The Best Link Building Letter Ever

Let me preface this post by saying that building good quality links to your website is one the most effective things you can do to get better search engine rankings.  Apart from the actual content on your site much of where your positioned in the search engine rankings depends on the number of good quality related links to your site.

Here at Foremost Media we manage a lot of websites for a lot of different companies and there is hardly a day that goes by when I don't get an email from someone working on a link building campaign.  Typically those folks look at the "Whois" information (Domain Registration Records) for one of our clients sites and some how end up in my email box (Technical Contact).  Most link campaign letters sound something like this:

BAD LINK BUILDING EMAIL BODY: 
Reciprocal link request

BAD LINK BUILDING EMAIL BODY: 
I'm the webmaster of a MyWebsiteHere website at www.mywebsitehere.com

We are interested in putting a link to your site and we ask in return that you put a link to our website with the following information: (Info Deleted for blog post) 

Please give us a title, a description and an address to link to. We will put a link to your website, in the relevant region, as soon as you agree to the exchange 

If you have questions don't hesitate to contact us and please identify the website you are representing if you are a third party representative.

Today I received a really well written link request from a company claiming to be from a "Cancer Center Advocacy Website" (A specific type of cancer that has a lot of advertising around it):

GOOD EMAIL LINK BUILDING SUBJECT LINE (Almost):
Fire Sfaety Resource (They Spelled Fire Safety Wrong but other then that the letter was really pretty good)

GREAT EMAIL LINK BUILDING BODY:
Hi,
I was browsing through state fire associations online and I like that you have a section dedicated to fire safety/ health resources at myclientswebsiteaddress.com  (One of our fire department clients).

My name is Real Persons Name (I deleted it for the purpose of this post but a real name is a nice touch) and I'm the Public Awareness Coordinator for the "Cancer Center" (Name Changed Here). We understand that local fire departments are tasked with keeping the community safe. Thus, as a public service, we are teaming up with fire departments across the country to help educate the nation about the dangers of asbestos and how to avoid it. This can include how to spot asbestos (pictures), common locations, how to test the air, and even asbestos information specific to your community. 

I noticed you currently have some mesothelioma information on your site. I would be honored if you would explore our site, provide us with feedback, and consider using our site as a resource on your links page as an additional resource.

Anything you can do to help us spread awareness would be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much for the information you provide to your community. I look forward to hearing from you and have a great afternoon! 

Best Regards,
Real Persons Name (Once again I deleted the real name)    
Public Awareness Director

I can't confirm or deny this next statement but my guess is that the "Cancer Center" is not a real place but rather a website built with the sole intention of generating leads for lawyers.  While the site does contains a ton of great info on Mesothelioma it also contains some not so subtle links to receive a free informational packet on Mesothelioma.  Anyway, that's not the point of this post so let's get back to the good link building email.  Here are the key things I think this email does right:

1.  It's not a hard sell- They appear to be offering me some help.
2.  It's from a real person with a real title.
3.  It's actually targeted at a page on my clients site that is relevant.
4.  The email is actually tailored to my clients industry (Fire Departments).

I hope you find this post interesting.  I would guess that the odds of successful link building would be much higher for the "Cancer Center" then the firsts email example I gave.  For the record I'm not a big fan of spam emails to webmasters requesting links but as I said before incoming links are very important to search engine marketing.  My best advice to you is "If you really want to build good links build GREAT CONTENT and folks will link to it naturally!"