Asking Bloggers For Links

Emailing popular relevant bloggers can be a great way to pick up some extra links and get your great content noticed when otherwise it might go unnoticed. But it’s important to remember a few simple things when firing off these emails to ensure maximum results.

1. Get to the point – most popular bloggers receive hundreds of emails per day and the last thing they want to do is get a page long email from you giving your life story when a couple lines will do. The longer your email is the less likely you are to get that link. All you need to do is say something along the lines of… "I came across a post on your blog that I really enjoyed. I would appreciate it if you could take a look at this post that I wrote on the same topic and let me know what you think. Thanks and I appreciate your time." It obviously wouldn’t be those exact words but you get the point, short and sweet.
2. Make sure your content rocks – do not email bloggers unless you are absolutely sure that your content is unique and very good. Otherwise you are wasting both your time and theirs. Also make sure you do some research before hand so you know exactly what kind of content the blogger likes.
3. No reciprocal links – bloggers don’t want to trade links with you, so don’t even bother asking. The best you can hope for is that they will review your product, or write a post with a link to your post. If you do end up getting a link on their blog roll consider that icing on the cake, but never ask for it.
4. Once in enough – don’t send more than one email. Just because they didn’t link to that post right away doesnât mean they won’t in the future. Possibly they even added your feed to their reader and it’s possible they will link to your other posts in the future. But if you continue to send them emails they will probably get very annoyed and you can forget ever getting a link.

The main reason it’s important to remember and follow these few simple steps is that you will usually only get one shot. That’s right, if you email them once and fail to impress chances are they will ignore any future emails from you. On the other hand if you do manage to impress them you will probably be on their radar from now on. That means you should put extra care into all of your content from that point forward, keep them reading and they will likely link to more of your posts in the future.