Employ someone for linking or buy links? Or don't bother!

[mryang]

Hope you guys can help.

I have always done all of our in house SEO and we have many top positions in Google. But I am struggling in the others like Yahoo and MSN.

A couple of questions -

OK so I have decided to write loads more relevant content and as a consequence hopefully attract a load more links to our site.

Do I buy links and deep link them to the pages with the anchor text written to match the target keyphrases - if so what price should I be paying for links these days?? And is it worth it at all? A SEO company says they can gaurantee me top three on the top searches for a chosen keyphrase - but they say I need 150 more links and they want to charge $15 a link... but these links they promise they say are clean (not link farms) but they are not related to my site.... So I would be looking at over $2000 per target phrase...

If I then have say 50 phrases thats alot of money for me to outlay.

However, I have always been very sceptical of these companies and very wary of infringing the search engines rules and policies. Plus I would have thought its only a matter of time before links from sites that are not relevant to my own will be ruled out or discounted anyhow..

Am I better off employing a new member of staff to sit and get me links from relevant sites - or is it even worth it at all.... Any help an suggestions greatfully received.

[ctabuk]

FORGET IT!!! Period

Here's what I do - go to www.google.com/alerts

Simply log in to alerts and load all of your keywords IMPORTANT
Do it twice like this

keyword
keyword blogs

example
Social Homebuy
Social Homebuy Blogs

Use GMail and add your links to the sig feature

The next day you will have emails from Google listing the sites that carry your keywords.

With the blogs that's easy - add your posts and your link or links in your sig. Have 3 or 4 different names - if you are really cunning use a spare hard drive - I have three so I have different ISP numbers.

With the press releases write replies asking for permission to add your links.

1 - Google will be searching your keywords - this will link them higher - gradually increasing - not dramatic but a good long term strategy.

2 - It will list sites that Google likes - so link there.

Think Searcher - Make sure your keywords are what you think searchers will use - so check your stats first.
Get Google to search your own site - add your site name without the http://www or the dot com. Make Google work finding it.

if you spend a while doing this you will save a small fortune.

[LobsterWebDesign]

As a general rule of thumb, never trust anyone who promises to get you to the top of Google. Its just not possible to guarentee it however good you are as an SEO.
However, its not necessarily a bad idea to pay someone to get you links but you have to be sure they are reputable.
From my experience MSN doesn't put the same emphasis on backlinks that Google does. For MSN you really just need to build the pages of your site correctly and use efficient code and make sure the Title bar reflects the keyphrase you're going for.
Then just find a few good directories (paid and free if you want) and add a entries that reflects the keyphrase you're going for and link to the relevant page on your site.

[mryang]

Some good advice there people. Thank you.

For example a product I sell is "USB Pens" and I put a few pages up for these about 3 months ago converting old pages which had some PR to target this keyword. Obviously its quite a competative key phrase. I am now ranked 56th today on google (no good to man nor beast).

I want to run a test campaign to see if I can get this phrase onto the from page of google and see how long it takes to get there - the reason being this is the phrase that a SEO has promised me he can get onto the top 3 results by spending $2000 on links - he says I need 150 links according to his "researchers".

As I said before I'm more than sceptical about these SEO promises, and I really appreciate the advice you guys are providing.

I will follow the advice of CTABUK concerning google and blogs + links etc.... Is there anything else you can suggest I do, the page in question is a PR4 page and is Portable USB hard drives, pen drives and digital memory

[erikko]

Originally Posted by ctabuk

FORGET IT!!! Period

Here's what I do - go to www.google.com/alerts

Simply log in to alerts and load all of your keywords IMPORTANT
Do it twice like this

keyword
keyword blogs

example
Social Homebuy
Social Homebuy Blogs

Use GMail and add your links to the sig feature

The next day you will have emails from Google listing the sites that carry your keywords.

With the blogs that's easy - add your posts and your link or links in your sig. Have 3 or 4 different names - if you are really cunning use a spare hard drive - I have three so I have different ISP numbers.

With the press releases write replies asking for permission to add your links.

1 - Google will be searching your keywords - this will link them higher - gradually increasing - not dramatic but a good long term strategy.

2 - It will list sites that Google likes - so link there.

Think Searcher - Make sure your keywords are what you think searchers will use - so check your stats first.
Get Google to search your own site - add your site name without the http://www or the dot com. Make Google work finding it.

if you spend a while doing this you will save a small fortune.

i tried it and it works for me, i never thought that you can track your links with these google feature

[mryang]

I have set up the googlemail and links alerts... however I dont see how you can use it to "you can track your links".

Any other suggestions will be put into place and I will update everyone on here and let them know how things are progressing.

[crankydave]

First of all, do yourself a favor...

If you want to rank for "USB Pens" you need to use the phrase on your page.

There's no place that you use it all... anywhere.

Take a look at your title element... Not there. Not even the singular.

Now... "USB Pen"...

Once in the meta description, no help on Google.

Once in the keywords tag, no help in Google.

Twice as an alt attribute.

Four times as link text pointing away from the page.

And only once as text on the page.

Dave

[coolguy27]

Originally Posted by mryang

Hope you guys can help.

I have always done all of our in house SEO and we have many top positions in Google. But I am struggling in the others like Yahoo and MSN.

A couple of questions -

OK so I have decided to write loads more relevant content and as a consequence hopefully attract a load more links to our site.

Do I buy links and deep link them to the pages with the anchor text written to match the target keyphrases - if so what price should I be paying for links these days?? And is it worth it at all? A SEO company says they can gaurantee me top three on the top searches for a chosen keyphrase - but they say I need 150 more links and they want to charge $15 a link... but these links they promise they say are clean (not link farms) but they are not related to my site.... So I would be looking at over $2000 per target phrase...

If I then have say 50 phrases thats alot of money for me to outlay.

However, I have always been very sceptical of these companies and very wary of infringing the search engines rules and policies. Plus I would have thought its only a matter of time before links from sites that are not relevant to my own will be ruled out or discounted anyhow..

Am I better off employing a new member of staff to sit and get me links from relevant sites - or is it even worth it at all.... Any help an suggestions greatfully received.

Forget it.... Buying links are frowned by Google... Read their linking scheme..

You must boosts organic links than doing that kind of style... It's no good. Google love links that are made organically..

[adeelkhero]

Myrang, fine with your Title & Meta Desc tag. But where is the Meta Keyword tag???

[ctabuk]

Google ignores tags - personally I'd always use them - buy currently Google leaves them alone

[mryang]

OK, so I have taken on board your title and tag suggestions and done some more on page optimisation.

Can you guys take a look at the code and page content and see if there are any glaring mistakes or over saturation of the keywords etc..

I am continuing with CTABUK's suggestions on links and blogs etc and charting my progress for the usb pen keyphrase. So far this week I have gone up 12 places in Google.

[ctabuk]

That's excellent news - try using this on your site

SiteReportCard: Web Site Optimization and Promotion Tools it's basic and honest

[kgun]

I will add to those stated above:

1. KW's: "Lateral thinking + SEO"
2. KW's: "Long tail + SEO"

Overall principle, think like a bot but write for human beings. Surround your KW's with text and links with relevant anchor text.

Have you tried:

www dot yoursite dot com/yourKW ? (KW in (sub)folder name and / or page)

www dot yourKW dot yoursite dot com ? (KW in (sub)site name)

Then write about your products on these pages / sites. Remember to use yourKW in the title tag, headings and anchor text of relevant IBL's.

[mryang]

Hopefully I will come in to work on monday and see I have jumped up a few more in the rankings... you never know though!! Fingers crossed.

KGUN... yes some of the pages linked from the main page the KW are in the page names before the ? but these pages I only added to the site a couple of months back so they probably have little PR so far.

How many quality links do you guys think I need - the guy who was trying to sell me links based on his promise to get me to the first page of google wanted me to buy 160 links but as I said before these were from non relevant sites .... so would 50 links from sites related to my KW's be better than 160 from general PR1 pages?? I presume so, or do you think I need alot more links for this KW?

I know the more links the better but is there any easy way to see how many quality links those sites near the top for my chosen KW have - is there a piece of software out there that allows me to specify a keyword and the site at the top of the list and scan their site and find all the sites that are linking to them and get the email addresses and URL's of those sites so I can approach them manually and ask for links or get added to their directories.

[Martinscholes]

Originally Posted by mryang

Hopefully I will come in to work on monday and see I have jumped up a few more in the rankings... you never know though!! Fingers crossed.

KGUN... yes some of the pages linked from the main page the KW are in the page names before the ? but these pages I only added to the site a couple of months back so they probably have little PR so far.

How many quality links do you guys think I need - the guy who was trying to sell me links based on his promise to get me to the first page of google wanted me to buy 160 links but as I said before these were from non relevant sites .... so would 50 links from sites related to my KW's be better than 160 from general PR1 pages?? I presume so, or do you think I need alot more links for this KW?

I know the more links the better but is there any easy way to see how many quality links those sites near the top for my chosen KW have - is there a piece of software out there that allows me to specify a keyword and the site at the top of the list and scan their site and find all the sites that are linking to them and get the email addresses and URL's of those sites so I can approach them manually and ask for links or get added to their directories.

You could also try free press release sites, too. Or for a better and charged for service Response Source :: www.responsesource.com Responsesource is a well-respected service. It is well-used by journalists for sourcing stories. And does not charge much so is well worth using.

Tell me about your USB pens. Sounds like a story that would fit in with some of my online magazines. afj_info@yahoo.co.uk

[mryang]

OK, so I have checked this morning and I am up to 40th in Google - up from 56th last week. So heading in the right direction.

Going to continue this week with the blog linking and posting some more articles.

Will keep you all posted.

[mryang]

Later in the day and I am now 39th in Google.. I didnt realise the results changed from one day to the next drastically (without a major update) let alone during the day hour by hour. Is this the same for the other search engines?

[ctabuk]

I really am pleased for you - it quite makes my day to meet someone who not only listens - but tries and has some success. It cheers up a day. Thanks -rep points awarded

Other SE's - This may sound vague - but - Yahoo - maybe - ASK and MSN? Yawn

Oh and just a minor point - we all like to know how we are doing in Google. But an ISP address continuously searching a keyword, may cause some problems - get a few buddies to search it.

[smargenau]

Great info CTA. I wil lalso look into the alert methodology for adding relevant posts.

I have been told that a linking directory on a site is good for seo -- I feel organic articels, blog entires, directories, etc. are much better. Settign up a mini link farm on my (and client) sites seems like a bad idea, yet this si what i am told....can anyone let me know if they have a solid answer fo this.

Thanks.

PS DO you recomend a anchor text link on blog sigs?

[mjtaylor]

Try thinking of your link directory not as a link farm or even an exchange, but as an actual resource for visitors to your site. Add links based on quality without concern for a link back.

Don't set it up geographically - in many niches, such as real estate, Google has removed PR from such directories as it sees them as recip link farms.

But Google does love links out ... especially to quality, relevant sites.

You might also want to start a separate thread when you have a question like this, since this is a little off topic ...

Cheers, MJ

[mryang]

Thanks CTA,

I'm using SEO Elite to track my positions in the search engines... it runs twice a day for my selected terms and graphs my progress - I hope this isnt "too many searches from 1 IP address per day"... I would think not because I am No.1 for the term DVD CASES and I probably search that term 5 times a day for the last year!

As for the Google loves quality outbound links - is there an optimum number of outbound links to place on any one page, I try and have a couple of relevant links on a page but only too high PR sites and then to their relevant page, I only didnt put too many on for fear of loss of PR myself.

[mryang]

Right, here is something I really don't understand - perhaps you guys on here can shed some light on it....

This morning my site is up to 13th in google.co.uk for the term USB PENS - but it is my homepage that comes up and not the optomised page portable-usb-drives.htm - my homepage I dont think even mentions USB PENS in any of the meta tags.

Confused? I am!

[ctabuk]

Don't be confused - it does not read tags -simply press the 'cache' control next to the SERP control and that will tell you what it has been reading.

Outbound links. Giggle time - I am in the UK Housing Market - One of my outbound links is massive and I mean really massive - it lists every Council, Every UK Trading bodies in Local Authorities, Every Single Government department - It's almost as big as wikipedia and it's never given me any problems. Just remember one simple word 'Relevant'
Shopping Cart / Checkout Battery packs £1HomeDVD-R mediaDVD+R mediaDVD+RW mediaDVD-RW mediaDVD RAMDVD RAM for camcorders Dual layer DVD discsDVD RAM video8cm DVD for videoDVD sample packsDVD recordersDVD video recorders</STRONG>DVD duplicatorsDVD replicationBluray dvd mediaBluray recordersDVD printersDVD glossary
I just took a look at your sig site.

Google reads pages for its cache - so use DVD once as a header and use some form of ditto underneath - same with CD's.

[mryang]

One interesting thing is that my home page is the only one in the searches that doesnt include USB PEN in the title of the page.... just goes to show that the keywords are irrelevant and its more to do with the linking structure within the site itself and the anchor + title text - obviously plus inbound quality links.

So lets see if we can make it into the top 10 tomorrow!!

[mryang]

Originally Posted by ctabuk

I just took a look at your sig site.

Google reads pages for its cache - so use DVD once as a header and use some form of ditto underneath - same with CD's.

Could you please explain that bit to me a bit clearer please ... don't quite see what you mean.

And what on earth is -

Originally Posted by ctabuk

simply press the 'cache' control next to the SERP control and that will tell you what it has been reading..

[ctabuk]

Here's one of my results 2nd on Google - naturally
Social Homebuy - Shared Ownership Schemes Information by CTAB - 8 visits - 2 Apr

Latest Info about Shared Ownership Schemes. This site is Authorised and Regulated by the Financial Services Authority. Mortgages for Council House Purchase.
www.counciltenantsmortgages.co.uk/shared-ownership.html - 13k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this



Click on the cached and it tells you the keywords Google used to identify the site.

[ctabuk]

Originally Posted by mryang

Could you please explain that bit to me a bit clearer please ... don't quite see what you mean.

And what on earth is -

1st point - Simple overuse of one term - It's ok in text you can't avoid repitition but yours are headers and I think that you could be over egging it.

2nd Seperate post

[mryang]

Thanks for that... much clearer now... will now have to post a question about re-writing my menus!

[pebblez]

How can posting replies to blog posts help rankings? Almost every blog I see has the nofollow tag on reply links

and yet according to mryang its working. Maybe this little experiment is proof that google does put some weight on nofollow links

[mryang]

OK, so this week I am in position 13 for USB Pens and have been as high as 7th .... however I fear that me searching from my IP address may have tainted the results and maked my site as a favourite of mine showing it higher up....

Where do you guys find me for USB PENS

[mjtaylor]

You can check your own results untainted here:
Scroogle Scraper .. I see you as 18

Cheers, MJ

[tamecrow]

Originally Posted by mryang

An SEO has promised me he can get onto the top 3 results by spending $2000 on links - he says I need 150 links according to his "researchers".

How on earth can he possibly 'know' that? Steer well clear.

[mryang]

Today I have slipped a bit to 17 so was hoping to have gone up not down... mind you I am making some big changes to my menu systems and layout this week so touch wood should pick up again next week.

[mjtaylor]

Originally Posted by mryang

Today I have slipped a bit to 17 so was hoping to have gone up not down... mind you I am making some big changes to my menu systems and layout this week so touch wood should pick up again next week.

#17 for what term? The last term you mentioned was USB PENS ... and I see you at #25 for that today ...

[mryang]

As previously discussed it looks like different areas of the world get different results, and at that quite different results - its quite interesting though... I'm not expecting it to be easy to get onto that front page for such a competitive keyword but will keep plugging away.