I’ve been amazed at my recent poll that shows that 46% of my readers that voted said that they never buy text links. Now keep in mind, my blog is about 80% dedicated to "link building" topics….and yea, I do buy some under the radar quality links…so it really suprised me that almost half of you Never buy text link ads.
My latest poll asks "Do you buy text ads?"
46% Never
20% A couple
19% A handful
8% A big handful
7% All I can find.
If you’re not buying advertising, and you’re happy with your rankings, I’ve got a lot of respect for you. I’m guessing that most of you have a great resource, and that you’re pumping out quality content, and this is producing quality backlinks on a regular basis.
I think in a perfect world we’d never have to buy link advertising, one can debate on if we live in a perfect search result world or not…..I personally vote having something that attracts natural backlinks, as well as buying when I feel it makes sense (for things like controlling link text).
But if you’re not going to buy, then I’d recommend aiming for working on things that can have a great impact on gaining natural backlinks. I found these 5 that give great tips and ideas on things that you can do to attract natural backlinks (yes, linkbait, if I may). If you’re seeking ideas, these 5 articles give good ideas on creating webpages that obtain lots of natural backlinks.
- Matt Cutts – linkbait and linkbaiting
- Bill Hartzer – Use Link Bait to Catch Better Rankings
- Nick Wilson – The Art of Link Baiting
- Jim Westergren – Lnk Bait
- Rand Fishkin – Building a Traffic-Worthy Site
What’s your Secrets (for those of you who say that you "Never"buy link ads)?
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[tags]link bait, linkbait, link building, link popularity, backlinks, seo, sem, internet marketing, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, google, [/tags]
12 Responses
I have never paid for a link or done any link exchanges. I compete with keywords in the hundreds of millions and rank on the first page of Google.
I also produce a great podcast, write weekly articles, run a blog and forum.
Works fine for me.
Here is the big secret!
Many of the people who took your poll might love to buy text links but might not be able to.
Many of the people who read your blog might work for large corporations and “Cant†buy text links. (I do but it was a real struggle.)
PPC is easy to track to the conformation page and report on results. It’s easy to show where the money goes and exactly how it comes back. Purchasing a hundred text links without a campaign code attached or some other tracking via redirect creates a situation that is hard to track. You can measure the traffic from individual websites and make the bean counters happy, but tracking and reporting on 100 or more individual links on a weekly basis can create a labor requirement that might easily become overwhelming.
The other benefit is favorable ranking for your target keyword. As with just about everything else involved with SEO, it’s difficult to show incontrovertible “Proof†of how these things work when you go to the finance department and ask for 10 or 20K. This is very difficult to present on a spreadsheet to the folks in Accounting & Finance as a profitable “Business plan†especially if they have zero SEO knowledge.
I’m sure you get questions like these all the time from clueless prospects: “How many visits will we receive from these links? How far up the ladder will my website climb in the SERPS as a direct result? What guarantee do we have of predicted results? Etc? Etc? Etc?
If the folks who have the cash, don’t understand SEO… (and not many corporate financial geniuses do)… then you might not be able to get the cash buy the text links. It can be a frustrating situation for anyone who is stuck in a situation where 99.99% accurate, weekly reporting on every dollar spent is an absolute must.
Well,
I work in what some would argue is the most competitive SEO industry(Gaming) around and link buying is a way of life in that industry. With that said however, I find one ‘trick’ works better then spending $100K/month on links and devoting ALL your time on trying to attract top notch backlinks, NETWORKING!
In my mind, as SEO evolves, networking and building trust worthy relationships with prominent SEO’s within the industry you are targeting can be the most valuable and powerful tool an SEO can have. WHat is better then working with another SEO whom you can trust??? As the Mastercard commercials always preach, PRICELESS!!!!
I have a relationship with two individuals in particular who are TOP SEO’s in my industry and also maintain a large network of trust worthy, well built, informative, non-spammy, high ranking websites and the three of us work with each other on an on-going basis to exchange content with links in the best way to benefit all three of us and to date it was worked like a charm!
Happy Hunting…
Critter
Call and ask. You’d be suprised.
I am currently trying the freebie giveaway method, give some freebies get some links 🙂
The only thing you need to do is to work hard on your website. The harder you work, the better your site is. Buying isn’t everything. Your cash will disappear, so will links or PPC.
Two things to do:
– write valuable content (not just link baiting, but content valuable to your visitors)
– get the Long Tail – you can get the lower hanging fruit this way
Critter,
do you go by Sandcritter on an entirely different “board”?
I say Creating Drama is the best way to Get Noticed, something like “headline” – ‘Google takes on MSN in the search war’
anything to get someone talking about the subject (article) controversies is the best SEO tool, why because people are to ignorant to even realize they are creating a niche about that subject. for example SEO: someone created it by simple talking about it, look how far it’s come.
Forget the link exchanges there only worth the backlink to them, List your site, don’t trade links, it’s all good.
Free link directories is the way to go. There’s thousands of them, and um there free. It only takes time. The best thing most are free to submit to an some rank pretty high in the search engines. Regardless the best link building strategy for the small webmaster is to go the free way, build your self a blog post to blogs, make a link directory, submit to directories, write articles about your site, offer a service for free. there’s many things you can do to get a better Search engine ranking.
After you try the free ways and are making some profit, that’s when I’d try a “few” paid links, but nothing lower then a PR6.
If you are just beginning to SEO your site stay far away from paid links, you really don’t need them until you exhaust your free SEO resources which is virtually never if it’s your personal Website….
“My vote would be never Ever”
I never buy link from the directory because they’re worthless. But I do buy link from yahoo, I think it’s the only one would help your site.
I’ve achieved fairly good ranks in SEO-related key phrases mostly by having good on-page SEO and implementing a sound internal linking strategy. That’s bought in work and now to get more, or rather to be able to pick and choose more, I’m buying directory links and writing articles. I’ve never had to buy a text link and I think there are far better ways of promoting yourself if you’re able. I can accept, though, that not every can pen a coherent article so I guess yeah, for some people buying text links is the better option.
BB
Why are paid links so important? does it help SEO, I think not. Matt cutts said in its blog, that Google can detect paid links. So it can harm your rankings? but I’m not actually sure, because I have never bought paid text links.
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