Over the last few weeks, people have been asking me if there are any guidelines to buying links apart from the usual ‘blab’ and talking about their recent acquisitions. To be honest, some of their truths were quite shocking, so I thought I would write about some basic guidelines to buying links.
Everyone knows the most basic of stuff: Page Rank is good, older domains work better than newer domains, similar themed sites are more likely to work better (blah … blah … blah), but what about the more targeted things such as IP address variation and number of inbound vs outbound links?
One guy actually told me the following: ‘I just bought a great link on a PR3 (pagerank) site yesterday.’
Great, I said – expecting him to tell me how he’d researched into it and used the correct keywords etc. He didn’t and I found out why later. This particular site had 141 inbound links, but 275 outbound links! Not only that, he had linked his web address rather than a keyword, the site was only 14 months old AND to make matters worse, it was a kids’ toys site!
*And the award for silliest link ever built goes to …*
Remember guys, before you start buying links, start doing some basic research into the site.
- How long has the site been established for?
- What is the site’s pagerank?
- How many pages does the site have? (as a general rule, the more the better)
- How many inbound links does the site have? (just as above – the higher the better)
- How many outbound links does the site have (the lower the better) – remember, subpages may also carry Page Rank, and a link from a PR2 subpage with no outbound links is better than a link from a PR3 site with lots of them
- If I’m buying multiple links from someone off a site network – are they from a variety of IP addresses? (the more IP variation, the better it is)
Now you know those things, you can start to value the site at what it’s really worth – and remember that most link sellers will negotiate. Don’t just start by throwing them a bundle of cash before you haggle a bit.
So the next time you are looking to purchase some links and think you’ve found the ‘Grade A’ cut of link juice … just check over these questions and make sure they all add up. If not, don’t be afraid to walk away – money doesn’t grow on trees, so save yours for the ones that are going to be worthwhile!
About the Author
Daniel Laming spent over two years working as an affiliate manager for GTech and Red Interactive, but recently decided to pursue a role as a full-time affiliate working on website BigPainsNoGains with a team of five, focusing on Online Casino and Online Bingo offers.