Links are 80% of the battle to struggle up Google's rankings. Getting them is hard work and labour intensive. We received this request for a link today from screenpages.com: I sanitise and circulate it here as I think it's interesting and potentially useful.
"Hi I`m
We have an idea which we hope will be useful for
We need some links and since there is an ongoing debate about the effectiveness of traditional reciprocal links, we would like to offer you two things:-
1) Some free of charge content for screenpages.com in return for a single link back. We are working with a large team of professional writers. We can get them (at our expense) to write some content for you to publish on screenpages.com. You can choose the subject and you have complete control. The content would be unique to screenpages.com - no copy/paste or tricks - and definitely no cost or other commitments for you. All we would ask is that you allow us to include one simple text link back to us towards the end of the content which will hopefully be found by the search engines in the longer term.
2) A 10% discount on any of our services
Please let me know if this would work for you and, if so, what subject you want our writers to cover. "
Go execute!