If you can't stomach such meta-tag tomfoolery, a more
palatable approach involves simply contacting sites that have a strong
affinity with your own. In the case of Fillet, recipe sites and ezines
focused on food are fertile territory for this sort of outreach. Again, you
should start by browsing subject directories or conducting a few general
searches. It's a safe bet that sites with prominent listings in the
directories and search engines also get a healthy flow of traffic. I
happened upon Aunt
Libby's Kitchen in Yahoo, and was tempted to keep on going. Its taupe
background and flesh-colored stripes may not seem appetizing, but swallow
your pride, and save your snobbery for wine-tastings. After all, it would
be a fine place for Adam to send an email about Fillet and request a link.
The email may look as follows:
Aunt Libby,
I was checking out your site and thought you might
like to see Fillet (http://www.fillet.com), a recipe
and dining Web site that I am developing. We have a
number of recipes that would fit into your kitchen,
and I'd appreciate if you could put links to Fillet
and some of our columns on your site.
Thanks,
Adam
Will this email lead to a link for Fillet? Maybe, maybe not. But if
Adam sends out these messages regularly, he will be exposing his site to a
lot of recipe buffs on the Web. Of course, this message would be a lot
more effective if Adam could offer a link to Aunt Libby's in exchange for
the one he's requesting.
Another benefit of regularly perusing and contacting other sites is that
you can see what steps they have taken to get Web exposure. When I
stumbled upon Aunt Libby, for instance, I was able to overcome my initial
background-induced queasiness to find two interesting marketing
opportunities that Auntie L is currently involved in: the Link Exchange,
and a cartel of sorts called "the recipe ring."
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