Or, an open letter to people spamming me with requests to exchange links…
Yet again I receive a template email from someone who clearly uses an automated program to send them out, asking me to put their link on my site in return for having my link on their site (still with me?).
The email itself raises a few points, which I’d like to go in to, and then establish this post as my official link exchange policy.
My name is Oxxxxx Pxxxx. I’ve just visited your website nikkipilkington.com
Erm, I don’t believe you.
I was wondering if you’d be interested in exchanging links with my website. I can offer you a HOME PAGE link back
from my Web marketing and SEO guide website which is xxxxxxxx.I’m sure this exchange would be benefitial for both of our sites,
helping towards increasing our visibility in search engines.If you are interested, please add the following information to your
website and kindly let me know when it’s ready. I’ll do the same for
you in less than 24 hours, otherwise you can delete my link from your
site.Title: SEO & Internet Marketing
URL: removed
Description: SEO & Internet Marketing for small business websites
If you had indeed looked at my website, you would have noticed a couple of things:
- I don’t have links to any other sites on there, unless they are contextual and part of something I am writing
- My site promotes my company’s SEO & Internet Marketing Services
Now, I freely admit that I’m not among the world’s most intelligent people, but I like to think I have a pretty sane head on my shoulders, so WHY ON EARTH do you think I would like to offer a link on my well promoted site to someone who purports to be one of my competitors? And if I, in some moment of deranged madness, agreed to do this, what makes you think that all I would want in return is a link on a page on your site which contains many of my other competitors, and isn’t even in your main navigation?
You finish your email with:
PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS NOT A SPAM OR AUTOMATED EMAIL, IT’S ONLY A REQUEST FOR A LINK EXCHANGE. YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS HAS NOT BEEN ADDED TO ANY LISTS, AND YOU WILL NOT BE CONTACTED AGAIN. IF YOU’D LIKE TO MAKE SURE WE DON’T CONTACT YOU AGAIN, PLEASE FILL IN THE FOLLOWING FORM: (web address removed) OR WRITE AN EMAIL TO (email address removed)
Well, Ms P., I beg to differ. It’s unsolicited and it’s commercial – and I suspect sent out in bulk with an automated program - that makes it spam. And that’s before we get to your outrageous ‘you will not be contacted again’ rubbish – this is the 3rd such email from you in 2 days, albeit promoting different sites (I don’t want to link to an Indian web hosting company or a watchmaker site either, thanks awfully).
And if I ‘will not be contacted again’, why do I then have to visit some site to fill in a form to ‘be sure’ you don’t contact me again? The same form, by the way, that I have filled in 3 times already.
PLEASE ACCEPT OUR APOLOGIES FOR CONTACTING YOU.
No, no, please accept MY apologies for:
- Thinking you clearly have no idea how to do your job
- Writing a blog post about how bloody useless you are, and
- Pointing out your faults to the lovely people that read my blog
The above is a moronic and useless way to ask for link exchange. The full email also claimed that having my link on their site would ‘benefit me in the search engines’ – having looked at their spammy site I can assure you it wouldn’t.
So, what is my linking policy? Simple – I don’t exchange links. With ANYONE. If a link is on my site it’s because it’s part of a post I’m writing, or it’s relevant to the page it’s on. I dont want to exchange links with holiday sites, hosting sites, watch sites, viagra sites, porn sites – I don’t want to exchange links with any sites at all.
Why? Because exchanging links with unrelated sites does nothing to help your Google listings, despite what people will tell you. Links from sites that are relevant and related to yours may help – but why would I want to advertise my competitors on my own website for the sake of a non-guaranteed ‘boost’ in Google? Even if I didn’t have the listings I wanted (I do) then that would be madness.
I’ll continue link building in the way I always have – slowly and surely, getting one way links from well thought of sites, and not seeing it as the be all and end all of SEO. Because it’s not.
I’ll leave the closing comment to Oxxxxx Pxxxx:
I hope you have a nice day and thank you for your time.
Other posts you may be interested in:
Tags: link policy, Links, spam
forward the mail to your email provider tivoli, BT, Virgin whoever as reported spam. also forward to your AV – anti-spam provider mcafee, sophos, symantec etc… this should stop them coming through to you again and flag them as spam.
Alas spam works so it’s not going away any time soon. 95% of all e-mails are reported to be spam. As much as I agree with today’s rant it’s something we just have to live with.
Nikki
I agree with you entirely. I seem to get so many of these requests.
Many look like machine spam but some seem to be written by people who really do think it helps.
[...] This post was Twitted by RichardOsborne [...]
Thanks Ross. My complaint isn’t about spam – I’m well aware it’s going nowhere, and as I use Gmail to organise my mail, I don’t get to see half of what comes through.
I’ll leave the spam rant for another day
Thanks Paul – if enough people are told the same thing (reciprocal links are the be all and end all of SEO) then they start to believe it, unfortunately…
Excellent post Nikki, and I share your frustration – I get a lot of these emails too, in fact I’ve had at least three this week alone.
As is the case with most spammers, they wouldn’t keep sending these emails if people didn’t keep falling for them.
So I’m glad you’re exposing this trash for what it really is – I hope all your Twitter followers will RT and help spread the word, so that people stop falling for this sort of nonsense.
Have a nice day
Debs
Thanks Debs – let’s spread the word!
[...] This post was Twitted by debbidoo [...]
Ohhhhh I’m with you – my favorite example is when they claim to help with my SEO to get me visible on google. Sorry fellahs, but I’m on page one for my key words and page two for related stuff so perhaps you’d better check first!?!?
S
aah yes, I often get emails from people offering to help me with my SEO and Social Media Marketing
[...] This post was Twitted by rachaelblogs [...]
nice post – so a poss link exchange is out then….. lol
There are many sofware link building packages out there and my guess is these email come from those.
Ah yes I had the very same e-mail in my inbox today. Very annoying! I always love the fact that you get a link on some random spammy site and then they ask you tp link back to an entirely different site. That always makes me laugh. Good job spreading the word Nikki – will retweet.
But the question is Nikki do you really think it will have any effect at all? You will get the same mail tomorrow and for the rest of time.
I hates ‘em. I hates ‘em all.
It might not stop them if you blog, but its cathartic, at least.