A standard method of introducing yourself and your new website and blog is to contact others within your field and ask for comments and the possible exchange of links.
There are endless debates and suggestions as to driving traffic to your site and the best seem to be links from one website to another. After reading thousands of articles on website development and listening to hundreds of podcasts on the subject, engaging your fellow site administrators and asking for comments and possible link exchanges is a recommended first step.
Google and other search engines see links from one site to another as a vote of popularity thus they are inclined to send you more traffic based on the number and relevancy of links.
I ran government websites for over five years and asking for comments and links was always difficult and tedious but fruitful after a certain amount of time.
I’ve worked with others on their sites using the same strategy and the results have varied considerably. I understand if a business asks for an exchange of links that those receiving solicitations could look at the exchange with suspicion. But I deal with government, associations and nonprofits; hardly entities to be looked upon suspiciously.
I recently worked with Cherry Lynn Bonachita
Here are my observations on asking for comments and link exchanges:
Sites that are directly administered by one person are far more likely than multi-administered sites to provide you with feedback.
Results vary considerably by topic. As stated, I developed relationships for my government sites that remain fruitful. My efforts to develop contacts for sociological issues were a pain but eventually proved useful.
For the personal history crowd ) they were involved, gracious and the flow of information continues to this day.
For social media sites, associations and nonprofits, the results were more than disappointing. Few responded to my notes and some who did were openly disdainful of my efforts.
Are there lessons in my outreach efforts?
I suggest that your letters be as personal as possible and concentrate on asking for comments rather than asking for links. My guess is that we are all fighting for market share while focusing on the same topics and, quite frankly, I assume that some simply are not fond of helping your efforts.
You want to develop your site to the point where it looks as good as possible and that you have a minimum of thirty articles. If you’re asking for a relationship, “dress” appropriately.
The “social” in social media doesn’t seem to apply to many site administrators. My experience in administrating/assisting multiple sites is that administration is hard work and the offer to connect is simply another burden that few are willing to entertain.
Many of the sites I contacted were for-profit organizations even though they focused on government, associations and nonprofits. If you weren’t willing to pay a fee, they were not willing to entertain your inquiries.
Some administrators did not like the use of a third person to send my inquiries. Considering the tediousness of the task, I’ve always used interns for the government sites and recently Ms. Bonachita to send my requests. I respond in detail to all responses so the person used to send the requests for contact seems irrelevant to me.
The bottom-line in the success of outreach efforts is the willingness to engage and learn. The personal historians (while promoting Http://MyLifeAudio) really wanted to exchange information; everyone was trying to explore the best methods of promotions and they were eager to engage. The social media, nonprofit and association administrators simply were not interested in a conversation.
It’s not my purpose to be discouraging. Reaching out to others to exchange information and/or links remains a necessary step. And it’s surprising that many do not check their e-mail or contact forms for weeks (or months) at a time thus responses are still coming in.
But the process of exchange and comments was much easier when the web was younger and we were all struggling to establish a presence. If you have suggestions as to doing it better, I would love to hear them.
Best, Len.
3 COMMENTS
Comments are closed.
Get All The Blogging tips That Helps To Start Your Money Making Blog Here
Thanks for sharing this information for us and resources its really help full for me with the help of this we can improve our ranking in google and other search engine
Thanks for this informations. It is a googd way to geht a better rankin in google and yahoo co….