Chris Richardson of Murdok is in San Jose for SES 2005. Today, he stopped by a session that is part of the Linking Track on today’s agenda.
How has your link buying strategy helped your business? Have you stayed with sites directly related to what you do, or broadened beyond a particular niche? Let us in on your link buy strategies on WebProWorld.
Buy that link.
Lots has been said about not buying links on other sites. Dire penalties like banishment from the search engines have been promised to those who disobey this tenet of optimization.
Eric Ward, CEO of EricWard.com, has long done things his own way in terms of advertising online. Buy links, but buy good links. Sites that cover topics related to your business make good places to invest in a link purchase.
The same goes for newsletters and feeds that offer coverage of related topics. Sponsor a whitepaper on a site-related topic, with your advertising displayed prominently.
That buying behavior should be done in a measured fashion. Purchasing a whole bunch of links at one time, or buying them from link farms who suddenly fill the Net with pointers back to your site, won’t help and could even hurt your efforts.
Ward’s suggestions don’t center on the search engines; they focus on traffic. You can’t convert a visitor if they don’t make it to your site in the first place.
Patrick Gavin, president of Text Link Ads, lists some specific benefits to link buying: direct traffic, link popularity, branding, and spidering. Buying a single page link doesn’t provide as much benefit as a site-wide link; again, be careful not to buy too many too quickly.
Outbound links don’t provide SEO benefits to a site. If you must have them, aim to make them ones that point to authority sites in your field. Incoming links enhance one’s PageRank with Google; Gavin notes that Yahoo does a much better job with link analysis, though.
When considering where to purchase links, Alexa will be a general indicator of site traffic. Gavin observes that a company press kit will probably be more accurate with traffic counts.
When you buy those links, mix up anchor text and destination URLs, and also switch between index page and deeper landing page links.
Thomas Bindl, CEO of OPTOP, discussed some of the hazards and pitfalls with links. First and foremost, you will want to verify a site’s PageRank. Check their search engine cache, their backlinks, and related sites.
He also says a site owner should plan to keep the link they’ve purchased for eight weeks, to give it time to get weight. After about two months, a site owner should see some benefit from that purchased link. If not, it’s time to dump it and move on with another part of your linking strategy.
Debra Mastaler, owner of Alliance-Link.com, extolled the virtues of buying links that spread your message across a wider audience. Even though a lot of visitors can be gleaned from links purchased on sites related to your target market, your target market generally has interests beyond just those topics.
Real world ad agencies mix up advertising campaigns to try and gain more market penetration, and you may wish to do the same thing. Like the rest of the panel at this session, Mastaler feels link buying is not a bad thing.
Greg Boser, president of WebGuerilla, makes the point that the Internet does not belong to Google. It belongs to the users, and link buying is a legitimate method of site promotion. Google sells ad space, and that’s just another form of selling links.
Boser agrees with contentions made by those who’ve looked at recent discussions regarding Google’s patent applications. He believes Google ages links, and won’t give credit to a new site that arrives with dozens of inbound links.
Buy links incrementally, and take advantage of a completely legitimate way to promote your site to your satisfaction, not the search engine’s.
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.