When you review pages mentioning your business, you need to decide whether each one calls for a link request, another response or no action. A page that names your business is in one of four states. Each one needs a different response, and treating them as a single outreach list is how these emails end up annoying publishers.
The four states
| State | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Named and linked | They named you and linked to your site | Nothing. Maybe say thanks, if you want the relationship. |
| Named, not linked | Your name is there with nothing to click | A small, specific request. The best outreach you get. |
| Named and linked to the wrong place | A dead URL, an old domain, the wrong page | A correction. The easiest email on this table. |
| Not named at all | The page covers your subject and skips you | A pitch. Much bigger ask, much lower odds. |
Rows two and three are where the work is, and almost everybody ignores row three. A publisher whose link now returns an error is being made to look careless. Telling them is a favor.
Why an unlinked mention beats anything else on your list
Somebody already put your name in a published article. Nobody asked them to.
So you are not persuading anyone to cover you. You are asking for a link, and the reply rate reflects the size of the ask.
You also have a real argument, and it is about their reader and not about you. Someone hits your company name mid-paragraph and has to go and search for it.
The timing mistake that ruins these
The date a page was found and the date it was published are two different dates, sometimes eighteen months apart. Get them confused and you make one of two errors.
You write about an old article as though it were new. A piece from last year turning up in this morning's report is not news, and calling it recent tells the publisher a tool found it.
You ask for a link that is already there. Stored data shows the page as collected. They may have added the link since. Open it first.
The second one is expensive. A publisher who added your link last month, then gets an email asking for a link, concludes nobody looked. They are right.
When not to ask
Some of these should stay exactly as they are.
If the mention is unfavorable, a link makes it easier to find and more useful to somebody deciding against you. Read the context before the row goes anywhere near an outreach list.
If the publication does not link to vendors as a matter of policy, and some do not, your email fails and marks you as somebody who did not check.
If you are one of twenty companies named in a single paragraph, the request costs more relationship than the link is worth.
What one of these is actually worth
Set the expectation before you start. This produces a trickle. How many you get is capped by how often people write about you, and no amount of effort raises that.
The ratio is why you do it every week. The placement exists. The publisher knows who you are. The email takes three minutes. No pitch you ever send will pay like that.
The step-by-step version, including how to sort the rows and what to put in the email, is in working an unlinked mention list.
Before contacting a publisher, check how the page currently names and links to your business. Let that context determine whether there is a useful request to make.
See also Brand Unlinked Mentions or monitoring brand mentions.