Everyone who runs a website had to start somewhere, begging and scrounging for links as best you can. The tried and tested formula of emailing sites telling them “I really liked your site and found it very useful…” hoping your hit rate might grab a few link exchanges with sites higher up the PR chain.

Eventually, all going well and a few years later, you end up being the one getting these requests and it does get a bit annoying after a while, but as I said we’ve all been there.

So, today I encountered a new method from a certain “Online Marketing Agency” and thought I’d share it. Rather than the usual pleasantries and over the top compliments, it was more of a demand.

Hi,

Can you tell me how i can go about placing a link on your holiday watchdog forum at the footer of the page for one of our holiday web sites?

Regards

xxxx

I’m guessing they are working along the lines that although we have a fairly well SEO’d site we don’t actually know what the hell we’re doing and we’ll just stick up links because we will believe they have a right to them. I had to IM Chris just to make sure he was there and it wasn’t a kidnap demand.

So it’s still early morning and I’ve only had one cup of coffee, so feeling slightly abused I replied:

Hi xxxx,

1) Download an FTP client, Cute FTP being my preferred option.

2) Find out our login and passwords

3) Edit the page footer script to include your new link

4) Upload changes via ftp client

Voila!

Probably unprofessional? Yea, but no more so than the original contact. I’m keen to see new methods webmasters / agencies are employing to gain some link love, but please don’t automatically assume the people you’re sending these emails to are stupid.