Eric Ward put a post up on Search Engine Land called: The Link Building Kiss of Death. In this post Eric talks about the types of email addresses which are just poor ones to use when emailing someone with information about your site (a request of a link). Some of the examples provided by Eric include:

• info@
• webmaster@
• help@
• contact@

I agree fully with Eric, who is a world class link builder, but would like to share an additional tip about how to find the contact information you are looking for. Let’s assume you are looking for a person on the web site of a major university. You want to find the contact info for the admissions director. You know the person’s name (let’s call here Maggie Pearson), but the only related contact info you can find is for “info@major-university.com”.

Kiss of Death right? Well certainly if you actually use that email address to send the mail. But, instead of fishing around one web page at a time, you need to put your search engine to work for you. Your next step would be to try this search:

“maggie pearson” site:major-university.com

You will be surprised how many times that person’s email address and/or phone number will show up in other places on the site. In the case of a major university, a lot of times the entire faculty and administrative staff have their information online.

For me, SEO is about asset creation. Whenever we work with a client site, we treat it like an asset. In short, the site is never treated as an item that we could potentially throw away. Once you start thinking this way, you become risk averse.

But that is not the only thing that happens. You begin thinking about who the leaders are in your space, and how you can become one of them. Of course, your goal maybe to become THE leader, but if you are just starting out, becoming one of the leaders is a start.

This is a mental shift from what I see with many people who publish web sites. Some of them may feel like it is difficult to become a leader in their space. Perhaps they don’t have the time or energy to invest in it, or they don’t believe in themselves enough.

Of course, there are several different ways to slice the pie. Seth Godin details these in his recent post The Long Tail and the Dip. For example, you can try to become the #1 player. Very difficult to do, as there can only be one who achieves this status.

You can become a niche player, and still be a leader. Definitely more achievable, as most spaces have many niches. Finally, the third segment detailed by Seth is the long tail. This Seth defines as making a small margin on a huge range of products.

Regardless of the scenario you choose to pursue though, you need to somehow attract attention to what you are doing. In any of these scenarios, that still requires establishing yourself as one of the leaders.

So how do you establish leadership? The devil is in the details of your space, but it will always involve recognizing ways that you can excel, and ways that you can make that visible to people. In the SEO game this relates to your link building strategy. Regardless of whether you are chasing the head, the vertical niche, or the long tail, invest in content, tools, unique concepts, or whatever it takes to make that link building strategy a piece of cake.

Otherwise your position is tenuous at best, and not likely to last.