Let's face it: you take some risks when purchasing links. But the time and work saved may be a worthwhile tradeoff against any potential downsides. Once you know the risks, you can minimize them while making informed decisions regarding whether link-purchasing is the right strategy for you.
Most people purchase their links through a text link broker such as text-link-ads.com, linkadage.com, and textlinkbrokers.com.
This is probably the easiest way to purchase links. And these companies tend to do a great job connecting you with high PageRank sites looking to sell links. But buying links through a link broker is not necessarily the best way to get links. There are potential drawbacks to consider.
What To Watch Out for When Paying for Links
One major drawback to buying links through a link broker is that these links all tend to come from the same type of site. This tends to produce an incoming link structure that's easy for search engines to detect and thereby discount the importance of these links.
The typical link-brokered link is found on a high PageRank newspaper site. Usually these links are placed within a small box titled something like advertisements or sponsored links.
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For instance, take a look at this example of brokered links found on a PR=8 real estate-related page at: marketplace.nwsource.com/realestate. They're located very near the bottom of the page and, although the exact links may have changed, they look something what you're seeing in our example to the right.
There's speculation that search engines have been working on something called block-level link analysis in order to discount the value of these kinds of links. Such analysis attempts to break a web page up into blocks, or sections. Links placed within side columns and at the bottom of the page would be discounted in importance compared to links located in the center column of a web page. They're also attempting to devalue links placed near words like advertisements or sponsored links.
So far, block level analysis doesn't seem to be hurting the rankings of pages associated with such paid links. Perhaps the technology hasn't yet been implemented. We suspect, however, that it's something the engines are studying and may roll out at some future date. For the time being, these paid links still work pretty well. Just be aware there's an element of risk if the engines start discounting, ignoring or penalizing them. At best, you'll have wasted your money. At worst, your site could be penalized.
In any case, here's what you can do to minimize the risk;
- Avoid run-of-site links. Run-of-site (ROS) links are links where every page (or most pages) on the site you're buying the link from are all linking to you. That means you may have hundreds of links all coming from the same site. That's definitely a tell-tale sign that you've paid for the links. It's much better to have the site just link to you from a single high-PageRank page, as that makes it more difficult for a search engine to determine that it's a paid link.
- Evaluate the other sites that are paying for a link from that page. Ask yourself:
1) Are they related in topic to the linking page?
2) Are they related to your own page topic?
3) Are they doing well in the search engines?
Ideally, the answer to each question would be: yes. Otherwise, if the site is selling links to just anyone, they (and you) are much more likely to be targeted for an off-topic ranking penalty.
For instance, if you're buying links for a travel site, this is a decent page to purchase a link from: http://www.suntimes.com/index/travel.html. The page itself is all about travel and, as you can see below, all of the paid links are also about travel...
In addition, most of the linked sites seem to be doing pretty well in the search results, which indicates that this link is probably helping. At any rate, it at least doesn't appear to be hurting their ranking.
On the other hand, this page exemplifies a poor choice when buying a link for a travel related site: http://www.post-gazette.com/ae/. The page itself isn't about travel and the paid links represent a random array of topics...
Furthermore, most of the pages being linked are not doing that well in their respective search results. Some even appear to be rather shady in nature (one page actually attempted to install a virus on our computer when we clicked its link). This is not the kind of neighborhood you want to be associated with.
An Attractive Alternative; The Presell Page
One way to have your paid links counted (and not penalized) is to not make them look like paid links. This is where the concept of the Presell (aka, Pre-sell or Pre sell) page comes in.
Typically, the problem with most paid links is that they look like paid links. They're usually just a single link tucked away in the side column or footer of a page. They're often surrounded with tell-tale words like Sponsored, Featured or Advertiser. This make them an easy target to be discounted or even penalized.
However, when you use a Presell page, you're buying a whole web page on the site from where you're getting a link. This allows you to place an entire article full of information accompanied by keyword-rich content. You arrange for the host site to link to your Presell page from one of their high PageRank pages and then, of course, you link back to your own site from within the Presell page's content.
This is a very sound strategy because the high PageRank page passes on link-equity to the Presell page which, in turn, passes on link-popularity to the page(s) within your own site that your Presell page is linking to.
Now, if you think this sounds like the article syndication we discussed in the first part of this series, you're right. The only difference is you're paying someone to place your article on their site. Of course, it's always best to have them run your article for free—and you should take that option whenever it's available. But, in reality, there are plenty of high quality sites from where you'll want to get links but can't, unless you pay them to advertise on their site.
Clearly there are two very different strategies for buying links. If you're buying a single link within the sponsored links box of a known link seller, then you're running a high risk of being penalized for that link; if not today, then eventually. But if you're finding quality sites on your own and paying them to run a Presell page with your links embedded in the body of the article, it's nearly impossible for a search engine to know that it's a paid link.
Paid Link Penalties
Purchasing links is contrary to most search engines' terms of service (TOS) and, if detected, your page can be penalized. One of Google's quality guidelines says:
Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank.
Obviously, purchasing links from high-PageRank pages in order to increase your rank technically violates that guideline. Google, as well as most other search engines, regard links as votes for the quality of a page. From the search engine perspective, buying links skews their voting system.
We have seen a few sites get penalized for purchasing links, but they were purchasing a huge number of links that often included run-of-site links with identical, or nearly identical, anchor text throughout. In other words, they made themselves an easy target by being careless and overly aggressive.
Be smart: if all your link popularity comes entirely from a few high-PageRank newspaper sites, then it's going to be obvious to a search engine that you're buying links. Instead, you should pursue a link strategy that encompasses a wide range of sites with varying PageRank. That makes your link-structure appear more natural to a search engine and renders your pages much less likely to be penalized.
Bottom line is: using paid links in moderation can be quite helpful to your rankings, provided that you get them from a variety of good topically-related sources while avoiding run-of-site links and all-identical anchor text.
Should You Use a Link-Broker?
We suggest you visit a couple of link-broker sites to get a feel for what they offer. However, before you decide to contract their services, consider that anyone, including Google, can visit, say, the text-link-ads.com site and see which sites are selling ads. That's what we did (by signing up for a free "membership") and here's one of the offerings we selected by chance:
Notice that, in the Description, they claim...
Your text link ad will appear in a great spot near the top of the page on this high traffic authority website.
Well, we visited that site and found the Sponsored links tucked away in the right-hand column and the Advertisers (same links) buried at the bottom left. Not exactly a "great spot near the top of the page". In fact the description for this link-offering would have been more accurate had it read:
Your text link ad will appear twice; once at the bottom of the far right column and again buried at the bottom of the far left while sharing space with over 200 additional links on this PR=6 specialty RSS news feed page.
Note the reference to: Maximum Text Link Ads On Page: 10 ...they're talking about only the ads from the broker text-link-ads.com. However, we also counted three more text-link-style ads, possibly from other link brokers. That's in addition to the other 214 links ranging from site navigation to specialty business news to RSS feeds—you get the idea. There's a heck of a lot more than ten links on this page.
Now, you might be asking, is this a typical offering? Well, actually, that's irrelevant. Text-link-ads.com is one of the best link brokers out there, but there's clearly a need to diligently check each and every link being considered. That being the case, you're probably better off just skipping the broker and going directly to the source. Besides, we can't entirely dismiss the notion that this whole link-broker thing might just be......a baited trap?!?
Which brings us around to a sticking point that makes us a bit nervous. We can't help but wonder why Google or any other engine is allowing list-brokers to exist. Clearly they could simply visit the list-broker sites (like we did), take note of which sites are selling links (like we did), and then penalize both the lister and the listed in one fell swoop—zap! ...such an easy opportunity to swat a bunch of SEO-mosquitoes all at once. How can they resist?
The question is, are the engines setting a trap they've yet to spring? That possibility makes it hard for us to recommend working with list-brokers regardless of how well they're doing their jobs or how great the links are currently working to boost rankings. It just seems like there's a door out there somewhere getting ready to bang shut once all of lemmings have been lulled into complacency. So be careful! ...and consider yourself warned!
On the other hand, if you do your own research and find good sites to get links from and contact those sites yourself, it would be difficult at best for an engine to know that you're paying for that link. And, by using a Presell page, you add yet another layer of security. Sure, it's far less convenient than paying a link-broker to do the work for you but, in the end, we suspect you'll be happier with your long term ranking results.
At this point you may be asking: why bother buying a link at all if it could result in a search engine penalty? That's a legitimate question. But the fact is, links from authoritative high-PageRank sites can be a huge boost to your ranking because the engines know they are hard to come by. Therefore, to get a high PageRank and topically relevant link, you're very often going to have to pay for it.
Regardless of the path you take to acquire your paid links, you'll want to get the best links possible. To do so, your first step is to ensure that each link matches the guidelines laid out in our recent report: Evaluating the Quality of a Link. The next step is to perform a link audit.
How To Use The Yahoo Link Command to Perform a Link Audit
A link audit involves doing a complete backlink analysis of a site in order to:
- judge the quality of a site's incoming links,
- determine what effect those links are having on the site's ranking, and
- determine the potential value of a link from a page within this site.
Most search engines offer tools to allow you to see which sites are linking to you. However, not all of these tools are created equal. Google has intentionally crippled their own link query system to make it show fewer incoming links than actually exist. They know about the links, they just don't want YOU to know which links they know about. It's their way of making it harder for people to manipulate their search results.
However, Yahoo has indexed many of the same pages that Google has, so here's our secret...
...to find the links that Google won't tell you they know about,
we query Yahoo.
Of course, the purpose of the following backlink tools is to help you learn which sites are linking to your competitors. That way you'll know who to contact to see if you can get links from them as well. And remember, sometimes you'll have to pay for those links or at least offer something else of value to the host sites.
Here's what you do...We'll show you how to do a link audit on your own site, but these same techniques can be applied to sites you're looking to get a link from, or to your competition, to see why they're outranking you. To see which pages Yahoo sees linking to your homepage, type the following into the Yahoo search bar:
- link:http://www.yoursite.com/
(Replace www.yoursite.com with your site's domain name. Notice that this search requires that you use the full URL of your site, including the http://)
To see which pages Yahoo sees linking to any one of your individual pages, type the following into the Yahoo search bar::
- link:http://www.yoursite.com/yourpage.html
(Replace www.yoursite.com with your site's domain name, and yourpage.html with the path to the page you are checking.)
Both of the above search commands will also show links from pages within your own site. Since search engines give more weight to links coming from offsite sources, you may want to filter out links from your own site. To exclude links from your own site, use the following search command:
- link:http://www.yoursite.com -site:www.yoursite.com
(Notice that the -site: search requires that you omit the http://)
You can also get an overall view of all the links coming to any page on your entire site by using the Yahoo linkdomain search. To see all pages Yahoo sees linking to each and every page on your entire site:
- linkdomain:www.yoursite.com
(Replace www.yoursite.com with your site's domain name, and be sure to omit the http://)
Finally, you can see all links pointing to your entire site, minus links from your own pages, by using:
- linkdomain:www.yoursite.com -site:www.yoursite.com (Replace www.yoursite.com with your site's domain name, and be sure to omit the http://)
We also recommend using the MarketLeap Link Popularity Tool which will display the number of incoming links from a variety of search engines and also compare your link popularity to that of your competitors. You can find it at: http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/
Here's what else you'll need
Without a doubt, running all these searches can get tedious and, even then, they don't tell you the whole story. You still need to know...
- the PageRank of the linking page,
- the anchor text being used in the links,
- the number of other links on the page,
- and whether the IP addresses are diversified across the web. (It's never good if links are coming from only one or two Class C Blocks. To the engines that suggests an incestuous relationship between sites.)
These are, arguably, the most important questions to be answered when analyzing your competitors' links. Fortunately, finding the answers can be pretty much automated. For that we use Optilink. It's clearly the best software for the job because it helps us determine the quality of a link (which is much more important than the quantity of links).
To Summarize
Buying links is sometimes your fastest and smartest result-producing strategy. But while using a link-broker to do the heavy lifting might be effective in the short run, over time you may find it could backfire. There's always the possibility the engines might drop a hammer on link-brokers, host sites and their link-purchasing customers.
So whenever buying links, it may be wise to work on the side of caution by procuring your own links through arrangements that you (or someone within your company) negotiate directly with the host sites. And remember to consider the Presell option, as that offers you all of the advantages, but with more control and hardly any risk.
Move on to Your 8 Week Step-by-Step Link Building Plan.
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