:
a specific reason for writing to this person, which shows you have read their site what you are offering and why it helps their readers the ask, stated plainly and once your name, your business and how to reach you
Personalise every message by naming a specific article or page and connecting your offer to it. Template outreach, where the sentences could be sent to anyone, is easy to spot and easy to ignore. Stay honest: if you found the site this morning, do not claim to be a long-time reader. Never offer money, free products or a link swap in exchange for a link. Lesson 6.2, "Link practices that breach Google's policies", explains why.
Priya's pitch to Wei Ling refers to Wei Ling's post on choosing a tuition centre, especially the part about asking how progress is tracked. She says she runs a small maths centre in Tampines. She offers a free one-page checklist of PSLE heuristics, with one worked example each and no sign-up, for parents who want to help at home. She says Wei Ling is welcome to link to it if it would be useful to readers, and offers to answer questions for any future post on PSLE maths. She signs off with her name, her centre's name and her phone number. A good pitch stays useful even if the site never links, and the checklist helps Wei Ling's readers either way.
Send your three pitches and log the date of each in the date contacted column. If a week or two passes with no reply, send one short, polite follow-up that adds something, such as a second reason the resource might help. If there is still no reply after that, mark the outcome "no reply" and move on. Repeated follow-ups annoy people and rarely work.
Record every outcome, including refusals and silence. Priya's community club replied within days and listed the workshop with a link. The blog replied two weeks later, after one follow-up. The PTA did not reply, so that row says "no reply". Over time your log shows which kinds of site and offer get responses, so you can aim the next round better.
You are done when your tab has 15 relevant sites, each with a contact, a reason and an offer, and 3 personalised pitches have gone out with their dates logged. The outcome column fills in over the following weeks.
Open your spreadsheet and build the list first, then pick your three strongest prospects and write and send your pitches.
Build a list of 15 prospect sites, send three personalised pitches, and log the date and any reply for each.
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