Yesterday our SEO company blog covered one way to get bloggers and influencers to link to your website; today we will cover how NOT to get links and the common mistakes made by SEOs and internet marketers.

First of all, any blogger who has achieved even a small degree of popularity has probably received an email or two from someone asking them to link to their website. Sometimes these sites are actually relevant or useful, and the person doing the emailing took to the time to make sure of that, and to actually read the blog they want to be linked on. Yes, this tactic is the link-building equivalent of cold-calling, however, with a little research it can still be moderately successful.

On the other hand, many of those cold-call emails are little different than telemarketing phone calls - the site they are requesting a link to has nothing to do with the blogger they contacted, they are suggesting inappropriate or irrelevant anchor text, or their message simply reeks of spam and mass-emailing. Furthermore, the emails often from addresses like “sales@widget.com” or “info@blank.com”; nothing that suggests there is an actual human being behind the message.

Therefore, before you send an email asking for a link or even a product review, give it a personal touch. Use the blogger’s actual name, write something that proves you are familiar with their site (if you don’t already comment or follow them on Twitter, Friendfeed, etc.), and of course, make sure your link would be relevant, useful, or interesting to their readers.

When it comes to building link popularity and collecting high quality links, personal connections are a huge part of the equation. Having quality content is the other part - and that has been discussed many times on our SEO agency’s blog and on virtually every other SEO blog out there.