Sometimes the best way to learn, is by example. That's why I love it when I spot something happening in the news that can be turned into an article idea, or when someone asks a great question at a seminar that I know can be turned into a series of blog posts. That's why instead of hitting my delete button yesterday when a link request showed up in my inbox, I saved the email long enough to use it as an example here on Search Engine Guide.

So taking to heart the the type of advice I offer up on link building (be relevant, be respective, offer value, etc...) take a read of the link request that showed up in my Search Engine Guide Account.

Dear Webmaster, We have travel-related and car-rental sites and we're looking for exchange link partners, we'll be very glad to swap links with your site. If you wish to place your link on our site, please forward me your site details (url, title, description.) and i will add your link on our site. As soon as rou link will be added, I will send you our information, so you can link back. Your link will be placed on page with less then 100 links and with the direct link from our hompage, Thank you, Looking forward to hearing from you.

Now, let's consider the many things wrong with this email...

1.) Be Personal - Is it really THAT hard to figure out who the editor of Search Engine Guide is? (Maybe...I do get emails from PR departments that call me by a wide variety of names several times a week. They all go straight in the trash. If you can't find the time to figure out my name, I can't find the time to write about you.)

2.) Be Relevant - Tell me again how travel-related and car-rental sites have ANYTHING to do with search engine marketing and the small business owner? Oh, that's right...they don't. So why would I want to link to you? Oh yeah, I wouldn't. Don't waste people's time, it builds bad karma.

3.) Offer Value - I suppose the value here is that I'm getting a random link from a random site. Apparently that's supposed to be enough of a reason for me to risk my own reputation by linking to some other random web site. Guess what...it's not. When you send a link request, give a REASON for someone to link to you. Tell me what exists on your site that my visitors will find to be absolutely fascinating. Tell me what value appears once that link has been clicked on...then we'll talk.

4.) Look Professional - Not only did the email show up in one great big paragraph with no formatting, it also features multiple spelling errors, grammatically errors and punctuation errors. Why would I want to associate with someone that sends business correspondence that looks like a 6 year old wrote it? Spell check doesn't take that long to run...honest. If you wouldn't sign your name to it and put it in the mail to a business associate, you shouldn't be willing to send it across email.

It's also pretty clear that this email came from an automated system that sent a blast email to any email address that they could find. The hope behind these types of programs is that if you cast a wide enough net, you might catch a few fish. The problem is that you usually don't catch much outside of the potential that people will complain to your host about the spam you're sending out into cyberspace.

Yes, link building is hard work. Is that really a surprise? Anyone that's gone to the time and effort of starting or working for a small business knows that life isn't easy. Success takes hard work, time and dedication. Until you realize that link building (or any other type of marketing) ALSO requires hard work, time and dedication, you're simply going to spin your wheels without getting anywhere.