The discussion on buying links at SES San Jose got a little more philosophical than Doug Caverly might have expected. Conference attendees were greeted with a band of Linking Jedi Knights expounding on the light and dark side of the link buying Force. Yes, on Day Four of the conference, I’m reaching.
“Your choices determine you intent,” said Eric Ward, CEO of EricWard.com.
Ah, yes, I see.
Snatch the link from my server.
What is the sound of one link clicking?
Publicist and link building aficionado Ward had no answer for that. Doug didn’t ask him. But Ward went on to pose questions of his own. Why are you buying the link? Is it for a rank or audience/direct click traffic?
“If you’re going to buy links to try to improve your rank, you’re playing with fire,” he warned.
Ward was referring to the general distaste search engines have for gaming the rankings through link farming. “Getting busted” earns a website a karmic search penalty. He echoed Text Link Ads Inc. president
Patrick Gavin, who began the session with a discussion of neighborhoods.
Ill-reputed websites linking to your site does double damage by busting your site down a few ranks in the search engines and downgrading your overall web-rep.
“It comes back to the neighborhoods and where you want to be put,” said Gavin. “Don’t, for example, mix in with casinos unless that’s your business.”
His advice was to “think natural.” Get relevant sites and blogs with good reputations to link to you and be willing to pay them for it.
“It’s not an exact science,” he cautioned, in reference to budgeting money for this.
Ward suggests yet other routes for link advertising, like email newsletters and press releases.
“But the links most valuable, to buy you cannot,” says Yoda. And the crowd edges forward to hear the rest of the master’s words.
“Don’t do anything to potentially hurt the pristine reputation your site has now,” Ward continued. “If you want to try some black hat tactics, launch a new site. It’s all fair game. It’s all business.”
Debra Mastaler, owner of Alliance-Link.com, gives a few more concrete tactics. Mastaler plugged LinkedIn.com as one place she uses to build links. She also recommends contacting heavy users on eBay and Amazon for links on their sites.
“They’re very open to it,” she says.
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