Link Building FAIL

Well, I’m back from the backwaters of Thailand safe and sound. I’ll do a post about meeting Wanphen’s mother and children as soon as I can. Plus I’ve got pics and video to post too! Woo hoo!

Okay, so first order of business is to demonstrate how not to go about link building. While I was away, I received the email below. I’ve removed identifying information for the following reasons:

1. The guy is working as a consultant for the company. It’s not 100% their fault this guy is missing the point.

2. They’re recruiters! I don’t want to get blackballed from the industry or can’t hire people because nobody will send me candidates 🙂

Hi

I’ve been carrying out some work for XXXXXXX, they are recognised globally as
the premier confidential recruitment and career consultancy serving the global
Gaming sector.

I have just been having a look around your site and noticed that the following
page already provides some really useful information.

http://www.pokerjobsearch.com/

To raise further awareness of the information available to your visitors it
would be really helpful if you’re able to add the following link to your
site:

http://www.xxxxxxx.com/ with the link text betting jobs if possible.

If you require further information, please don’t hesitate to contact me
and if you decide to add a link please can I ask you let me know for my
records.

Kind regards

ZZZZZZZZ on behalf http://www.xxxxxxxx.com

Okay, this is better than most of the complete crap I get about doing 3-way link exchanges with site scraping sites but let me point out the FAILS in this link request.

1. I know it was cut and paste from a MS Word document because everywhere there was a smart quote I get a bunch of gibberish (I cleaned it up for the reader’s benefit). It’s cool if you use a template but know that if you cut and paste from a MS Word document into a contact form that the other person is going to have to decipher the email.

2. If the person had actually looked at my site, I already link to them on every page of the site. They’re in my sidebar.

Before asking for a backlink you might try to discern if the person is already linking back to you. Because if you would have known that you could have saved all of that boilerplate “the premier confidential recruitment and career consultancy serving the global Gaming sector” nonsense (why is Gaming capitalized?).

3. Betting Jobs (so you can eliminate them as the source of this email) is actually the name of a gaming recruitment firm (see above screen shot). Why would I link use Betting Jobs as the anchor text for a company not named Betting Jobs? I know they want the keywords but that’s like asking me to link to Full Tilt Poker but use PokerStars as my anchor text.

4. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, what’s in it for me? I’m not a heartless bastard stingy with my links but you’re asking me to misrepresent your client’s company to my readers via a false name and you can’t even offer a reciprocal link? Hell, offer to send me a t-shirt or something.

Of course, I’m halfway joking on that last point. The point I’m trying to make is that you gotta give to get. If they sent me a link to some great content or offered to swap links then we might be talking about a fair trade. But they’re offering nothing and asking me to be a whore. How insulting is that?

So if you’re a recruiter that’s on the list in the screenshot above and you’ve hired some SEO guru to boost your rankings and you want to know if this is your boy . . . shoot me a message and if it’s your guy I’ll forward you the email.

BTW, this post makes 1,498. My next post will probably a trip report from the Petchabun trip and more info about Wanphen’s family and then . . . . the 1,500 post!!!