How to Ask for a Link: Use Incentives

Michael Bergbauer - January 13, 2012

Part of any good link building campaign will require you to request links from other websites. You might talk to vendors, customers, or fellow members of the industry. Regardless, all of your requests will need to have one thing in common: you must incentivize them.

Usually, the best incentive you can offer is a link in kind. There are number of creative ways you can trade links, some of which include:

Guest Blog Posts — Guest posts are a classic way to trade links with another site. If the other site has an authoritative blog, you could be getting a good link that your competitors don’t have. The best part is that this can work both ways. You can write a post for their site that includes links to your site or the other site can write for you — then post a link on their site saying “read the guest post we wrote here.” If possible, each party can write a guest post for the maximum amount of links.

Interviews — Like the guest blog post, granting an interview with someone at your company or interviewing a leader at another company is a set-up to produce more content for your site via article, blog post, etc. As an added advantage, whoever participates in the interview establishes authority and thought leadership within their industry — which builds the company’s reputation and has inherent value for future link building.

Grant Special Acknowledgement — You will want to keep it relevant to your site, but you can create a page or blog post to give awards, spotlights, trusted partner status, etc. to companies you want a link from. Eager to brag about their acknowledgement, they’ll likely link to your site when they mention it.

By creating a well worded personal approach to other websites with a good incentive, you gain a number of opportunities for great link building and networking.