Why get involved in heavy search engine optimization when you can get the same results with text link advertising? Many site owners face this conundrum right now. The truth is that if you do both, your site may be unbeatable. Or, you may enjoy no benefit whatsoever, as the search engines strive to avoid counting paid text links in ranking any given site. Text link ads are, therefore, a very hot topic.
Yes, text links taint results, and the search engines haven’t quite found a way to deal with them as yet. Until that happens, text links will continue to be the ranking technique of choice for many site owners. Why? Because text links can work to increase a site’s rankings with the search engines.
The ethics of this decision deserve your consideration. So, rather than try to encourage you to use, or avoid, buying text links, I’ll simply state the facts and let you make up your own mind about this particular practice.
The Evolution of the Text Link
When search engines such as Google began to rank Websites based upon the number and quality of sites that linked to them, those search engines created a digital cottage industry called link placement. Emailing for link swaps was wildly popular with some, while others placed banner ads containing direct links to their own sites. Both solutions fit well with search engine’s immature algorithms.
Since then, search engines have vastly improved their systems for the filtering or removal of paid advertising links. Some of these steps have turned out to be unfair to many smaller Websites that are not connected to the larger Web publishers. As Google changes its algorithm, so the shape of the Web changes with it.
However, text link ads, or sponsorships as some call them (excluding Google Adwords ads, which Google can screen automatically), fit into the Web page less obtrusively than other ad units, and are often less easily identified as advertisements by the search engines. To this day, the search players have real difficulty distinguishing between a purchased link and a normal hyperlink. This will undoubtedly change in time, though, as the search engines’ objective is to produce relevant search results that aren’t influenced by advertisers’ money.
Link Popularity and Link Reputation
Although search engines do assess the number of inbound links to a Web page when ranking that page, the quality of the link is seen as more important than the quantity of links. Although your link may be placed on every page of a sponsored site, don’t expect Google and Yahoo! to give merit to this plethora of links. Some site owners are now varying the wording of the links they place on other sites, but this tactic will probably be filtered out soon.
The phenomenon of link buying has occurred because Google has tightened its algorithm to weed out links between topically unrelated sites, and within link exchanges. Unfortunately, most Websites have these types of links. This fact means that millions of Websites have been put out in the cold by Google’s action. Sites that belong to big corporations or publishing empires are more likely to be topically-related, and they may be able to garner links from authority sites that are on-topic and have high Pagerank. The only way in which smaller Websites could compete is to buy links on these major sites.
One other recent phenomenon has given the minor sites a boost, though: blogs. The success of blogs may actually be due, in part, to Google’s new algorithm รข€“ they’re currently dealing with this problem in unison with Yahoo! and MSN. But in the meantime, comment links on blogs have become the spammer’s tool of choice. Once the search engines devise a way to ignore this form of spam, spammers will most likely turn to text link ads.
Text Link Ads Get Clicks Too!
Text links have a surprisingly high clickthrough rate compared to graphic banner advertising. Advertisers know this and many have abandoned banners in favor of text link ads. Although buying links to your site isn’t in the spirit of organic search engine indexes, the purchase of text links is revolutionizing search engine optimization.
Buying search engine rankings certainly doesn’t sound ethical, yet those who don’t buy links, and who don’t set aside a good part of their budget to the acquisition of paid text link ads, can find themselves at a decided disadvantage. A quick look at the top ranking sites will reveal that most gain their rankings through paid text link ads. These text links, though small and seemingly insignificant, are in fact very powerful.
So, you’re aware of the pitfalls and the potential benefits. If you feel buying text links is unethical, or a waste of your time (after all, the search engines will likely find a way to avoid attributing any value to them), then it’s one less task to put on your SEO to-do list. Great! You might want to skip down to the last section, "Text Link Ads and the Google Sandbox" for the wrap-up.
If you’re curious as to how the purchasing and link placement systems work, however, we’ll consider this next.
What Advertisers Seek in a Host Site
Websites that are ranked for the same keyword topic as the advertiser’s site, or offer material that relates to the keyword topic of the advertiser’s Website, are the most valuable places to place a text link ad. If the advertiser’s site is about pet supplies, for instance, they’d look for sites that deal with pet supplies, veterinary services, pet shops, kennels, pet care magazines, animal training, or dog shows.
It’s best for the advertiser to stick with the exact keywords for which they’d like to rank, but related words and synonyms can also be helpful. If they’re placing a lot of text links, the advertiser might consider varying the copy to help prevent their being filtered due to duplication. The keyword supplies is related to suppliers, distributors, and manufacturers. The advertiser would make sure they got a link from their supplier or distributor, and even from the manufacturer in their product category.
Optimizing Text Links
The advertiser’s text link ad will use their targeted words in the title area. They might also use stemmed variations of those words, and related words, in the description. Some text link ads use keywords only within the anchor text, as in the following examples:
The second example uses keywords, related words and synonyms. It may even sound awkward, but the advertiser’s goal is a search engine ranking boost, not ad copy awards.
The second example above is more powerful because search engines analyze the text near hyperlinks to better understand a link’s true meaning. It’s a complicated process. Advertisers may also use the link title tag, however, if their link is out of place with the rest of the links on that page, as this may tip off the search engine that the advertiser’s is not a regular link.
To acquire text link ad placements, many advertisers contact site owners directly, or use any one of a growing list of text link ad brokers. These businesses act as a go-between, matching seller to buyer — a quick search online turns up numerous such services. Generally, the services allow advertisers either to bid on a link or to buy them outright on a monthly or yearly basis. Most times, though, advertisers aren’t able to see the host site before they buy, so they ask a few key questions before they purchase:
They make sure the site doesn’t use tracking code on the link, since tracking code identifies it as a commercial link.
They research whether the site has their targeted keywords.
They identify whether the pagerank is on the low end or high end of the stated PR level.
They identify the keywords for which the site has rankings, and what those rankings are. If it ranks 450th for its keywords, it will be unable to pass on much, if any, value to the advertiser.
Obviously, link buying can be perilous in the sense that advertisers may not get much of a return on their investment. However, companies with huge advertising budgets may buy so many text link ads that even if just half of them produce, they’re going to do well.
Text Link Ads and the Google Sandbox
One of the reasons Google had to delay the appearance of Web pages and sites in its index is because of paid text links. The impact of this approach began with the infamous Florida update, in which some sites had to wait up to eight months for Google to recognize new links to their site. Google couldn’t distinguish between illegitimate and paid links, so it just put all new links on hold to thwart link buyers. If you were paying $1000 a month for links, and you didn’t see any rank increases for 8 months, you’d be deterred from link buying in the future!
One downside to Google’s filtering of paid links is that innocent links can also be deleted along the way. There are many appropriate and naturally occurring links that aren’t counted by Google because of the keyword topic, they’re position within a page, or their appearance within the link patterns between a certain range of Websites. If your link is the only one on the page, Google may not count it. So, the last word on paid text link ads is that they might not work for you.
Google, Yahoo! and MSN all have the resources to study the paid link issue and develop effective screening solutions within their search algorithms. Since it isn’t easy to detect paid links, and because text link ads are so pervasive on the Web, there is plenty of room for some strategically developed and placed text link ads to squeak through the filters and help the advertiser rank highly — but for how long?
reproduced from http://blogs.sitepoint.com/text-link-ads-buy-way-top/
Monday, 18 April 2011
Sunday, 17 April 2011
101 Advanced Tips For Text Link Ads purchase
You need discretion to buy text links effectively, and there’s more to it than just avoiding paid link networks. Here are 101 tips to reduce your risk and maximize value for money the next time you buy links.
A few quick notes before I start:
1. Some of these are “paid links” that come with the purchase of something else. I’ve included those to create a comprehensive, go-to guide on buying links.
2. Sites named here are just random examples; I’m not saying that any of them buy links. They’re just for illustrative purposes.
3. Some of these tactics – especially #5 – is in a gray legal area, so you’d be wise to consult a lawyer before attempting any tactics that common sense suggests may run afoul of the law. They’re in here mostly for entertainment purposes and to help you think creatively.
4. This article is mostly just a long-winded version of this 1 simple, old link building tip. Brevity may be the soul of wit, but you can’t eat wit for breakfast…
Without further ado, here are my 101 advanced text link buying tactics
1) Buy a tweet with a link from someone whose tweets are syndicated [without the nofollow] on their blog or elsewhere.
2) Pay for a spot in web and/or graphic designers’ portfolios.
3) Buy links to your linkbait content pieces. It’s more credible than getting a link to your ‘buy now’ page.
4) Pay for ReTweets or StumbleUpon traffic such that the links you buy for your linkbait can credibly be explained as organic.
5) You can dress your text links up as AdSense. AdSense is ubiquitous, so one more block of ads should suffer from the same banner blindness as all the rest. (Note that this is for illustrative purposes, only; check with your lawyer before doing this, as there are likely TM issues.)
6) Dress your paid link up as a CPM ad network spot, with the requisite redirect URLs that have incredibly long-character-strings. These traditionally use 302s. Yours will use 301s.
7) Have someone ghost-write a WordPress theme where you get to release it and claim to be the author – you get to have the ‘designed by XYZ’ links. This is not to be confused with buying a footer link in a theme that isn’t the ‘designed by’ link.
8) Buy a spot in a link roundup, whether it’s a list of resources, bloggers, blog posts etc. There are as many ways to do this as there are list posts!
9) Buy a text link in a ‘How Not To Do ABC’ post. These are popular in the web design community, such as the famous Web Pages That Suck. (Note: I’m not suggesting that site sells links; it’s just an example.)
10) Pay for inclusion in some widely syndicated ‘Recent Blog Posts’ widget. For example, SEO Chat distributes widgets you can put on your site featuring their most recent blog posts.
11) Buy family. Wouldn’t you like to be part of the Gawker media network, or the Tribune Interactive network (with such sites as the Chicago Tribune and LA Times)?
12) Buy a membership in some business association. Ex.: Chamber of Commerce, SEMPO.
13) Pay to be cited in some news article. Be the expert giving the journalist his quotations… instead of your stingier competitor (who’d just say the same thing anyways).
14) Build paid links by circulating a meme .
15) If you run a community site and/or an aggregator, you can have bloggers link back to you with their post tags or categories. Think Technorati.com
16) Buy text links via classified ads that let you include a link.
17) Make a donation to a charity.
18) Buy [ranking] content and redirect it .
19) Send someone a gift.
20) Buy a forum link signature. Or buy 100, as they’re usually sold by the caseload anyways ;).
21) Buy a link in the ‘friends’ sidebar category, which is inherently a little random/offtopic (unless all your friends work in the same industry!)
22) Buy a guest-contributor link in the masthead of a magazine.
23) Pay bloggers you hire to add “guest author badges” to their sites, which badges link back to you.
24) Send webmasters holiday greetings. A parking provider I worked with did that for me once and it made them stand out in my mind. Small gestures can go a long way. Like $20 bills in ‘hope you’re having a nice January 17th’ holiday greetings ;).
25) Pay to be interviewed 1-on-1 by a blogger.
26) Pay your own bloggers to interview others, so that the “hey, I was interviewed at this site” link goes to you.
27) Work link requirements into standard contracts with suppliers.
28) Offer discounts to clients who link to you from their sites.
29) Buy links to your free sample contracts or aspirational documents. Bruce Clay Inc could buy links to its SEO ethics guide, for example. Ditto Creative Commons, legal info sites offering sample documents etc.
30) Buy a partnership from the site’s “Partners” page.
31) Buy affiliate links.
32) Buy fake affiliate text links, which are really just a URL parameter and 301 redirect. Or those of you on WordPress can go with a URL shortener plugin and get creative…
33) On a related note, you can combine techniques 31 and 32 to buy a batch of links from any given blogger. 7,000 bloggers use my Internal Link Building plugin, many of whom have it auto-link externally to affiliate products they endorse. Whenever the product is mentioned on their blog, the plugin automatically turns it into a link. Have them set up your link with the Internal Link Building plugin.
34) You can make this even smoother by imitating the pattern with legitimate affiliate links, where bloggers use a redirect folder for their affiliate links. This tends to look like bloggersite.com/recommended/product or site.com/go/product .
35) Pay for people to install your social proof widget. Instead of Hacker Safe, how about they install “The World’s Greatest SEO Had A Drink With Us At SMX, Which Makes Us Cool” badge? Besides, this is guaranteed to lift their conversions. Or the bounce rate, whichever comes first alphabetically.
36) Buy a publicity stunt. Have someone make a replica of Chris Sherman out of macaroni and cheese, on your behalf.
37) Purchase a spot in those 1999-era “Pages I Like” resource pages. It’s similar to the blog resource list roundups, but here you’re getting yourself added to an existing page, rather than creating one from scratch. Also, these usually aren’t on blogs. You can include the money incentive as part of your normal approach to ‘the reciprocity method‘ (no, it’s not about reciprocal links).
38) Buy reciprocal links.
39) Pay people to use your creative commons licensed pictures, with a link credit back to your site. You’ll need to take some nice pictures for this to work.
40) Buy stock photography for others and trade it for a link.
41 – 50) Repeat tactics 39 and 40 with video, audio, slide show, webcast or flash embeds.
51) Buy things for people that are on their wish lists at a given retailer in exchange for a link.
52) Adopt orphaned WordPress plugins and bring them up to date.
53) Sponsor a whitepaper, webcast or other educational material.
54) Create something controversial, then hire forum members in the relevant communities to start “Did You Guys See This??!” threads. The more initial comments you can get on the discussion, the better. You can also try this with sock puppet accounts, but they’re more likely to be flagged as spam than if established community members do it.
55) On Q&A sites, have established members ask a question that people have about your product category. Pay other members to answer with multiple links to articles that you and others [who don't compete with you] have written on the topic.
Mixing in your link with others makes it harder to tell that there’s payment going on, as opposed to only dropping a link to your own site. This avoids getting the link removed as spam.
Bonus points if the Q&A page ranks afterwards…
56) Buying text links can also be done to reinforce existing links, and thus distance you from the risk. For example, suppose you got a link organically from some Q&A site. Why not hire members of that site to reinforce that page with internal links to it?
57) Buy traffic, video embeds and/or links for your Youtube video. What are the odds Google will penalize Youtube? They’re pushing it into the SERPs harder than ever, with 2, 3 and sometimes even 4 videos in one search results page!
58 – 60) Buy links for your Google Places, Knol or Profile page.
61) Make a $1M donation to McGill’s Law Faculty. Ok, fine, I’m being facetious. The cheque goes to McGill Law’s webmaster.
62) Pay for a table at your local college’s career day.
63) Buy an interactive ad with several [non-SEO-value-passing] links embedded in it. Image-map a portion of it to link to your site. Get creative with what portion you image-map.
64) Buy links for your competitors in the same place(s) you buy links from. But make the links go to nonexistent locations, either because they never existed or they expired and weren’t redirected etc.
Initially, it will appear like the linker is just mentioning some of the players in the industry (e.g. “For SEO, try firms A, B and C.”). Later, the links to competitors can be removed since they’re link rot. The idea is to make the item look clean initially, and then reveal its true nature. It helps if you have the competitors’ names be deliberately misspelled so that they don’t show up on reputation management dashboards.
65) Buy links in ‘related posts’ sections of blog posts.
66) Ask bloggers selling you ‘related posts’-links to also link to non-competitive bloggers in the same ‘related posts’ area. Your purchase thus flies more easily under the radar. This is like the foliage that lets a camouflage suit blend into the background.
QNA SITES…
67) Set up dummy sites that you “buy” the ‘related posts’-links for, while including your real money site in one of those secondary sites you ask to have included in the foliage. This cuts the risk that the blogger will name your site if competitors or others ask about paid links.
68) Buy text links that will help you establish a brand in your niche. If you can build a brand before you get banned, you have a winning hand. (Inspired by ‘If the glove doesn’t fit, you have to acquit.’ )
69) Buy advertising so that you can get the associated editorial news coverage.
70) Buy a spot in a trade-show, cocktail meeting, or tweetup wrap-up post.
71) Find a social way (eg Twitter) to contact your prospect for a link that doesn’t involve email (or gmail). Via Joshua Sciarrino / Refuge Design.
72) Buy links to a tweet of yours. Again, you’re one-step removed from the risk. The advantage over buying links for pages on Google is that a Tweet page is hyper-focused on 140 characters, including your link. It’s like ranking an AdWords ad.
73) Buy a negative review or complaint regarding your site. Best to make it from some obscure blog so that it doesn’t rank.
74) Create a social media community and buy links to profiles. (And if you run a social media community, you might want to revisit that member list for members named Buy Viagra …)
75) Purchase installations of your social media community’s ‘vote this up’ badge. It’s a decent way to seed the badges anyways, if you approach influencers in your niche.
76) In hyper-competitive markets where every search for “blog” + your main keyword turns up a competitor, look at related keywords. EG If you’re working on an SEO site, look up SERP analysis. This will help you find genuine writing on the topic that was not written specifically for search engines. (As opposed to “10 Ways To Buy Your Health Insurance From Me”…)
77) Create a contest and pay people to participate in it.
78) Buy an “rss-feed-only” link from a blog who you know is syndicated by scrapers (eg to get the scrapers to link to you).
79) Find “top movers” charts and similar items, then pay to influence whatever metrics the rankings are based on so that you rank high enough to get a link. Of course, this would probably be a pretty expensive link unless you got a little crafty with the metrics and the data input…
80) Pay to have your link dofollowed on sites that moderate the comments and allow some to be dofollow.
81) Buy priority access to key news releases from important organizations. This is based on the idea that people reporting [important] breaking news get links. Think TMZ and Michael Jackson.
82) Imagine nutty news and pay for people to talk about it. This way, you can go for the conspiracy theorist community. (See #32) Disclaimer: Aliens don’t have a great interest in mortgages, credit cards or viagra. (Unless they’re aliens of a certain age…)
83) Buy inclusion in CSS galleries. CSS galleries show off sites that look good by making creative use of CSS.
84) Bribe people at conferences with chocolate chip muffins, when you know the conference had a crummy breakfast/lunch. (Sadly, SMX‘s food is too good to make it susceptible to such tactics.) Via Keri Morgret, who sells model battleships.
85) Disclose the risk in selling links. And pay a risk premium. Competitors may suggest the nofollow attribute to your link sources, and being up front in this way can mitigate that risk.
86) “Sell items on eBay and offer to donate the proceeds to charity. Many charities will link both to the eBay auction and to your site.” (#60)
87) Buy most of your text links without optimizing the anchor text.
Most of your organic links will come with your name as anchor text. Your paid links should be the same, if they’re going to blend.
88) Heed the hub patterns in your industry, so the sources of your paid links match those of competitors’ organic links.
Got a job site? Pay for colleges’ career development offices to link. Got a hotel? Get conventions, events and conferences linking. Got a software site? Create the free trial versions and distribute them to the freeware sites.
89) Don’t mention your site in an initial email or phone message. That’s taking silly risks, as you don’t know if the person is open to it or not. They may even be connected to a competitor or might spam report you. Michael Gray has more on avoiding Kamikaze SEO.
90) Purchase vanity-bait links. Vanity-bait links are where you cite and compliment other bloggers in the hopes of them mentioning you in return.
One common example of this is Top 100 Bloggers In {Niche X} lists. Those lists aim to get those top 100 citing them back…
For example, write a commentary on a popular meme, and cite others who’ve commented on it. Throw in some compliments as to the strength of their analysis.
Then buy links saying things like, ‘John commented on this topic too and aggregated a bunch of key ideas from around the blogosphere.’ The compliments serve to make the links look like authentic vanity bait.
(Adapted from SEP’s 75 Ways to Build Links, )
91) Follow the principles of linkable content to defend the credibility of your paid links. Hold off on ads, proofread your grammar and spelling, use quality graphics…
92) Instead of buying links purely based on contextual relevance, buy your text links based on demographic targeting.
It’s no secret that coupon sites skew towards moms, especially those who are at home. Why not buy links from the myriad work-at-home-mom blogs? David Szetela of Clix PPC Marketing always lectures on picking content-network keywords for the demographics…
93) Ignore Dave Szetela and go the traditional contextual relevance route with your content-network campaigns on AdWords. This lets you identify relevant sites to buy links from. (#7 via Tom Critchlow).
94) Pay off Wikipedia editors to protect your link addition to ranking Wiki articles. This works on the rich-get-richer principle of link building.
95) Hire publicists. “Press agency employees usually know the right people in the right places, which can result in a higher acceptancy rate of your press release.” (#59)
96) Encourage staff to contact their family and friends to get you links. Heck, make it a company-wide contest and see who can get the most and the best links. It’s up to them whether or not they buy the links…
97) Get links from other companies’ staff bio pages. “Joanna does graphic consulting on the side, in which capacity she is working on ‘Your Site Name.’”
98) Create fictitious, citation-worthy characters whose names include a keyword. This works for exotic keywords, but probably not for common words like “refrigerator.”
99) Follow seasonal patterns related to your industry. Now, in mid-October, the candy and costume markets are feeding newspapers with stories about safe trick or treating. Yyou’d be well advised to buy links that flow with the time of year, too.
100) Be a RAT. Or at least know the rat.
100) Hire a professional. Like yours truly. Or Search & Social. Michael Gray. Wiep. Brian Chappell. Social Media Rockstar. (I don’t know if Brett still buys links though, given his social media success.) Alliance Link. Search Engine People.
101) Buy a spot in an SEJ list-post advertorial about text link buying… Kidding, I swear ;D.
Conclusion:
One thing I tried to demonstrate in this article is that you can take virtually every organic link building technique and achieve the same thing with money.
You can earn links to your linkbait or you can buy them or both. You can develop relationships with bloggers, Wikipedia editors, hubpage curators etc… Or you can pay them.
Practically speaking, the net result is identical.
So unless the quality rater team emails every webmaster around to inquire about intent, there’s no way to ever be sure if a link was paid for or given freely.
Which is why Bing and Yahoo sensibly count quality paid links and reject the junk.
I’d love to hear your comments below! Note: Please stow the personal attacks and propaganda about how paid links don’t work, since you’ll just be moderated as noise. They work, there’s a risk to them, we minimize the risk, now let’s move on.
This article was written by yours truly, Gab Goldenberg. I offer link buying services focused on 1) Minimizing risk, 2) Passing ranking value 3) Maximizing value for money with rankings, referral traffic conversions and demographic/psychographic branding.
Gab Goldenberg is the owner of SEOROI a full service SEO and link building firm which offers SEO consultation and link acquisition strategy or email Gab at Gab@SEOROI.com. SEO Services For Serious ROI. Blog Posts For Serious SEOs.
Reproduced from http://www.searchenginejournal.com/101-tactics-buy-text-links/13578/
A few quick notes before I start:
1. Some of these are “paid links” that come with the purchase of something else. I’ve included those to create a comprehensive, go-to guide on buying links.
2. Sites named here are just random examples; I’m not saying that any of them buy links. They’re just for illustrative purposes.
3. Some of these tactics – especially #5 – is in a gray legal area, so you’d be wise to consult a lawyer before attempting any tactics that common sense suggests may run afoul of the law. They’re in here mostly for entertainment purposes and to help you think creatively.
4. This article is mostly just a long-winded version of this 1 simple, old link building tip. Brevity may be the soul of wit, but you can’t eat wit for breakfast…
Without further ado, here are my 101 advanced text link buying tactics
1) Buy a tweet with a link from someone whose tweets are syndicated [without the nofollow] on their blog or elsewhere.
2) Pay for a spot in web and/or graphic designers’ portfolios.
3) Buy links to your linkbait content pieces. It’s more credible than getting a link to your ‘buy now’ page.
4) Pay for ReTweets or StumbleUpon traffic such that the links you buy for your linkbait can credibly be explained as organic.
5) You can dress your text links up as AdSense. AdSense is ubiquitous, so one more block of ads should suffer from the same banner blindness as all the rest. (Note that this is for illustrative purposes, only; check with your lawyer before doing this, as there are likely TM issues.)
6) Dress your paid link up as a CPM ad network spot, with the requisite redirect URLs that have incredibly long-character-strings. These traditionally use 302s. Yours will use 301s.
7) Have someone ghost-write a WordPress theme where you get to release it and claim to be the author – you get to have the ‘designed by XYZ’ links. This is not to be confused with buying a footer link in a theme that isn’t the ‘designed by’ link.
8) Buy a spot in a link roundup, whether it’s a list of resources, bloggers, blog posts etc. There are as many ways to do this as there are list posts!
9) Buy a text link in a ‘How Not To Do ABC’ post. These are popular in the web design community, such as the famous Web Pages That Suck. (Note: I’m not suggesting that site sells links; it’s just an example.)
10) Pay for inclusion in some widely syndicated ‘Recent Blog Posts’ widget. For example, SEO Chat distributes widgets you can put on your site featuring their most recent blog posts.
11) Buy family. Wouldn’t you like to be part of the Gawker media network, or the Tribune Interactive network (with such sites as the Chicago Tribune and LA Times)?
12) Buy a membership in some business association. Ex.: Chamber of Commerce, SEMPO.
13) Pay to be cited in some news article. Be the expert giving the journalist his quotations… instead of your stingier competitor (who’d just say the same thing anyways).
14) Build paid links by circulating a meme .
15) If you run a community site and/or an aggregator, you can have bloggers link back to you with their post tags or categories. Think Technorati.com
16) Buy text links via classified ads that let you include a link.
17) Make a donation to a charity.
18) Buy [ranking] content and redirect it .
19) Send someone a gift.
20) Buy a forum link signature. Or buy 100, as they’re usually sold by the caseload anyways ;).
21) Buy a link in the ‘friends’ sidebar category, which is inherently a little random/offtopic (unless all your friends work in the same industry!)
22) Buy a guest-contributor link in the masthead of a magazine.
23) Pay bloggers you hire to add “guest author badges” to their sites, which badges link back to you.
24) Send webmasters holiday greetings. A parking provider I worked with did that for me once and it made them stand out in my mind. Small gestures can go a long way. Like $20 bills in ‘hope you’re having a nice January 17th’ holiday greetings ;).
25) Pay to be interviewed 1-on-1 by a blogger.
26) Pay your own bloggers to interview others, so that the “hey, I was interviewed at this site” link goes to you.
27) Work link requirements into standard contracts with suppliers.
28) Offer discounts to clients who link to you from their sites.
29) Buy links to your free sample contracts or aspirational documents. Bruce Clay Inc could buy links to its SEO ethics guide, for example. Ditto Creative Commons, legal info sites offering sample documents etc.
30) Buy a partnership from the site’s “Partners” page.
31) Buy affiliate links.
32) Buy fake affiliate text links, which are really just a URL parameter and 301 redirect. Or those of you on WordPress can go with a URL shortener plugin and get creative…
33) On a related note, you can combine techniques 31 and 32 to buy a batch of links from any given blogger. 7,000 bloggers use my Internal Link Building plugin, many of whom have it auto-link externally to affiliate products they endorse. Whenever the product is mentioned on their blog, the plugin automatically turns it into a link. Have them set up your link with the Internal Link Building plugin.
34) You can make this even smoother by imitating the pattern with legitimate affiliate links, where bloggers use a redirect folder for their affiliate links. This tends to look like bloggersite.com/recommended/product or site.com/go/product .
35) Pay for people to install your social proof widget. Instead of Hacker Safe, how about they install “The World’s Greatest SEO Had A Drink With Us At SMX, Which Makes Us Cool” badge? Besides, this is guaranteed to lift their conversions. Or the bounce rate, whichever comes first alphabetically.
36) Buy a publicity stunt. Have someone make a replica of Chris Sherman out of macaroni and cheese, on your behalf.
37) Purchase a spot in those 1999-era “Pages I Like” resource pages. It’s similar to the blog resource list roundups, but here you’re getting yourself added to an existing page, rather than creating one from scratch. Also, these usually aren’t on blogs. You can include the money incentive as part of your normal approach to ‘the reciprocity method‘ (no, it’s not about reciprocal links).
38) Buy reciprocal links.
39) Pay people to use your creative commons licensed pictures, with a link credit back to your site. You’ll need to take some nice pictures for this to work.
40) Buy stock photography for others and trade it for a link.
41 – 50) Repeat tactics 39 and 40 with video, audio, slide show, webcast or flash embeds.
51) Buy things for people that are on their wish lists at a given retailer in exchange for a link.
52) Adopt orphaned WordPress plugins and bring them up to date.
53) Sponsor a whitepaper, webcast or other educational material.
54) Create something controversial, then hire forum members in the relevant communities to start “Did You Guys See This??!” threads. The more initial comments you can get on the discussion, the better. You can also try this with sock puppet accounts, but they’re more likely to be flagged as spam than if established community members do it.
55) On Q&A sites, have established members ask a question that people have about your product category. Pay other members to answer with multiple links to articles that you and others [who don't compete with you] have written on the topic.
Mixing in your link with others makes it harder to tell that there’s payment going on, as opposed to only dropping a link to your own site. This avoids getting the link removed as spam.
Bonus points if the Q&A page ranks afterwards…
56) Buying text links can also be done to reinforce existing links, and thus distance you from the risk. For example, suppose you got a link organically from some Q&A site. Why not hire members of that site to reinforce that page with internal links to it?
57) Buy traffic, video embeds and/or links for your Youtube video. What are the odds Google will penalize Youtube? They’re pushing it into the SERPs harder than ever, with 2, 3 and sometimes even 4 videos in one search results page!
58 – 60) Buy links for your Google Places, Knol or Profile page.
61) Make a $1M donation to McGill’s Law Faculty. Ok, fine, I’m being facetious. The cheque goes to McGill Law’s webmaster.
62) Pay for a table at your local college’s career day.
63) Buy an interactive ad with several [non-SEO-value-passing] links embedded in it. Image-map a portion of it to link to your site. Get creative with what portion you image-map.
64) Buy links for your competitors in the same place(s) you buy links from. But make the links go to nonexistent locations, either because they never existed or they expired and weren’t redirected etc.
Initially, it will appear like the linker is just mentioning some of the players in the industry (e.g. “For SEO, try firms A, B and C.”). Later, the links to competitors can be removed since they’re link rot. The idea is to make the item look clean initially, and then reveal its true nature. It helps if you have the competitors’ names be deliberately misspelled so that they don’t show up on reputation management dashboards.
65) Buy links in ‘related posts’ sections of blog posts.
66) Ask bloggers selling you ‘related posts’-links to also link to non-competitive bloggers in the same ‘related posts’ area. Your purchase thus flies more easily under the radar. This is like the foliage that lets a camouflage suit blend into the background.
QNA SITES…
67) Set up dummy sites that you “buy” the ‘related posts’-links for, while including your real money site in one of those secondary sites you ask to have included in the foliage. This cuts the risk that the blogger will name your site if competitors or others ask about paid links.
68) Buy text links that will help you establish a brand in your niche. If you can build a brand before you get banned, you have a winning hand. (Inspired by ‘If the glove doesn’t fit, you have to acquit.’ )
69) Buy advertising so that you can get the associated editorial news coverage.
70) Buy a spot in a trade-show, cocktail meeting, or tweetup wrap-up post.
71) Find a social way (eg Twitter) to contact your prospect for a link that doesn’t involve email (or gmail). Via Joshua Sciarrino / Refuge Design.
72) Buy links to a tweet of yours. Again, you’re one-step removed from the risk. The advantage over buying links for pages on Google is that a Tweet page is hyper-focused on 140 characters, including your link. It’s like ranking an AdWords ad.
73) Buy a negative review or complaint regarding your site. Best to make it from some obscure blog so that it doesn’t rank.
74) Create a social media community and buy links to profiles. (And if you run a social media community, you might want to revisit that member list for members named Buy Viagra …)
75) Purchase installations of your social media community’s ‘vote this up’ badge. It’s a decent way to seed the badges anyways, if you approach influencers in your niche.
76) In hyper-competitive markets where every search for “blog” + your main keyword turns up a competitor, look at related keywords. EG If you’re working on an SEO site, look up SERP analysis. This will help you find genuine writing on the topic that was not written specifically for search engines. (As opposed to “10 Ways To Buy Your Health Insurance From Me”…)
77) Create a contest and pay people to participate in it.
78) Buy an “rss-feed-only” link from a blog who you know is syndicated by scrapers (eg to get the scrapers to link to you).
79) Find “top movers” charts and similar items, then pay to influence whatever metrics the rankings are based on so that you rank high enough to get a link. Of course, this would probably be a pretty expensive link unless you got a little crafty with the metrics and the data input…
80) Pay to have your link dofollowed on sites that moderate the comments and allow some to be dofollow.
81) Buy priority access to key news releases from important organizations. This is based on the idea that people reporting [important] breaking news get links. Think TMZ and Michael Jackson.
82) Imagine nutty news and pay for people to talk about it. This way, you can go for the conspiracy theorist community. (See #32) Disclaimer: Aliens don’t have a great interest in mortgages, credit cards or viagra. (Unless they’re aliens of a certain age…)
83) Buy inclusion in CSS galleries. CSS galleries show off sites that look good by making creative use of CSS.
84) Bribe people at conferences with chocolate chip muffins, when you know the conference had a crummy breakfast/lunch. (Sadly, SMX‘s food is too good to make it susceptible to such tactics.) Via Keri Morgret, who sells model battleships.
85) Disclose the risk in selling links. And pay a risk premium. Competitors may suggest the nofollow attribute to your link sources, and being up front in this way can mitigate that risk.
86) “Sell items on eBay and offer to donate the proceeds to charity. Many charities will link both to the eBay auction and to your site.” (#60)
87) Buy most of your text links without optimizing the anchor text.
Most of your organic links will come with your name as anchor text. Your paid links should be the same, if they’re going to blend.
88) Heed the hub patterns in your industry, so the sources of your paid links match those of competitors’ organic links.
Got a job site? Pay for colleges’ career development offices to link. Got a hotel? Get conventions, events and conferences linking. Got a software site? Create the free trial versions and distribute them to the freeware sites.
89) Don’t mention your site in an initial email or phone message. That’s taking silly risks, as you don’t know if the person is open to it or not. They may even be connected to a competitor or might spam report you. Michael Gray has more on avoiding Kamikaze SEO.
90) Purchase vanity-bait links. Vanity-bait links are where you cite and compliment other bloggers in the hopes of them mentioning you in return.
One common example of this is Top 100 Bloggers In {Niche X} lists. Those lists aim to get those top 100 citing them back…
For example, write a commentary on a popular meme, and cite others who’ve commented on it. Throw in some compliments as to the strength of their analysis.
Then buy links saying things like, ‘John commented on this topic too and aggregated a bunch of key ideas from around the blogosphere.’ The compliments serve to make the links look like authentic vanity bait.
(Adapted from SEP’s 75 Ways to Build Links, )
91) Follow the principles of linkable content to defend the credibility of your paid links. Hold off on ads, proofread your grammar and spelling, use quality graphics…
92) Instead of buying links purely based on contextual relevance, buy your text links based on demographic targeting.
It’s no secret that coupon sites skew towards moms, especially those who are at home. Why not buy links from the myriad work-at-home-mom blogs? David Szetela of Clix PPC Marketing always lectures on picking content-network keywords for the demographics…
93) Ignore Dave Szetela and go the traditional contextual relevance route with your content-network campaigns on AdWords. This lets you identify relevant sites to buy links from. (#7 via Tom Critchlow).
94) Pay off Wikipedia editors to protect your link addition to ranking Wiki articles. This works on the rich-get-richer principle of link building.
95) Hire publicists. “Press agency employees usually know the right people in the right places, which can result in a higher acceptancy rate of your press release.” (#59)
96) Encourage staff to contact their family and friends to get you links. Heck, make it a company-wide contest and see who can get the most and the best links. It’s up to them whether or not they buy the links…
97) Get links from other companies’ staff bio pages. “Joanna does graphic consulting on the side, in which capacity she is working on ‘Your Site Name.’”
98) Create fictitious, citation-worthy characters whose names include a keyword. This works for exotic keywords, but probably not for common words like “refrigerator.”
99) Follow seasonal patterns related to your industry. Now, in mid-October, the candy and costume markets are feeding newspapers with stories about safe trick or treating. Yyou’d be well advised to buy links that flow with the time of year, too.
100) Be a RAT. Or at least know the rat.
100) Hire a professional. Like yours truly. Or Search & Social. Michael Gray. Wiep. Brian Chappell. Social Media Rockstar. (I don’t know if Brett still buys links though, given his social media success.) Alliance Link. Search Engine People.
101) Buy a spot in an SEJ list-post advertorial about text link buying… Kidding, I swear ;D.
Conclusion:
One thing I tried to demonstrate in this article is that you can take virtually every organic link building technique and achieve the same thing with money.
You can earn links to your linkbait or you can buy them or both. You can develop relationships with bloggers, Wikipedia editors, hubpage curators etc… Or you can pay them.
Practically speaking, the net result is identical.
So unless the quality rater team emails every webmaster around to inquire about intent, there’s no way to ever be sure if a link was paid for or given freely.
Which is why Bing and Yahoo sensibly count quality paid links and reject the junk.
I’d love to hear your comments below! Note: Please stow the personal attacks and propaganda about how paid links don’t work, since you’ll just be moderated as noise. They work, there’s a risk to them, we minimize the risk, now let’s move on.
This article was written by yours truly, Gab Goldenberg. I offer link buying services focused on 1) Minimizing risk, 2) Passing ranking value 3) Maximizing value for money with rankings, referral traffic conversions and demographic/psychographic branding.
Gab Goldenberg is the owner of SEOROI a full service SEO and link building firm which offers SEO consultation and link acquisition strategy or email Gab at Gab@SEOROI.com. SEO Services For Serious ROI. Blog Posts For Serious SEOs.
Reproduced from http://www.searchenginejournal.com/101-tactics-buy-text-links/13578/
How to buy links without being punished
The types of link buys that Google has a distaste for are the links that are exchanged directly for cash. Modify your way of thinking just a little and there are a wide array of easy to buy high value links awaiting your purchase. The key to having a low risk profile is to make the link appear indirect.
Most links occur because of a value exchange of some sort. People link because
■they find a resource to be valuable
■they get paid directly for linking
■they get paid indirectly for linking
Here are 16 indirect ways to buy links without looking like you are on a link buying binge.
Testimonials: Best thing ever. Buy now! ;)
Testimonials help increase sales because they are a sign of social trust. Many content management systems, web designers, programmers, and web hosts offer links to featured clients. Some keep full directories of sites using their services, while other sites, such as Pligg, also allow people using their software to buy an ad on the official software site.
Conferences: By paying to attend a conference and being social there some people may reference you on their blogs. Some conferences also list speakers, post an official list of attendees, and highlight sponsors with direct links. Giving away t shirts or coming up with viral games (such as drinkbait) will get you links.
Association Memberships: Trade organizations tend to have significant global authority and topical authority. In order to push the agenda of the organization many of these list members to show proof of social value. These links are often priced far below their value, and contributing directly to associations is a way to also get significant exposure in front of the type of people who are likely to buy from you and/or link at your site.
Contests: People are competitive animals. Contests like the Mahalo Follow refer a friend program also move the spamming activity away from the source and onto other people, thus allowing the central sites to profit from spamming without being called spammers.
Awards: Even if winning an award has absolutely no value people still like recognition. Winners like to talk about what they have won. In some cases you can even give award winners your product to get them to talk about it.
Donations: Support causes you believe in. Money is the fuel upon which charities can fund themselves and spread their messages. It is hard to call you a spammer for donating money to a good cause. If you get a bit of link equity out of it as a bonus why not enjoy the benefits of good karma? Better yet, you might be able to donate software or services to charities at little to no expense to you. How much is an SEO services by link on a PR8 charity site worth in branding and distribution?
Free Samples: This acts similar to donations, except it is easier to spread to a wider audience without appearing spammy, and if people like what you offer they may review it on their sites.
Widgets: Many embeddable tools (like analytics products, what is my PageRank tools, etc) provide static links back to the original source site. Some companies also provide emblems that their site is hosted on a green host or that they support some other cause.
Sponsorships: Many email newsletters are archived online. If you target a compelling offer to the right audience this may lead to additional links. Services like ReviewMe also allow you to put targeted offers in front of audiences who may help spread the word.
Web Directory Submission: An oldie, but an easy one to do. Here is a list of some of the better ones. The editorial guidelines are not as stringent as we are led to believe, and here are tips for getting the most out of your Yahoo! Directory submission. If you like video content here is a video about submitting your sites to directories.
Affiliate Programs: Even if affiliate links do not provide direct link juice, good affiliates still send a relevant stream of traffic to your site. Some affiliate programs also 301 redirect the affiliate links to the end merchant site. Affiliate programs allow clean companies to profit from the dirty parts of the web (think AdSense or Mahalo Follow).
Social Media: Partner with someone who enjoys writing junk for sites like Digg. If you are too lazy for that, StumbleUpon ads allow you to target ads to specific groups on StumbleUpon, and there are a number of Digg spamming services on the market. Here are some tips for link baiting.
Google AdWords or Other Ad Buys: You can buy ads and send targeted traffic streams to your linkworthy content. You can do it one keyword at a time, or target ads to specific websites. In some cases businesses get organic links just because people are talking about how often they see their ads, plus top of mind awareness leads to more usage and more links.
Link Out to Egomaniac Bloggers: This is a way of buying links by paying with your attention and distribution. People like getting mentioned, and are more likely to link to people who agree with them. Seth Godin linked to my blog again a few weeks ago and when I saw he mentioned my site (even if only in passing) for some reason that made me happy. Insightful blog comments are also likely to make a blogger want to talk about you.
Blog Carnivals: Blog carnivals are where a group of bloggers all talk about a topic and mention everyone else in the ring. These amount to a big circlejerk. If your site is legit and a market leader there is no need for this sort of stuff, but if your site is new in a saturated field doing this might be helpful. Plus others in the blog carnival may end up adding your site to their blogroll or talking about you again on their blog.
Press Releases: Do it too often and it looks cheesy, but some mainstream media outlets like CNN syndicate press releases, while others may chose to interview you based on your press release.
Hire Them / Buy Their Brand & Site: If someone already has a large following but is not monetizing it to the full potential consider hiring them and letting them help you build a more profitable business. You can also look for under-performing sites to buy. If someone is outside of your financial reach you may still be able to leverage their brand by interviewing them.
This article is reproduced from http://www.seobook.com/archives/002422.shtml .
Most links occur because of a value exchange of some sort. People link because
■they find a resource to be valuable
■they get paid directly for linking
■they get paid indirectly for linking
Here are 16 indirect ways to buy links without looking like you are on a link buying binge.
Testimonials: Best thing ever. Buy now! ;)
Testimonials help increase sales because they are a sign of social trust. Many content management systems, web designers, programmers, and web hosts offer links to featured clients. Some keep full directories of sites using their services, while other sites, such as Pligg, also allow people using their software to buy an ad on the official software site.
Conferences: By paying to attend a conference and being social there some people may reference you on their blogs. Some conferences also list speakers, post an official list of attendees, and highlight sponsors with direct links. Giving away t shirts or coming up with viral games (such as drinkbait) will get you links.
Association Memberships: Trade organizations tend to have significant global authority and topical authority. In order to push the agenda of the organization many of these list members to show proof of social value. These links are often priced far below their value, and contributing directly to associations is a way to also get significant exposure in front of the type of people who are likely to buy from you and/or link at your site.
Contests: People are competitive animals. Contests like the Mahalo Follow refer a friend program also move the spamming activity away from the source and onto other people, thus allowing the central sites to profit from spamming without being called spammers.
Awards: Even if winning an award has absolutely no value people still like recognition. Winners like to talk about what they have won. In some cases you can even give award winners your product to get them to talk about it.
Donations: Support causes you believe in. Money is the fuel upon which charities can fund themselves and spread their messages. It is hard to call you a spammer for donating money to a good cause. If you get a bit of link equity out of it as a bonus why not enjoy the benefits of good karma? Better yet, you might be able to donate software or services to charities at little to no expense to you. How much is an SEO services by link on a PR8 charity site worth in branding and distribution?
Free Samples: This acts similar to donations, except it is easier to spread to a wider audience without appearing spammy, and if people like what you offer they may review it on their sites.
Widgets: Many embeddable tools (like analytics products, what is my PageRank tools, etc) provide static links back to the original source site. Some companies also provide emblems that their site is hosted on a green host or that they support some other cause.
Sponsorships: Many email newsletters are archived online. If you target a compelling offer to the right audience this may lead to additional links. Services like ReviewMe also allow you to put targeted offers in front of audiences who may help spread the word.
Web Directory Submission: An oldie, but an easy one to do. Here is a list of some of the better ones. The editorial guidelines are not as stringent as we are led to believe, and here are tips for getting the most out of your Yahoo! Directory submission. If you like video content here is a video about submitting your sites to directories.
Affiliate Programs: Even if affiliate links do not provide direct link juice, good affiliates still send a relevant stream of traffic to your site. Some affiliate programs also 301 redirect the affiliate links to the end merchant site. Affiliate programs allow clean companies to profit from the dirty parts of the web (think AdSense or Mahalo Follow).
Social Media: Partner with someone who enjoys writing junk for sites like Digg. If you are too lazy for that, StumbleUpon ads allow you to target ads to specific groups on StumbleUpon, and there are a number of Digg spamming services on the market. Here are some tips for link baiting.
Google AdWords or Other Ad Buys: You can buy ads and send targeted traffic streams to your linkworthy content. You can do it one keyword at a time, or target ads to specific websites. In some cases businesses get organic links just because people are talking about how often they see their ads, plus top of mind awareness leads to more usage and more links.
Link Out to Egomaniac Bloggers: This is a way of buying links by paying with your attention and distribution. People like getting mentioned, and are more likely to link to people who agree with them. Seth Godin linked to my blog again a few weeks ago and when I saw he mentioned my site (even if only in passing) for some reason that made me happy. Insightful blog comments are also likely to make a blogger want to talk about you.
Blog Carnivals: Blog carnivals are where a group of bloggers all talk about a topic and mention everyone else in the ring. These amount to a big circlejerk. If your site is legit and a market leader there is no need for this sort of stuff, but if your site is new in a saturated field doing this might be helpful. Plus others in the blog carnival may end up adding your site to their blogroll or talking about you again on their blog.
Press Releases: Do it too often and it looks cheesy, but some mainstream media outlets like CNN syndicate press releases, while others may chose to interview you based on your press release.
Hire Them / Buy Their Brand & Site: If someone already has a large following but is not monetizing it to the full potential consider hiring them and letting them help you build a more profitable business. You can also look for under-performing sites to buy. If someone is outside of your financial reach you may still be able to leverage their brand by interviewing them.
This article is reproduced from http://www.seobook.com/archives/002422.shtml .
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