Are You Sending Bloggers this Annoying Linkbuilding Email? STOP

My latest Medium article:

Stop emailing creators with the same tired link building script.

I think Online and Digital Marketing expert Neil Patel is to blame for this.

I woke up early this morning by an alert that pinged on my phone at 3am.

It was from a Website owner looking to get free Backlink juice from one of my established lifestyle blogs and he is hitting me with the standard pitch language he (or she) learned from attending one of Neil Patel’s workshops or reading his Quick Sprout blog or other Linkbuilding SEO blog post.

I know it is Neil sending these people to me because I have watched some of his webinars and videos online and on YouTube.

Neil has built a multi million dollar brand and several companies online from developing an online reputation for being an SEO and digital marketing guru.

He is influential and successful and because of this fact, his disciples copy his formula to the tee and part of that scheme involves contacting established bloggers who rank in search for certain topics or terms.

All the power to him except, his trainings are outdated

I get the formulaic emails by the dozens weekly and frankly, I have had enough. I really wish I could put a filter block to stop these requests from clogging up my inbox.

The sample pitch he tells his disciples to hit us with goes something like this:

“Hi (insert blogger’s name):

I’ve been a follower of your blog for a while now. (Usually a lie)

I noticed that you wrote about (insert topic) on your post (insert target link) or I see you have a broken or outdated link in this post.

I wrote (or my team) put together a post about a similar topic which would make an excellent resource to add to your post. (Read: help give me your back link juice or boost for free by linking to my resource)

I’m sure your audience will benefit from this trash content or additional info.

Thanks

First, if you are sending the same tired script as thousands of others, what are the odds you won’t sound disingenuous in your ask?

Let me tell you: Great! The odds are Great!

Stop it. Stop spamming us like this.

I don’t have any advice (actually I do, see below) on how you can get your links and boost your site or your client’s sites with this white hat scheme but it is simply exhausting to open up our emails to be bombarded with these requests routinely.

I am in several Facebook groups with content creators and we talk about how to monetize our presence and the platforms and sites we have taken years to build.

We are really not interested in helping you leap frog our hard work we took to grow our rankings organically.

This supposed SEO trick is actually manipulative and exploitative.

We tell newbies to install no-follow plugins to block spam my links embedded in your “free content” offers.

We want to protect their assets from you arbitragers.

If you are one of the aspiring business owners looking to sell your products and services by building backlinks and have been sending out this email, know that you are trying to rob us of our hard earned domain rank or domain authority.

I suppose this tactic has worked for some and a few creators have obliged the request, perhaps comfortable with getting new content or being able to swap out a dead link.

Maybe enough bloggers and creators have succumb to the same tired pitch and because of those “Successes”, they have inadvertently signaled to you all that this is a winning strategy.

I wish I could be a good sport and say “good on them” but I cannot.

They put the rest of us who are on to this game in the position of having to field these pitches more often than necessary.

I don’t want to call out Neil alone because certainly since his various ventures started sharing this “secret” to SEO backlinking, a few of his disciples have built their own businesses around selling this very same tactic.

It’s almost like a content marketing MLM.

Just quit it already.

Apparently, Google has caught on and is planning to require a new alt-tag to indicate user generated and sponsored content in order to help its crawlers determine which ‘do follow’ link is legit from the webmaster and from a paid or guest post sponsor or link.

Not like this new change will stop SEO white and black hatters but it may scare some creators into no longer accepting the okie doke!

All I can offer is to create great content, make awesome relevant infographic and pitch us exclusive or semi exclusive resources with no strings attached.

I’ve obliged these types of genuine asks, regularly, especially when I’m in a pinch and needing fresh content. I blog 5–8 times a day across four blog properties.

I am, however, drained by that stake script and ignore any and all that I get.

I cannot be the only one.

If you want to be more successful, ignore Neil Patel’s advice please and thanks!!

Sincerely,

Me, Jay Jay

your friendly neighborhood blogger.