A Lesson in How NOT to Market A Website

I thought this is a great example of how to NOT market a website.

Note: I’ve removed all references to the person’s name and website because I don’t think calling the person out by name is the right thing to do.

Subject: Reminder: Link exchange with your site http://www.geekestateblog.com

Dear Webmaster,My name is [removed] and I run the web site [removed] Real
Estate:http://[removed].com/The other day I wrote you to let you know I’m very interested in exchanging links. I’m sending this reminder in case you didn’t receive my first letter. I’ve gone ahead and posted a link to your site, on this page:

http://www.[removed].com/linkmachine/resources/resources_real_est
ate_12.html

As you know, reciprocal linking benefits both of us by raising our search rankings and generating more traffic to both of our sites. Please post a link to my site as follows:

Title: [removed] Real Estate
URL: http://[removed].com/
Description: Information on Real Estate in [removed]. Search the MLS for the entire [removed]

Once you’ve posted the link, let me know the URL of the page that it’s on, by entering it in this form:

http://www.[removed].com/linkmachine/resources/link_exchange.php?ua=_ua9

You can also use that form to make changes to the text of the link to your site, if you’d like.

Thank you very much,

[removed]

How would you feel if you got that e-mail in your inbox? And it gets better — it hasn’t happened just once, but numerous times.

It’s one thing to receive an e-mail from a real estate agent requesting to exchange links who has:

1. Taken to time to look up my name
2. Written a personal e-mail
3. Done their due diligence and decided that your site has a similar audience (ie local)
4. Explained why exchanging links is mutually beneficial

It’s something else entirely to receive a link exchange request that:

1. Is clearly auto-generated (hint – my name is NOT webmaster)
2. Does not have a similar audience (GEB does not cover the geographic area this Realtor specializes in)
3. Repeatedly shows up in my inbox

If you are interested in doing what this Realtor is doing to promote your website, by all means, check out www.linkmachine.net (I’m not going to hotlink it since I don’t endorse what they do).

Please note that this tactic isn’t specific to real estate — many website owners use automated-programs like the one above to improve their SEO and, hopefully, receive more traffic as a result. However, as a website owner, even if you get several links out of an automated program like this, I’d encourage you to think long and hard as to whether spamming to get them was worth the resulting damage to your brand.

If anyone’s inbox has been bombarded by similar link exchange programs, please feel free to share your story in the comments. Maybe webmasters will eventually realize this is not the way to go about marketing their website…or maybe they won’t.