Over the last few weeks I have received a number of emails from bloggers and site owners requesting link exchanges with my blog/s. Although, all were polite and well written, I did not feel I could take these people up on their offer. No, not because I’m a great big meanie who only shares links with established blogs, but because not one of these blogs came even close to covering a subject which was related to any of mine, or which would have been of any interest to my readers. Is this important? Yes, it is, and for a couple of reasons.

Before I explain why relevance is important when it comes to linking, let me say I don’t blame the people who wrote to me for doing so, or for believing that contacting random bloggers was a good way to get publicity for their new blogs. If you scout around many marketing and money making blogs, you will see so called gurus suggesting this very idea, and making it sound as though bloggers are literally overjoyed to receive such requests. The truth is they aren’t. That doesn’t mean that you should never consider asking for a link, but to randomly contact bloggers based on such things as Google Page Rank, or the number of commenters is a bad idea.

Why is relevance important?

Search engine bots, especially those belonging to Google are highly sophisticated little guys, and are capable of understanding context and relevance. I won’t pretend to understand how this works, and most search engines guard their algorithms closely, but it is true to say that having your link on sites which are related to your own in some way is of far more benefit than having it appear in random places. If you blog about gardening, it would be of little value for you to have your link on blogs about football, or welding. However, having it mentioned on other gardening sites, or on those which are in some way related – a blog about cooking with your own home grown vegetables for example – is very valuable.

Lack of relevance is a problem for human visitors too. If people are visiting your blog to find out more about gardening, they probably won’t be particularly interested in football or welding, or if they are, they won’t expect to find such subjects on your blog. When a reader looks at your blogroll, they will be hoping to discover the gardening blogs and sites you recommend.

Put yourself in their shoes. You find a great blog, packed full of useful info, because of this you have a degree of respect for the opinion of the blogger, you think ‘this girl knows her onions, I wonder which blogs she reads’, then you check the sidebar, and find a load of completely irrelevant stuff. I suspect you would be distinctly unimpressed.

So, how should you go about asking for links on another blog or site? Well, I’ll be honest and say this isn’t something I have ever done, mainly because I prefer to have the kind of links which are based on the value of what I write, therefore the following suggestions are simply my own ideas about the kind of approach that would make me consider accepting such an offer. Other people will have other ideas, and if you do, don’t forget to share your thoughts in the comments.

• Spend some time researching your theme or subject to find appropriate blogs.
• Don’t contact the blogger immediately. A more useful approach would be to get to know the blogger first. Read their blog, leave valid comments – not spam such as ‘great blog, visit mine’. The chances are, if you become a regular the blogger will link to you anyway, but even if they don’t, they will be more receptive to an approach from a regular commenter, than a complete stranger.
• When you do make contact be polite, use those manners your mother taught you. Don’t boast, brag or write in a way that could be construed as arrogant. You may think your blog is the best thing since sliced bread, that doesn’t mean anyone else will.
• Allow the blogger to choose the text they will use with your link. Identikit links are not good, and can count against you with search engines. Natural, organic text is a far better option. In addition, your choice of wording may not be suitable for all blogs, so let the blogger have a free choice about this.
• If the blogger says no, take it on the chin. There are many reasons why they may not want to link to you – it isn’t necessarily a slight against your blog. Be philosophical, just because they don’t want to link to you today, does not mean they will never link to you.

One final point: While the above advice may be of some use to you, the best way to encourage other bloggers to link to you is to write good content. This may be more time consuming, but in the long run, it will be more productive.

This post was first published on March 16th, 2007

Updated to add: To find out more about the importance of link relevance pop over to this post at the Official Google Webmaster blog

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