Resource page link building, done without being a nuisance

A resource page collects links for a reader who wants more: a university course's reading list, a community's tools page, a consultant's "what I use", a charity's list of services, a roundup of the best software in a category.

The person maintaining it has an unusual problem: the page goes stale, links die, and new things appear that they have not heard of. A well-judged suggestion solves that problem. This is the opposite of most outreach, where you are interrupting someone who has no gap to fill.

• It is a list, not an article with links inside it.
• It has a maintainer, usually named, sometimes with a submission line.
• It is dated or visibly updated.
• The links go out to other sites, not only to its own pages.

Search operators find these pages faster than any tool, because resource pages name themselves.

"uptime monitoring" intitle:resources
"uptime monitoring" intitle:"useful tools"
"developer tools" inurl:links
"status pages" "tools we use"
intitle:"best tools" "uptime monitoring" -site:yourproduct.com

1. 1

   Run the operators for your category

   Swap in the words your buyers use. Collect twenty pages. Half will be junk, which is normal.

2. 2

   Read each page as a reader

   Would you send someone here. If the list is forty affiliate links with no judgement, close the tab: a link from it is worth nothing and Google's policy on low-quality directories covers exactly that kind of page.

3. 3

   Check what is already broken on it

   Run a broken link checker over the survivors. A dead link on the list is your opening: you are offering a repair and an addition in the same email.

4. 4

   Find the maintainer

   The byline, the about page, the repository if the list lives on a code host. A list on a code host takes a pull request instead of an email, which is a better route when it exists.

Rival research shortens all of this. Open the referring domains of the two products closest to yours and look for pages whose URL or title contains resources, links, tools or awesome. Those maintainers already list products like yours.

A resource page maintainer is judging one thing: will this help my reader. Two things decide it, and both are on your side of the fence.

• The page you propose does one job and does it without a signup wall. A free tool, a reference, a calculator, a clear guide. A pricing page is not a resource.
• It is obvious in five seconds what the thing is. The title says it, the first sentence says it, no video autoplays.

Worked example. PingFox sells uptime monitoring. The submission is not pingfox.com. It is pingfox.com/tools/status-page-checker, a free page that tells you whether a status page is reachable, with no account. Now the maintainer of "tools we use for reliability" has a reason, and the link is to a page that keeps being useful.

Short, specific, and about their page. Say where it belongs on the list, in their own structure.

Subject: suggestion for your reliability tools list

Hi Marta,

Your tools list has a section for status pages, and the link to
statuscheck.io in it has been dead since April. We built a free status
page checker that does the same job without an account:
pingfox.com/tools/status-page-checker. It fits the same section if you
want it, and the dead link is worth removing either way.

Thomas, PingFox

• Name the section of their page. It shows you read it and makes the edit trivial.
• Say what the thing does in one clause, not in a paragraph of positioning.
• Declare who you are. Hiding that you made it is how a submission becomes spam.
• Never offer money, a reciprocal link or a free plan in exchange. That converts an editorial link into a link scheme.

Some pages call themselves resources and are link farms with a nicer template. Google's link spam policy names low-quality directory and bookmark sites, and paid placements that pass ranking, so a link from these is at best ignored.

The test that settles it: if the page did not pass ranking at all, would you still want to be on it because its readers matter to you. If the answer is no, skip it.

Resource pages are maintained in bursts, usually once or twice a year. A polite no today is a yes in eight months when the maintainer sits down to refresh the page.

• Keep a sheet of every list you found, its maintainer, the date you wrote and the answer.
• When you ship something genuinely new that fits an old no, write once more, and only then.
• When a maintainer adds you, check the link works and thank them in one line.
• Revisit the sheet each year: lists change hands, and new lists appear in every category.

Ten good resource pages in a year is a reasonable outcome for a founder doing this alone, and those links sit on pages that keep sending small amounts of the right traffic for years.