Trusted sites, particularly government and academic sites, present some real difficulties for the link builder. They can be bureaucratic and reluctant to link to commercial businesses, which mean that your approach must be well thought out.
Here are some of the best ways to pitch government sites:
• Look for dot government sites that target your local area – are there free listings? Are there people you can talk to directly about a link?
• Offer discounts to government staff.
• Highlight how environmentally-friendly your products are.
• Highlight your product recycling facility (if you have one).
• Approach government staff who blog.
• Become involved in local economic development issues – especially if they’re looking for success stories.
• Do you offer help that complements their work? Eg, fire safety, debt help.
Here are some ways you can pitch an academic site:
• If you already provide services to a local school or college, check whether they list suppliers.
• Create a useful resource guide to your industry – let schools and colleges know about it.
• Tell them about the discount you offer college staff or students.
• Tell them about the internships, placements or part time work that you provide.
• If you studied at the school or college, let them know you’re now in business and eager to help.
• Volunteer to take part in research studies.
• Sponsor one of the campus clubs.
Here are some ways to pitch organizational sites:
• Volunteer to help or take part in events they’re running.
• Help promote their events.
• Encourage your staff to take part.
• Run a fund-raising event.
• Provide pro bono services.
• Sponsor their website.
• Sponsor publications.
For Gazelle who buy used electronics, getting listed on the recycling pages of government sites is important to their business. It is therefore worth their while putting a lot of effort into winning such government links.
And they’ve been quite successful, as this screenshot from the Link Builder tool shows:
So to summarize, check your own priorities, look at what could be attractive about your business and make a simple, direct approach – by telephone, email or web contact form.
Gazelle.com was successful because they concentrated on recyling – something that government agencies are sure to be interested in. Looking for a similar hook for our BBQ business, we’d think about concentrating on food safety to start with.
Government agencies will link out to commercial companies when they have a reason for doing so, as in this link from the United States Department of Agriculture:
Author Bio
Charles West is a professional content writer and blogger since last 2 years. I have writing expertise in technology and certification topics specially. I love to share that recently I passed my 642-883 exam from SAS institute and 642-874 exam from VMware. Thanks for reading.
