Rant - courtesy link removals!

[Marketing Guy]

I'm not in the habit of starting new threads just to rant, but nonetheless here we are.

Where the hell is the "courtesy" in a link removal notice??

Let's look at the history of our relationship shall we? You send me a hugely flattering email telling me how great my site is and how you linked to it from your wonderful site. The reality is that you have neither looked at my site nor is your site very good.

Then the fact that I neither respond nor add a link to your site within 3 or 4 months should indeed be a clear of the indicator of my intentions (let's forgot your bull**** email from a freebie email account / link building agency for a minute, and quickly pass over the fact that you are lecturing me on the search engine benefits of a link exchange between your mortgage / casino spam site and my unrelated site).

But no, perhaps I didn't fully understand the initial email? Maybe I'm just a greedy person trying to get loads of free one way links?

It's known as a "negative close" in the sales industry - the threat of a removal of a service to encourage the client / customer to pay / deliver whatever it is you want them to. You might use this technique if the client hasn't paid their bills in a while for example.

Unfortunately the technique is somewhat reliant on the seller *actually* having something of value to take away, which usually isn't the case with these emails.

Yes, I know this may come as a shocker to a lot of people, but removing my link from your crappy site isn't going to whip me up into a frenzy of despair causing me to reciprocate to your festering pit of spam.

There's no courtesy involved here - you have nothing of value to offer me. It basically says that my site is only good enough for you to link to *if* I link back. And that thought usually contradicts the crap in your initial email about how good my site is....

Don't get me wrong, I don't mind link requests - I'll even honour those who I feel are relevant to my site (but generally ignore SEO agency / link builder emails, other than to laugh at some of the crap they try to feed me). I'll even tolerate requests that link to me and more aggresively demand a link back - that's becoming more and more standard practice these days (even if it's IMO a little unprofessional and not the best approach).

But goddam if I detest link removal notices from sites I didn't want a link from in the first place. I had about 20 over the weekend. IMO they are on par with those whiney forum posters who get a bee in their bonnet about some minor change in policy and public announce they are leaving the forum - like it's some huge deal and anyone is going to give a crap. But I digress.

I'd be interested in what kind of conversion these types of emails get, because I suspect it isn't high. Seems more like a canned response from link building agencies - I don't particularly see the value in taking links down (they were all good enough to link to in the first place right? ) other than to justify some admin expense to pass onto clients.

What's everyone thoughts on this? I suspect noone is going to turn around and say they love getting these emails. But perhaps some have experience sending them and could comment on the effectiveness of the conversions? Or has anyone here been convinced to add a link to a site solely on the basis you might lose your link from them?

</rant over>

Feels good! Think I'll set up my autoresponder with a link to this thread.

MG

[mcanerin]

A very nice rant! I get those all the time, to the point where I automatically delete anyone claiming to link to me without reading any further. I may lose a few links, but when compared to my time and sanity, it's a win.

My favorite ones are those that actually DON'T link to you - the link they send you to "check the listing" has your domain in it and the listing is generated on the fly when you visit using it, otherwise it doesn't exist.

Nasty. I give them all the love, courtesy and attention they deserve

Ian

[Marketing Guy]

There's just something really dated about the whole pitch that really churns my stomach - it's the kind of circa-1999 thing when someone linking to you *was* actually something - a big deal that may stop legitimate webmasters and cause them to actually be flattered - ie, it actually meant something.

No, sorry, but the total affect that a single link from you has in Google does not compensate for the fact that you have put no effort into you site or your email!

No doubt Google gets this auto-generated stuff - it would be quite amusing if they responded to the link removal notice in kind:

"Dear Webmaster,

Thank you for your initial email informing us of the benefit that links from your site would have on our search engine rankings.

We have noticed that you have now removed your links to Google.com. As you know, being listed on our site can have a substantial impact on your search engine presence, bank balance and general sense of well being. This is a courtesy notice to inform you that we will be removing your links from our site, as you have not returned the several thousand visitors we send you each day.

Kind Regards
The Google Team"

Ah slow Monday afternoon. Shall we start on 3 way link exchanges next?

MG

[Lyndsay]

hehehe... nicely done

Who even has the TIME to do that? I sure as hell don't.

[PhilC]

I've only ever accepted one link exchange, but I've no doubt that the email method does work. There are millions of small sites out there that would accept the exchange because they don't know any better, and, for them, it may even be an equal exchange.

If I were operating an automated email link exchange request system, I'd write a programme that searched an engine on the phrases that I was interested in, gather all the emails it could by visiting the unique sites of all the of ranked pages - right down to last ranking, and send the emails. There must be a massive number of small website owners who would exchange links - especially those that are lower down in the serps. I'm sure that's what the automated systems do, and I'm sure that it's very successful.