How many follow ups before giving up?
-
What are your thoughts about the contacting process itself. I am targeting sites in relevant industries, with domain authority over 50, asking to be added to resources or comparison pages
1-How long do you wait before sending a second/reminder email?
2-Do you have a template for follow up emails? "Hi, I contacted you a week ago about...."
3-If domain authority is decent (50-60), how many times do you follow up before giving up?
-
Pick up the phone. Often solves the problem fast.
Sending an email is easy and requires no "on the spot" thinking.
Speaking to someone by phone does.
Calling just a few of those potential link prospects will have you quickly examining your value proposition (in a good way) since you will likely flub your first few attempts if your offer has no value.
-
If not by an unsolicited email or call, how do you approach a prospect with an infographic or content you might have for one of their specific pages?
-
These emails offer real business relationships: we ask them to become partners and get nicely paid per lead to a good quality product; or feature each others site as the preferred product provider in relevant pages. I use preciprocity principles, follow/like or link to them ahead of time but the response rate is still low. Until now, a follow up to an unanswered email has not resulted in more responses, so I was thinking about not following up at all and just move on
-
If the emails and followup are unsolicited then yes its spam, and my reaction is the same: to ignore, report as spam and delete.
Gyi is spot on about the overall tactic. Personally I very rarely send unsolicited sales or link requests. I agree those are a waste of time. But if there's already an established connection, then yes absolutely I am tenacious and will pursue the lead for a minimum of 5 times.
-
I refuse to deal with anybody who uses a robo-caller - insta-hang-up and the number is added to my phone's 'reject list'. What they are saying is that THEIR time is too valuable to waste on the call, but they have no problem wasting MY time.
-
You'd have lost it similar to I did once then... I'm always too polite to simply hang up, I just keep repeating politely that I'm not interested for various reasons until they accept it. However, not one time... a telesales guy who was calling to do a 5 minute survey refused to give up. I really was extra busy at the time and told him over and over that I didn't have time and would he please accept no as my answer.
This chap then told me that he would ring me everyday several times per day until I did his survey! He was actually threatening me with daily sales calls.
I went mad, I don't often do that but the damn cheek of it!!
High volumed expletives and frothing at the mouth... I'm not proud of it, but he didn't call back again
Mind you, at least he was human... lately I've been getting called by machines that ring me up and tell me to press button 1, then keep me on hold before passing me to a sales person (I had to go through to ask them to remove me from their list, which was pointless as there's always more).
What is the world coming to lol.
-
You guys are right... it's the "brute force" thing that really bothers me.
The "value to recipient" method would be better - but usually there is no value. lol
-
I totally agree with Gyi. If you are not getting any response, you are not presenting any value to the recipient, or you made it into their junk box. I would reply once and if you don't get a response, adjust your strategy and move on.
-
I think both sides of the earlier responses have merit. However, successful link requests are less about brute force and more about thinking strategically. First, in my experience, unsolicited emails of any kind are a total waste of time, or at least extremely inefficient (not to mention very annoying). Not a good way to start a relationship.
Think about your link requests more like business relationships and less like a sale. Would you spam your colleagues? Your boss?
How do communicate with other professionals? Use that as a template for thinking about how to contact link targets. And don't call them link targets ; ).
-
Thumbs up, Steve....
I report most link requests as "spam" and if I recognize a second request from the same site I block their email address or better their entire domain from my inbox. (Gmail allows an unlimited number of blocked addresses.)
Call me on the phone once and I will tell you nicely not to bother me... call a second time and you will not like what I say.
-
I think that's awful (no offense). I get tonnes of link requests, and other such emails every day. I don't have the time to reply to them and neither should I have to. Some of the emails state that "As they haven't had a reply from me... etc..." And then presume to suggest that I should take time out of my busy day to reply to their unsolicited emails.
Continuing to ask after no reply the first, or even second, or as you say 5th time is not getting the message and is little less than harassment.
A lot of people, like myself don't reply because:
a) It open the doorway to more such spam, and
b) Sometimes replies are little more to the sender than confirmation the email exists and responds so they can sell your data
I think it's rude to keep sending people emails. Why should I have to write "No" hundreds of times per week when I didn't even ask for the email in the first place.
So, what you're saying is that you're one of those people who hassle and bug people like me who are just trying to get on with my work, and you won't ever stop despite the fact that I don't reply?
It gives all of the industry a bad name when people do stuff like that.
Also, why should I have to unsubscribe, when I never subscribed in the first place? Not to mention that most of these requests don't have the option to unsubscribe anyway.
Sorry for the rant, nothing personal but I see it as pressure sales via spam... which I'm surprised works at all to be honest.
-
I think the same principle that applies to sales applies here. This stunning fact is something I've never forgotten once I learned it: 80% of closes happen after FIVE or MORE points of contact.
Most people fail to follow up that many times. Let's say one email, then maybe 1 or 2 reminders via phone/email? Up it to at least five and you'll have a better success rate. Personally for sales, I don't ever stop following up. I must either get a clear YES or a clear NO. (This could be as simple as "Unsubscribe.")
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Are backlinks from the Episode Description field on Spotify "follow" or "no follow"?
Are backlinks from the Episode Description field on Spotify "follow" or "no follow"?!
Link Building | | FLLocal0 -
Followed links bad?
I send press releases through 2 different press release agencies. I noticed in the past year or so that one of the agencies started tagging all of the links in my press release with rel=nofollow while the other did not. I couldn't figure out why, so I actually called the "nofollow" agency...they told me that they do this because it is actually BETTER for SEO and that google would penalize you for creating new press releases that do not contain "nofollow" tag.. and that this was done as a result of some recent change to google's algorithm....now I do not know who to believe. Has anyone else heard of this issue and maybe could this be specific to press releases?
Link Building | | TrueResults1 -
How many links and mentioned shall I collect for a new website per month?
My wife made a new web site and now we are trying to promote it. But I wonder if there is any risk by having too many links and mentions in the beginning (for a brand new site). How many links and mentions should I collect per month at the moment? Or shall I concentrate on something else?
Link Building | | MichaelJanik0 -
How do sites have so many 'total links'?
I've been analyzing some of our competitors: essayedge.com and papercheck.com Both sites have a large number of 'total links'... about 93,000 each. The former has about 1,200 linking root domains while the latter only has 195. Even for 1,200 linking root domains, 93k total links seems like a ton to me. Our site has 101 linking root domains and only 299 'total links'. I'm quite new to this whole SEO game and admittedly still learning a TON. Am I missing something here? How do sites generate so many links? This seems nuts to me. Thanks for any help!
Link Building | | TBiz0 -
Value no follow links from Google Content Network
Is there a value of using Google Content Network to add no follow links to the general linkscape of a website? I notice a lot of competion higher than me on SERPs for specific keywords have these links from website with high DA. We have tested the value of having Adsense adds, but they do not convert the traffic. We might consider using them for the purposes of ranking higher on SERPs though, and would appreciate any experinces with this.
Link Building | | inet-design0 -
Too many internal links to a particular page?
I have read all the data regarding the number of links per page, but my question has to do with the number of internal links to a particular page. After looking at some of the competition inside Open Site Explorer I can see that the competitor in question has a much smaller number of links going to the desired page then the site I am comparing. The competitor is outranking a page that should be ranking higher due to higher page authority and external root domain links. Internal Links to Page: 9,950 Competitor Page Internal LInks: 208 Is this a situation where the sheer number of internal links is discounted because of page rank distribution throughout the site? Just want to get some clarity here. Thank you for your responses.
Link Building | | jmsobe0 -
Can a reciprocal link turn into a one way if you no-follow?
If you create a list of links to top blogs in your industry but no-follow all the links, and they link to your list, will that count as a reciprical link or a one-way link by search engines?
Link Building | | SparkplugDigital0