How many times have you discarded a link prospect after they rejected your link building proposal? Even if your answer is “one,” I believe that’s far too many times. I’ve said it once, and I will say it once again: Dismissing a prospect because they rejected your pitch is bad practice. [tweet this]
When approaching a publisher or blogger, always do so with a series of ideas in mind. This means that you won’t be aggressively pushing for one type of link/project; hence you will be open to ideas suggested by the other person. Closing yourself up to a partnership between your client/business and a website equals closing the door to creative opportunities you wouldn’t have thought of by yourself.
This approach comes along with a byproduct: You’ll be exercising your creativity A LOT more than when you’re not just focusing on one specific type of link. Once you move away from a monistic approach, the link building ideas will begin to flow in a natural way. Additionally, you could keep a record of those you couldn’t implement as they might be a good starting point for other projects!
In my experience, collaboration is key for building sustainable links that will actually drive traffic to a website. A blogger will always know their readership better than you will, no matter how much research you’ve done nor the time you’ve spent on the site. Be flexible in your approach and let the ideas flow from both sides of the table. Forget about building links that will only feed the crawlers and start focusing on the human aspect of what we do: We are connectors, we open doors.
This tip, and 19 more, can be downloaded in one PDF.