I recently composed the following letter for one of my clients and figured it might be helpful for some of you. Feel free to use any or all of it and change it as you see fit for your own purposes. Cheers!

When a non-abccompany.com website links to abccompany.com, that website is indicating that there is something of value on the ABC Company website. When search engines, like Google and Yahoo, see that other sites are linking to abccompany.com, they view those links as votes for the ABC Company website and adjust their rankings accordingly. The more links we get from other websites, the higher we will rank in the search engines. Higher ranking search results beget more traffic to our sites, and more traffic to our site means more leads for our sales staff. And everyone knows what more leads for the sales staff means.

In order to successfully rank for searches on words like “generic term A” and “generic term B” and “generic category C,” we need to develop links to the specific pages within our site that are most pertinent to the information that the user, customer, or client adviser is searching for. The search engines need to see votes for (links to) specific pages:

http://www.abccompany.com/type/generic_term_a.html and http://www.abccompany.com/type/ generic_term_b.html  and http://www.abccompany.com/division/ generic_category_c.html, respectively.

The other thing we can do to make this effort even more valuable is something I like to call value-added anchor text linking. Anchor text is the text that displays on a web page (typically underlined and blue) and links the user from where they are to a different location. The links above are using anchor text that is not value added. If we really want to get the most out of our time, our links should look like this:

If you have a generic term A or a generic term B or need information on generic category C, you might consider using an ABC Company System to aid in your process.

Value-added anchor text linking makes that vote (link) count for much more. The linking website is saying two things with a value-added anchor text link instead of just one. In the first example we only get the value of #1 below. In the second example, we get the value of #1 and #2:

1. We’re linking to that particular ABC Company web page because it has the information on it that we can use.
2. That page that we’re linking to is related to the term “generic term A” or “generic term B” or “generic category C.”

Since we used value-added keyword anchor text, the search engines (Google, Yahoo, etc.) will rank that page higher for the terms we used in the anchor text.

When you speak with your clients, simply ask them for a link on their website. If they are willing to give you a link, send (Insert Link Builder Name Here) an email with their contact information (phone number and email address) and the type of ABC Company System they are using, have used in the past, or are planning on using. (Insert Link Builder Name Here) will contact them directly, so let them know that they should expect a call.

If you would rather manage this interaction without connecting (Insert Link Builder Name Here) with the client,  send (Insert Link Builder Name Here) an email with your contact information (phone number and email address) and the type of ABC Company System they are using, have used in the past, or are planning on using. (Insert Link Builder Name Here) will call you to discuss.

(Insert Link Builder Name Here)’s Phone Number is XXX-YYY-ZZZZ ext. D; feel free to call him/her with any questions.