Hi All I know the debate rages on about using programs to help you with link management. However, I think some programs (like Arelis) simply help you manage your link program and does not automate the process. With that said, I have looked at quite a few forums and in general most people give Arelis a good review. I downloaded the demo to test it out. My question is for those who own and use Arelis. Here are the steps I take. 1. Look for potential link partners 2. Once I find a link partner, I put their link on my site 3. I send them an email telling them where I placed their link and asking if they in turn would care to place my link on their site. I did about 70 of these types of emails. I tried to personalize them as much as possible. Yet my results are poor -- very little response. So for those who use Arelis, how do you get people to respond to your link request email. I'm puzzled since I have read on many forums how successful they have been using Arelis and was wondering what the secret was to their sucess. Thanks in advance for your help. p.s. Just so you know, I have done all the other normal link building. (1) I have my own affiliate program (2) written articles (3) done a free ebook (4) given away a screen saver (5) submitted to directores (6) did a PR -- Etc. About the only thing I haven't done is write a program (i.e. php) to give away for fee that requires you to have my link in place to use the program. I don't have any php skills or I would do that next. thanks again.....Steve
What do you consider poor? How many links did you get outta the 70 emails you sent out? You have to remember, especially with reciprocal link building, one person's success is another persons failure. Here's an example. If I build a spammy kind of site and want to just get it indexed and have some of the 1000's of pages get ranked, then i'll send out 5000 email requests (using the standard, boring template style email) and hope to get 100 or so links back, which would equal a successful link campaign. But...if I'm building an industry authority type site, and send out 70 emails (customizing to the fullest in each and every email) to other authority type sites, and I get 10 links pointing back to me, then that would be a successful link campaign. Those authority links are going to be worth a whole lot more in the long run. So, it's all relative to the task at hand. If you're building an affiliate type site, with not that much content and a mediocre design, sending out 70 very customized e-mails is going to be a waste of time. You'd either need to add more substance to your site or just mass send e-mails to whatever site Arelis finds for you.
Some very good points Voasi. Maybe I should of broken down my procedures better and provided the link to my site so you could judge for yourself. This is how I do it. 1. search for link parnters using Arelis...since my site is a dating site, i search on the keyword online dating 2. once i find potential link partners, i go to that site to be sure it is relevant to my site content. 3. next i send a personal email. In other words, i use arelis to find my site, to keep a database of those sites I searched, but when it comes to the email I try to peronalize it as much as possible. From the 70 emails I sent out, I got 2 responses. Obviously I wanted to see how it was working before I continue sending out emails. I guess I picked 70 because that was the year my son was born. My website is http:// www. filipinaeyes . com It is not an affiliate site. Anyways, thanks for your input.
I would scan the top 10 competitor sites in Google and plug them into the Arelis software, checking the backlinks of them as well. You can also use Aaron Wall's BackLink checker and pull the Excel spreedsheets and contact the sites that way too. But it looks like you have a good method going. The dating market is a very competitive market, even for niche-y type sites. You just have to keep plugging away and think of alternatives ways to gather incoming rather then some of the old school methods like reciprocal linking (which still work).
Voasi is right. Always check the backlinks of your competitors. It increases the chances that you will get positive responses. 2 responses from 70 emails is bad. I send out that many emails using Arelis and I get more than that typically. Certain industries are more competitve and harder to get links for than others. The dating market is okay, but is fairly competitive. If your site is in an industry where you have to deal with experienced webmasters, they will know about programs like Arelis. That is why I stick to theme based websites. Also, I don't think their is anything wrong with using programs like Arelis for link management. Link building building is a difficult and time consuming process, even with Arelis. transduction,
Opps...soory Hi Tesla Do you mind if I ask roughly what your ratio of responses when requesting a link exchange? Obviously my emails are not hitting the target. Is there something you do or say in your emails that gets you a good response? Thanks Steve
Try this - http://www.stuntdubl.com/2005/08/30/link-request/ and this - http://www.stuntdubl.com/2005/06/29/link-dialogue/
I find that if I use the template email I get less than 5% response, where if I tailor the email like I would usually send an email I get 10-15% response, which is still low, but if you are doing this on a regular basis, you'll soon see an increase in your backlinks.
Voasi it depends on the website. I have more than one. My newest website is at www.dark-ufo.com. This website is a pr 0, and on the day I launched it I emailed 100 websites using Arelis. I got 30 positive responses the next day. But the UFO webmasters are not as competitive as Dating or Marketing. I try to stick to interesting topics for my sites that don't have explosive competition.
Perhaps the manual way is the best after all. And if I got it right, a natural linking scenario is one with a few links once.