Benefits of link buying
The most obvious benefit for buying a link is the increase
in traffic. We have seen some great examples of simple text
links on sites being worth a considerable amount of traffic.
In these situations, it is very easy to measure the return
on investment. The key is to only consider buying links for
sites that have a similar theme to your own forum or community,
this means that you are affectively pushing for a share of
the host site’s traffic.
The other benefit from link buying is the perceived affect
on SEO and Page Rank, unfortunately it is a little bit more
difficult to find tangible evidence. Anecdotal reports suggest
that many sites experience an increase in Page Rank or their
search engine rankings, whilst other sites have clearly been
penalized for investing in a paid for link.
Link buying tips
If after reading this page you still want to go down the link
buying road, please read our link buying tips below. These
are designed to equip you with the knowledge to make a much
more educated decision with regards to your link buying strategy.
- Always complete your own due diligence on the web site
you are considering buying a link on. Check for yourself
the number of back links they have, their Page Rank and how
they rank in the search engines. Also check how many pages
they have indexed and request their latest traffic reports,
including where their traffic is referred from.
- Make sure that you only buy links that are of the same
topic as your forum or community, this increases your chances
of appealing to your host site’s audience and therefore enable
you to get a slice of their traffic.
- The major search engines reward what they see as “natural”
growth in back links. This means that you should consider
your anchor text, change the keywords often. It is very unlikely
that every site linking to you would select exactly the same
anchor text. The same is true for any type of patterns, mix
your link building up a bit.
- Make sure that you are buying a link from a reputable source.
Check their credentials and references before parting with
any money.
- If possible, try to ensure that your link is placed on
a page with few other links.
- Although it is not known with 100% certainty, there are
strong suggestions that Google are penalizing sites that
are publicly selling text links. Try not to buy links from
sites of this nature.
- One of the most important link buying tips is track and
measure the success of the link. Understand exactly how much
additional traffic it bought to your forum and how many new
members. If you can not track the success, it is impossible
to establish whether you are getting value for money.
Where to buy links from?
There are a number of sources you can use to purchase links.
There are dedicated sites ran by brokers, auction sites, forums
or more latterly eBay. All have their own risks associated
with dealing with them. We’ve provided a link buying tips section
below, this has been put together by experts with years of
link buying experience. Take heed of the advice and you will
be benefiting from your new links in no time with little risk.
In the meantime, we’ve provided a little more detail about
each outlet below:
- Text link broker sites –
Usually the identity of the site where your link will appear
is kept confidential until the deal is complete. Not an ideal
situation as it is always best to complete your own due diligence
for each web site.
- Specific text link auction sites –
These types of sites are often a little bit more open however
will guard their site details from the public and the search
engines. Try to deal with reputable dealers with good feedback
reputations.
- Webmaster forums – A
popular way to find topical links on relevant sites. Again,
it is important to deal with reputable people, ask for
references or contact details of other forum members they
have dealt with.
Link buying summary
It’s very hard to be overly enthusiastic about buying links.
However, we do understand why people need to consider that
option, especially in high competition keyword areas. In our
opinion, the only reason you should consider purchasing a link
is for advertising purposes only, if you receive a push on
the search engines or a Page Rank boost as a result, think
of it as a bonus.
We spent a great deal of time recently working with a client,
they were competing for certain keywords and had just lost
out the top spot on the major search engines for certain key
phrases, they were obviously keen to understand why. Following
our investigation, it was obvious that the competing site had
worked very hard to grow their back link count. In fact, there
was very strong evidence that they had purchased a huge number
of links to help give them a boost in the search engine results.
In our opinion, this case study shows that link buying for
SEO reasons is still a valid method to increase your site’s
ranking, however you can be sure that the search engines will
be trying to counter this. So in summary, as a short term boost
and as long as you follow our link buying tips, you’ll most
likely see great benefit in buying links. Long term this may
change. |
