Links are critical for ranking well in search engines and for getting traffic to your site, but how can you get them? Aside from posting endlessly in message boards and blog comments (many of which don’t pass on page rank) or waiting for some kind, generous soul to link to you spontaneously, it can be very difficult to get high quality links to your site.

One of the simplest methods is to simply ask for links. Here are a few suggestions that will make asking for links easier and more productive.

Be Ready Ahead of Time

Prepare some good, generic ways to link to your site ahead of time. Make up some buttons and a few text links before you begin your linking campaign. You can even include them on a page on your site called “Linking to Us” or something like that. Some examples of buttons and links that I have created are found here: BYU Links and Buttons.

Link Ahead of Time

For each web site that you would like to get a link from, find a web page that is relevant to a page on your site. Link to that page from your page. Use good link text that describes what is on the page. If you can, include the link in some of your content. When you ask this site to link to you, you can show them the high-quality link that you have created to their page and they will be more inclined to link to you.

Make it Easy

When you ask for a link, make it really easy for the other person to link to you. Tell them which page you would like him or her to link to. Tell them about a good page on their site to place the link on. Create two or three sample links to your page that you can include in the email you will send. For my post about credibility on a web site, I could use these:

(I inserted the spaces to keep the links from falling off the edge of my site. Normally the links wouldn’t have spaces before “increase”)

Send a Link-Request E-mail

Write a professional-sounding e-mail to the other site. Explain that you found the site useful and relevant, that you have linked to them, and that you would appreciate a link back. Give them the suggestion of which page to link to and your sample links, but also make it clear that they can link however they want. Also tell them that you are willing to modify the link you made to them if they want you to. Thank them for their time, spell check your e-mail, and then send it off.

Call Them

If you can, give the site operator a follow-up phone call during his or her normal business hours. The human touch of a phone call is a strong persuasive element that shows that you aren’t simply rattling off a generic e-mail to hundreds of site owners. Explain how you’ve linked to them, how a link to the page of your site that you’ve chosen is relevant, and that you have sent an e-mail with the sample links in it.

Follow Up

Check back later (about a week or two) to see if the site has linked to you. If they have linked to you, your are in good shape. If you can’t find the link, try using the site’s search function using words related to the link topic or your site or asking in a short, polite e-mail. If they haven’t linked to you, you can remind the site operators of your request (probably only once or you’ll annoy them), remove the link, or add rel=”nofollow” to your link so that you aren’t wasting precious page rank.