The past few days, I’ve been Googling around to find sites that link to other Web sites that are related to my profession, but not the site that I’ve been running for about 12 years. For the owners of these sites, I composed a fill-in-the-blank semi-personalized letter letting the recipient know that they seem to be missing a site in their linkroll, and tell them about mine - without using superlatives, SEO jargon, or anything that seems like advertising or chest-thumping.
The majority of those sites that have links to “everywhere but elmwood’s site” are blogs. When I try to find a contact address on them, about half have nothing, not even a munged email address or .jpg with the address to foil spammers. The majority of these sites are on Blogger/Blogspot, so I can’t check domain name records to find the owner’s email address. Literally, the only way of contacting them is to post a comment, and to do so would make me feel like I’m comment spamming.
Why not just make a genuine comment on something in one of their entries, then mention your site at the end of the comment as a “by the way” remark?
I know that is more time-consuming, but I doubt anyone would object if it was obvious you had bothered to read some of their blog first. I respond much better to bands trying to promote themselves to me on MySpace if the band member makes a comment on my profile that makes it obvious they did bother to read it.
So you’re upset that people you’ve never met have not taken steps to provide you with convenient access to free publicity?
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
Not like the bloggers have any obligation to you at all. If I got a “fill-in-the-blank semi-personalized letter letting the recipient know that they seem to be missing a site in their linkroll” I’d likely laugh while hitting the delete button. If you were a registered user, I’d be inclined to throw in a ban at no extra charge. Depending on my mood, I might also make a sticky thread mocking you without mercy to the general amusement of my regular members.
If, on the other hand, you get interested in their blog and post interested and relevant comments, they’ll come find you and link to you. For Blogger, that might mean creating a Blogger account and linking to your page.
I don’t link to people because they send me an email. I link to people because I want people who read my site to read their site. That generally means that I like the person and think their site is worthwhile.