Have you even gotten a call from someone offering you a product or service that you didn't ask for?
If so, most of you will at best allow them a very brief window in which they must capture your attention if they want to continue to pitch you.
Like sales, link builders also often have a limited window in which they must capture your interest if they hope to earn a link from your site. Should you be so quick to say no to link builders though?
What if each time you nonchalantly dismiss someone attempting to promote their own business, you are missing a valuable opportunity to promote yours?
As a website owner yourself, you too should be looking to promote your site to increase the traffic and the revenue it generates. The army of people emailing you to ask for a link are your FREE marketing team and you should be looking for ways to leverage their network for your benefit. Not everyone who reaches out to you will have value to offer, but when they do, don't waste the opportunity.
It is pretty likely that you get numerous spam emails, asking you to publish an article, and even the email is written very poorly. In those cases, the article is likely to be of low quality too, those are not the types of emails I am suggesting you respond to.
In addition, guest posts stuffed with affiliate links, or those intended to link to adult, payday lending, or casinos are also ones you should pass on, unless you too are in that industry.
Thankfully, there are however many good writers or SEO agencies promoting good sites who can provide you with great content for your site, or to share with your audience.
SEO link builders of yesteryear would commonly send out bulk, poorly written, generic emails in an attempt to generate link opportunities. Those who have failed to adapt or that don't realize their emails and content are terrible still do that today.
Thankfully, many link builders are much more quality focused than they were in the past, meaning you are able to benefit greatly from responding to emails and accepting links on your site. Here are three ways that saying yes can help your website too.
Fortunately, Google updates that started happening in 2011, have moved SEO companies, marketing agencies, and even other website owners toward producing higher quality work. As a website owner, this means that you can pick up free, high value content for your website. If you give them the "go ahead" to submit content and it does not meet your expectations, reject it then or ask them to revise it, if it is close to your standards. If you tell them no from the start, you are missing out on the potential to review and pick from a library of great content that could be helping your site attract more visitors.
Many SEO companies or professional bloggers will have the ability to promote their content once it is live on your site. If the writer is sharing it on social media, you will gain exposure to their audience, which should be similar to your own, which is why they are writing for your site. Many bloggers will also have an email list that the content can be shared with, again sending new visitors to your site and giving you the opportunity to turn them into a lead or sale.
A third value offer you may receive is paid promotion of the guest post. That's right, some people will foot the bill for paid traffic to promote a guest post on your site, meaning free, guaranteed traffic for your site. I have seen offers range from $25-$200 in paid traffic to go along with the post. Whenever someone does pitch you, don't be afraid to ask them what is in it for you.
If you are promoting your own site or working with an SEO company, every outreach email you receive could be an open door to building new, relevant links to your own site. Simply asking if they can help you in return can go a long way.
Here is a great example from a recent outreach campaign:
In exchange for publishing a guest post, this person asked if we could connect them to a blog we owned or had worked with in the past so that they too could promote their website via guest posting. While a reciprocal link swap is not recommended, putting the webmaster in touch with a third-party site can help both the site owner and the person asking for the link initially.
If you consider the fact that the majority of outreach emails come from SEOs or marketing agencies, the likelihood of them having contacts at another site is high, meaning great potential for you. However, don't forget to focus on quality first. The quality of their emails and content can be indicative of the quality of other sites they may have contact with.
While the flood of low-quality emails you are likely to receive is going to be very annoying, don't let those discourage you from engaging with the quality pitches you receive that could be helping your website grow and prosper.