Every experienced SEO expert will tell you that it is the best way to have one-way links from related websites. Established / popular websites receive natural backlinks all the time from different resources, sites, blogs. For new site it is hard to receive good backlinks and regular submissions could hurt business in the beginning when site owner add his link in too many directories or exchange links with too many sites (especially unrelated).

  Google gives a good recommendation on their webmaster guidelines page by telling:

“Make sure all the sites that should know about your pages are aware your site is online”

Picture source: SEOmoz

  Contacting other webmasters for backlink could look little spammy. There are some good strategies to contact site owners turning yourself as friend and staying away from spam.

  Over 2 years ago we promoted classical music website called Everynote. We realized that there are millions people worldwide who loves classical music and many of them run their personal blogs and websites. We Google over 600 websites which belong to musicians, classical music fans, composers, teachers, and others. We send personal email to all of them asking for support by writing reviews. It wasn’t just similar letters, all site owners received personal email with information they might be interested or suggestions about their business. In less than a week we got over 40 responses with thank you letter and link back for our client. It was enough to get domain trust and extremely good Google rankings for targeted keywords.

Sitelinks on Google for Everynote. It tells that Google trust this domain.

 How to ask site owners:

•  Use contact forms and e-mail which site owner provide for public. Never use client / customer applications because people are really mad when they think about getting a new clent and see just another link request after they open email. Don’t use WHOIS to find email because most of them are outdated (active webmaster change email adress several time a year to get rid of spam).
•  Write regular mail - letters for those who givess home / office adress refusing to publish email.
•  Good thing if you find that webmaster is active on some social media site like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn etc. In this case try to become a good friend who provides some good information.
•  Asking for link back explain why your site is important, tell about unique information you provide.
•  Benefit site owner with something. It is good if you give valuable advice or exelent feedback.
•  Send personal emails and messages trying to stay away from massive direct mail with the same request to everyone.
•  Offer support such as content writing or membership.
•  Don’t tell that you can give link back right away. Talk about link exchange only if site owner will reply with this offer.

 Spam and poor written emails reduce success and increase chance to appear in all spam databases.