Updated January 11, 2023
Reading Time: 3 minutes
Selling a Link
Sales is a difficult job role to have. You get more doors slammed in your face than you get held open. If you’re trying to build links for your company then you’re working in a sales role in all but name. So, how do you do that effectively, choosing the right sites to host your links, without coming across as an overly pushy sales person and burning bridges?
Take a look at our four hints below on how to sell your links:
Always Do Your Homework – When you’re looking for link targets, make sure you vet them thoroughly. Check the other content on their site. Does it match the quality of your site? Do they regularly update their blog? Have they posted any links to other sites recently? If you see something you think smells a bit fishy, again, move on to the next one.
Don’t Always Judge a Book By its Cover – Appearances can be deceiving. If you look at a blog like marketing guru Seth Godin’s you would be forgiven for thinking you’d stepped back in time to 2005. Yet his blog is one of the most shared and well respected and any link he was to share would be of great value. However, on the other side of the coin, there are lots of beautifully design websites, jammed full of code, with bad SEO and zero readers. All of which, on the outside at least, look like great places to host a link.
Outreach – there’s a difference between persistence and stalking. When you’re trying to get a company to agree to post a link keep that in mind. If you’re reaching out cold to companies you haven’t worked with before, be careful to use public contact details only. You might have a clever way of finding their personal email, or maybe you saw them on Facebook, but keep things simple and email their ‘contact us’ address. Unless the company is a huge multi-national you can be fairly certain it will have been read by someone and if they don’t respond, then they’re probably not interested.
No Means No – In sales, I was once taught that “no doesn’t mean no, it means ‘not now’”. There are many sales situations where this can be true, but link building probably isn’t one of them. If you’re trying to seal a big deal with many different stakeholders then you’re going to need to be resilient and ‘not take no for an answer’ on a few occasions. But link building isn’t one of those things. The only think your persistence is going to do is annoy the person you’re chasing. Just move on to the next target.
Build Links Like A Sales Pro
How do you approach finding new links for your site? Do you have any tips on getting into the sales mindset and how to build links?
Photo credit – Top: Joe The Goat Farmer
Photo credit – Bottom: Yandle
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