Link Zinged by Jim Boykin, I think

Disclaimer: This article reflects my personal experience and represents only my opinions. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer, co-workers, or associates.

I am usually disgusted by the no-name SEO firms that use my contact form to ask me to sell links, buy links, or otherwise participate in linking schemes. It’s no secret that most of the people in the SEO industry have little or no clue about how to optimize for search beyond using links. (Disclaimer: I use links too, but I know that links are not the only tool in the shed.)

If you’re going to call yourself an SEO, I just feel like you should do a little research before you contact Michael Martinez and ask him to participate in your linking schemes. I’m not going to be impressed by lectures on the value of PageRank, how SEO is all about links, etc. Nor will I be persuaded to sell links to you.

I don’t particularly like paid links. That doesn’t mean I want to weigh in on the paid links debate. It just means I don’t particularly like them, and that predisposes me to be very, very skeptical of any “advertising” requests I receive (as these people seem to be incapable of recognizing the unmodified Google AdSense I host on my sites).

Today I received an unusual link request. As Steve Ballmer might say, “No one asked for any links, so what’s the problem?”

The problem is that I’ve been around this business long enough to know a link request when I see one, and one of the link building industry’s best-known names apparently neglected to warn one of his interns not to contact Michael Martinez for links.

Here is a slightly modified version of the email we received:

Hi,

My name is [NAME DELETED] and I’m a communications student. I’m currently working on a paper covering non-verbal communications. In my research I came across your website: [SOME XENITE.ORG SITE]. I wanted to say thank you for a great resource. I found another site that also has some great stuff and thought you might be interested in the additional resource. My way of paying it forward, I suppose. The address is a bit different but the info is really good. You can find it at: [SciFi article on website that ordinarily doesn't publish SciFi content]

Thanks again!

Sincerely,

[NAME THE INTERN USES]

I make no secret of the fact that I am a science fiction fan. Nor have I hidden the fact that I publish other kinds of content on Xenite (my Salsa dancing and White Cheese Dip sections are quite popular, for example). Xenite is a personal site, not a business site. It reflects my personal interests. But there is a little corner of the site that is dedicated to SEO — it even ranks well for one of the competitive SEO expressions.

I just feel like, if you’re going to train people to ask for links, you should also train them to do a site search to make sure they are not contacting someone who writes about search engine optimization, who in fact practices search engine optimization for a living. If you search my name my official (personal) Website comes up first and on the front page it tells you I do SEO professionally.

You’d think people would have sense enough to get a clue before ignoring the words above the form you fill out to contact us that read: “Please do not send us link requests, press releases, or book announcements. Such emails will be ignored.”

Below that warning we have another: “Xenite.Org does NOT sell links. Do not waste our time by asking us to sell you links.”

And between those two warnings and the form you fill out is a third warning: “Certain private information is logged when you use this form. Please review our privacy policy.”

Our privacy policy is one of the oldest privacy policies on the Web. Many other sites have used our privacy policy as a model (I know because those people asked permission to use our privacy policy as a model). I make no bones about the fact that I am logging your IP address and that some third party software (i.e., Google AdSense) may also be logging your IP address (in fact, Google requires me to disclose that second fact).

Dear Intern At The Marketing Agency, I have your IP address. And do you know what I can do with that information? I can usually track you down to your doorstep. If you’re only doing this from work, people can still find out where you work no matter how deceptive you try to be (the article accuses Jim Boykin’s company of trying to buy a link and provides a fairly detailed analysis of how the author tracked the request back to Jim’s firm).

Because of the Xenite.Org privacy policy I will not disclose the IP address or other private information included in the message we received, but let’s just say that when I exercised a little due diligence I found some pretty convincing evidence that makes it seem like someone from Jim’s organization contacted me. I’m not saying I can prove that conclusively.

Nonetheless, I find that article about the link purchase to be ironic because last year Jim Boykin abandoned paid links. The timing of these two articles is curious.

But to return to the email I received, like Steve Ballmer might say, in today’s email, “No one asked to buy any links”.

Yeah, I get that. But what I don’t get is why a link building intern would even bother to contact me with an obvious shill science fiction article. Was the article interesting? Sure. Would I have linked to it under other circumstances? Very possibly. How? I’m not going to tell you. They made more than one mistake and I am not going to explain them all.

If you want to know how to ask people for links, read Eric Ward’s advice from 9 years ago on how to ask for links. That advice is as solid and relevant today as it was 9 years ago. In fact, Eric Ward says he still asks for links.

You know, I trust Eric when he says this is what he does. There are occasional people who contact me who appear to be following Eric’s principles, if not his exact advice. In fact, three years ago I wrote an article for SEOmoz where I explained how to request links from picky sites (like mine). If you see what I ask for and compare it to what Eric offers, you’ll notice some very close similarities in the criteria.

We can boil the ideal link request down to the following requisite points:

1. You openly declare who you are and don’t hide behind faux personas
2. You explain what you are asking for instead of trying to be sneaky
3. You explain how the site you want the link for is relevant to the potential linker’s audience and values
4. You accept that not every site will give you the link

If some of you want to throw money at a potential link, that’s your business. But you’re not going to get a link from me like that, I guarantee you.

If you really want to bring a site to my attention that you believe is relevant to what I am doing and of interest to my readers (you’d be amazed at how much email I get from people, asking for information I don’t yet have), just do that.

But understand that Xenite.Org is not interested in 99.9999% of all the sites you are trying to promote. Simply putting a science fiction article on some business site doesn’t impress me, it sure doesn’t fool me, and it infuriates me enough that I’m willing to call out people who in my opinion should not be doing this.

For more on my personal take about link building, check out SEO Theory’s Link Building and Link Theory categories.

NOTE: If Jim Boykin wants to rebut what I have to say about him and his company here, he is welcome to do so. Short of calling me a liar, he is welcome to post any comment to defend himself and his company’s reputation. It is entirely conceivable that someone else is using an Internet service connection that can be mistaken for Jim’s company. I will not argue the point with further posts or comments, so Jim is welcome to the last word.

I’m not interested in trashing anyone’s reputation — but I AM feeling offended that an apparent fellow SEO’s company contacted me in what I feel is a very misleading way to tempt me into linking to a business site that appears to be disguising itself with science fiction content. That’s not linkbait in my book.

And I realize Jim is a popular guy. Half the SEO community may jump down my throat for writing this article. You don’t have to link to SEO Theory if you want to be nasty to me. I’d like to think this article will just give people cause to think, rather than cause to rouse rabbles.

Jim — if you post a rebuttal or explanation, I will update this article to note it at the very top so that readers have a fair chance of seeing it.