|
|
|
Links - Should You Buy Them?
By Merle Copyright © 2006
Buying text links for your
website is a highly controversial subject online. Like it or not, approve of the
practice or disapprove, it does exist and there are many website owners who are
doing it. I'm not going to debate the issue one way or the other; just shed some
light on what some consider a "gray subject."
So why would you want or
need to buy a text link on another website? It all goes back to "link
popularity." Search engines look at how many other sites are linking to yours
when deciding on your ranking. Granted, this is just one criterion, but
nevertheless an important one to pay attention to.
If you don't know how
many other sites are linking to yours, go to any search engine and type this in:
link:http://www.yourdomain.com ... you should get a pretty good idea of your
"popularity." Keep in mind that Google never shows all sites linking to yours,
so what you see in the results will not be an accurate presentation of those
linking to you. Why they do this is not clear (it's one of those "Google
Secrets"), but a possible explanation is that it's one of the methods they use
to keep their ranking algorithms private.
When considering a link
purchase, only buy from sites that are related to your theme and use the Google
Toolbar to check their page rank. You can download it here: http://toolbar.google.com/
A page rank of 4 or above is
pretty good but a 7 or 8 is excellent. Never buy a link based on page rank
alone. If the site doesn't relate to your site's content, don't do
it.
Here are some things to keep in mind before making any purchases:
- There are two types of links: one-way
and reciprocal. A reciprocal link is when two sites agree to link to
each other, a one-way link is just one site
linking to another without linking back. Purchasing a text link is an example
of
a one-way link. One-way links are counted higher by most search engines and
therefore are more valuable then reciprocal.
- When supplying your text
link to other sites, make sure to include your keywords in your anchor text.
The anchor text is the part of the link that is clickable. Use a variety of
key phrases so as not to raise any red flags with the search engines.
- You also want to be consistent with
your url. Use the "www." part
in all incoming links, as links to "yourdomain.com" and "www.yourdomain.com" could
be treated as two different websites by the search engines.
- Another
tip when buying links is to do it slowly. Don't buy too many at
one time. You want it to
look natural to the search engines. Hundreds of sites deciding
to link to yours
in a
week is not "natural" and may catch unwanted attention from the powers
that be.
- Stay away from link farms when choosing
link partners. Just associating with "bad sites" can be enough to get
you banned by the search engines. You'll also want to make sure you're
getting links from different
IP
addresses. Search engines will give the links more weight if they don't
all come from the same IP.
So now that you have the basics, where
do you buy the text links? I thought you'd never ask.
1) LinkHaul: http://www.LinkHaul.com
Purchase static links to PR 4,
5,6, 7 or 8 websites. Pricing starts at 3.00 per month.
2) Text Link
Brokers: http://TextLinkBrokers.com
Offering a variety of link
building programs to increase your link popularity.
3) LinkAdage: http://www.LinkAdage.com
Buy or sell text links within
an auction format or buy direct through a broker.
4) Text-Link-Ads: http://www.Text-Link-Ads.com
Offering $100.00 in free
text link ads when you spend $125.00. So you only have to spend an
initial investment of $25.00
5) BackLinks: http://www.BackLinks.com
Free service that allows
webmasters to trade, sell or buy text links.
When you buy a link, it's
usually billed on a monthly basis and you'll always pay more for a
site with a higher page rank, and also for having them put your link
on their
main
page compared to a page deeper down within the site. Once you purchase
a link let
it
run for a few months at a time, search engines will need it in order
to find and spider them.
Right or wrong, purchasing links is one way to improve your
link popularity quickly and move your site up the ranks in the search
engines. Remember, there are many ways to increase your website traffic,
and buying
text
links is just another means to an end.
About the
Author:
|
|
|
