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You know the importance of getting links pointing to your web site. It's a major factor in Google rankings. So you've been finding related sites and sending out emails requesting links. But no one responds and no links get added to your site.

Are your emails getting opened?

Perhaps the problem is that no one is reading your emails. There are two possible reasons for this.

• You emails never reach the recipient because of spam filters. Even though you may not be using trigger words like "free" and "$$$" in your subject line, you can still get blocked. Be sure to send your email as text instead of HTML. Don't include images in your email since some spam filters automatically assume this is a sign of spamming.

• You emails are deleted without getting read. This is the more likely scenario.

There are many programs available today that automatically send email queries requesting reciprocal links. It is a major annoyance to webmasters as they are rarely pertinent to the content of your site and frequently are from garbage sites with no PageRank or content. You don't want to drain off your own PageRank to sites providing no benefits to you or your visitors.

These automated queries are really easy to spot. And any savvy webmaster will delete the emails without reading them. It is the subject line that gives them away.

Is your email subject line getting you deleted?

Karon Thackston, in her article, "How to Write Persuasive Subject Lines," suggests that you have 3 seconds and 40 characters to use in getting your emails read. I can agree with the 40 characters in your subject line. Subject lines often get truncated. But there is no way it takes 3 seconds to read a subject line.

My experience is that one second to read a subject line is being very liberal - if you even get that far. The first test you have to pass is the from address. If that address is not pertinent to the reader, kiss your email goodbye. It will be deleted before they ever get to the subject line.

"From" address extremely important

I have received numerous emails from celebrities like Paris Hilton and Brittney Spears. I don't know them nor do I care to so any emails from them are instinctively deleted. I also deleted any emails from any individual I do not recognize. Spammers have taken to scrambling first and last names. Maybe they have figured out that some of us just don't want to hear from Paris Hilton and so they are offering more variety.

If the email is from a business, I notice whether it is something pertaining to that email account. It doesn't matter if it looks like a legitimate business when reviewing email for my fishing website. If it isn't a fishing-related business, it gets deleted.

Your "from" address should be something meaningful to the recipient. If it isn't, you are likely to have your email deleted before it is read. The address should contain your domain name. Absolutely avoid free email accounts like Hotmail and Yahoo.

If the "from" address looks relevant, the reader will usually take the time to read the subject line. Within the limitation of about 40 characters, write the best subject line you can. Send the email to yourself to test how it looks.

Present your offer

Let the reader know what the email is about. If you want to exchange links, tell them. Don't try to trick them into opening your email. You'll only make them mad by tricking them and then they definitely won't link to you.

Add a benefit

Try to include a benefit with your offer. "Exchange links with PR 5 fishing website" would catch me attention for my fishing site. I would be very interested in exchanging links with a PageRank 5 website on the same subject as my website. Of course, the same email sent to my music site would fall on deaf ears.

Also note the order of the keywords in my subject line. The offer came first. There is no doubt what the email is about. Next is the benefit. Even if the last part of the subject line were truncated, I would see the benefit of reading the email.

Personalize the email

Let them know this is a personal email and not some automatically generated one. Find something you like about their site. (If you can't find something you like, you shouldn't be linking to them.) Tell them, "I visited your site and really like [this] about it." When they read that, they'll know you really did visit their site and are writing a personal email.

--Rich Pulham