If you’ve been wondering why I’m not posting regularly lately, it’s because I’ve moved to Jerusalem since mid-January and am currently studying at Hebrew University, in Jerusalem. I’ve yet to get internet in my apartment (the first month I had internet via the yeshiva I was at prior to coming to Hebrew University), hence the slow posting frequency etc. Please stay subscribed as I hope to get internet soon and write at a regular pace again.

Downloads:

• Updated Feb 8, 2010: Internal Link Building, a Wordpress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so that you can rank like Wikipedia. General info: Check the Internal Link Building page. Update info: Check Marios' updates.
• SEO ROI Calculator spreadsheet.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  

The most common way to buy links is to find a site that shows up in Google’s index, then contact the owner asking them to add your link in exchange for monetary compensation. What is often not considered is that published pages don’t change very often.

If you have a page that was published 6 months ago and the only change that page has ever see was adding an < a href... tag, isn't that a red flag?

I know it would be to me! Since this is content that is already online, we’ll call this a post-published link purchase.

So a better, but often overlooked way to buy links is in pre-published content.

Buying links on pre-published pages takes a little extra effort because you have to contact the site owner/webmaster/blogger based on their past articles, but ask for a link in an upcoming article.

Since this content hasn’t ever been seen by Google it won’t raise a [why-is-this-otherwise-stable-content-suddenly-changing-] red flag when the post has a link to your website.

A few concerns with this method:

1. Posts with a single outgoing link are dangerous. Experienced link buyers know that you can quickly get in trouble if your link is the only outgoing link on a page.

Make sure the pre-published page has a few outgoing links in addition to yours.

2. Paid link outers. Just with any link purchase, you’ll encounter a few people who like to use Google’s feedback form to report your site.

You can easily get around this by not telling the site owner which site you own, and explain that you want a few links. Give them 3 links to include in the post. Your link, and two links to trusted authority sites that are not direct competition.

[Ed: You might also consider buying links "for" the competition and ask to have yours included as well to keep things under the radar.]

3. Time and labor. This is a labor intense method. You have to suggest topics for a post that your link will fit into. For many bloggers/webmasters, they don’t know what they’re going to post about so you might have to coach them on appropriate topics that would match the anchor text for the links you’re buying.

The only way around this is to outsource the labor (which adds a hard cost) or to by pass the individual blogger and go somewhere that accepts most links (like a regional web directory or niche directories).

4. Poor post quality. Knowing that they’re writing the post for the purpose of linking to you could lead the blogger to write a lazy post. A poorly written post won’t earn many links so you’ll have to rely on the strength of the main domain to provide some juice to your post. This completely depends on who’s writing the post.

A good way around this is to write the post yourself and offer it as free content. You might be able to get around spending money this way. [Editor's note: Brandon's implying in this context that you pay the site owner and provide the post. Obviously it's not a paid link if you just offer a guest article, like Brandon's doing here.]

Here’s to staying under the radar and on top of the SERPs!

If you liked this post on buying text links, add my rss feed to your reader!

Downloads:

• Updated Feb 8, 2010: Internal Link Building, a Wordpress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so that you can rank like Wikipedia. General info: Check the Internal Link Building page. Update info: Check Marios' updates.
• SEO ROI Calculator spreadsheet.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  

It’s well known that most SEOs hate link building with a passion. Why? Two reasons.

1. The best quality links in terms of SEO value are tedious to obtain and involve the traditional research-and-request model. Aka link begging.

2. Even if you do everything right, you might still not get a response for a multitude of reasons, going from stale contact information to derelict sites so old they’re grown over with ivy.

As a link builder, I can tell you that I feel the same way about it. But when push comes to shove, I remember these classic lines that Cicero wrote.

Section 1.10.33 of “de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum”, written by Cicero in 45 BC

“At vero eos et accusamus et iusto odio dignissimos ducimus qui blanditiis praesentium voluptatum deleniti atque corrupti quos dolores et quas molestias excepturi sint occaecati cupiditate non provident, similique sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollitia animi, id est laborum et dolorum fuga. Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio. Nam libero tempore, cum soluta nobis est eligendi optio cumque nihil impedit quo minus id quod maxime placeat facere possimus, omnis voluptas assumenda est, omnis dolor repellendus. Temporibus autem quibusdam et aut officiis debitis aut rerum necessitatibus saepe eveniet ut et voluptates repudiandae sint et molestiae non recusandae. Itaque earum rerum hic tenetur a sapiente delectus, ut aut reiciendis voluptatibus maiores alias consequatur aut perferendis doloribus asperiores repellat.”
1914 translation by H. Rackham

“On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain. These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammelled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided. But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains.”

Bottom line? Stop procrastinating, because you’ll be grateful tomorrow for the links you obtained today. Suck it up!

Downloads:

• Updated Feb 8, 2010: Internal Link Building, a Wordpress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so that you can rank like Wikipedia. General info: Check the Internal Link Building page. Update info: Check Marios' updates.
• SEO ROI Calculator spreadsheet.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  

In Canada, the main law in this field would be the Competition Act, whose sections 52 and 74 (or is that 54 and 72?) deal with misleading advertising.

The law was revised in March 2009 to, amongst other things, raise fines for criminal prosecutions under the Act. Which is awesome!

Fines were at $50,000 to $100,000 penalties for individuals, and $100,000 to $200,000 for companies.

Today they’re at $750,000 to $1M for individuals, and $15M to $20M for companies. A considerably greater dissuasive force, imho .

You can find my more eloquent and detailed post on this, in French, at Blogue Marketing Interactif. (I guest-write for the Montreal Marketing Association.)

p.s. What does this tell you about flogs?

Downloads:

• Updated Feb 8, 2010: Internal Link Building, a Wordpress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so that you can rank like Wikipedia. General info: Check the Internal Link Building page. Update info: Check Marios' updates.
• SEO ROI Calculator spreadsheet.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  

The main benefits of using my text link buying services are that I

• Reduce your risk,
• Get you the most value for money, and
• Maximize your ROI.

To buy text links effectively, I follow a few principles:

- Minimize risk by making paid links indistinguishable from unpaid links. This also maximizes effectiveness.
- Purchase links for rankings, but also for branding and community building. Brands and communities are valuable assets that drive traffic and revenue.
- If it can send traffic that converts, the link is worth buying. This is why demographic targeting is a valid approach to buying links.

My rates start at $1000 for every $1000 in paid link spend, which is based on the average amount of time involved in managing such a budget. For link purchases beyond $8,000/month, we can negotiate better rates. The rates are also negotiable for long-term commitments of 9 months+.

If you’d like discrete text link buying services, contact me.

Downloads:

• Updated Feb 8, 2010: Internal Link Building, a Wordpress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so that you can rank like Wikipedia. General info: Check the Internal Link Building page. Update info: Check Marios' updates.
• SEO ROI Calculator spreadsheet.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  

“8) Buy a spot in a link roundup, whether it’s a list of resources, bloggers, blog posts etc. There are as many ways to do this as there are list posts!

9) Buy a text link in a ‘How Not To Do ABC’ post. These are popular in the web design community, such as the famous Web Pages That Suck. (Note: I’m not suggesting that site sells links; it’s just an example.)

10) Pay for inclusion in some widely syndicated ‘Recent Blog Posts’ widget. For example, SEO Chat distributes widgets you can put on your site featuring their most recent blog posts.

11) Buy family. Wouldn’t you like to be part of the Gawker media network? Legitimate sitewide links from major news properties…”

[...]

23) Pay bloggers you hire to add “guest author badges” to their sites, which badges link back to you.

24) Send webmasters holiday greetings. A parking provider I worked with did that for me once and it made them stand out in my mind. Small gestures can go a long way. Like $20 bills in ‘hope you’re having a nice January 17th’ holiday greetings .

25) Pay to be interviewed 1-on-1 by a blogger.

26) Pay your own bloggers to interview others, so that the “hey, I was interviewed at this site” link goes to you.

27) Work link requirements into standard contracts with suppliers.”

If you liked this post on link buying and greyhat seo, add my rss feed to your reader!

Downloads:

• Updated Feb 8, 2010: Internal Link Building, a Wordpress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so that you can rank like Wikipedia. General info: Check the Internal Link Building page. Update info: Check Marios' updates.
• SEO ROI Calculator spreadsheet.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  

SMX West’s video SEO panel taught me that the number of embeds your video gets is important to having it rank better at Youtube, and potentially in Google’s universal search results. So why not speed things up by buying a few installs and links for your video?

If more embeds means better SEO, there seems to be an argument for buying installs, just as there is for buying links in normal SEO. An embed is when someone copy-pastes the html code from Youtube to put a video on their site.

Buying embeds or links for a Youtube page is all the more interesting since there’s less risk than buying links for your own site.

• It’s hard to see Youtube get penalized by Google, so your chances of wasting your money are less.
• Even if a Youtube page is penalized, you can always reupload the video with some slight modifications and try again.
• It’s not like you burned a website, with the associated expenses in time and money…

The problem is that it’s easier said than done.

Youtube Video Data Patterns

Quantitative Data: Embeds, Links…

There’s likely a pattern in the data in terms of the ratio of views to embeds and links. If a video has 100 views, it probably won’t also have 100 embeds.

Additionally, there’s probably a longtail curve in terms of what videos get the most embeds. A few videos with hundreds of thousands or millions of views get astronomical numbers of embeds.

The pattern also likely varies in accordance with the quality of the video or audio. For example, an amazing song will likely rack up more embeds per thousand views than an average track.

Qualitative Data: Video Star Ratings, Saves, Favorites, Adds-to-Playlist

There’s probably a large range of variance in the quality of videos. If that’s the case, the ratings look something like a bell curve: most ratings on most videos fall somewhere in the middle, and a few great / awful videos get extremely positive or negative ratings.

What The Video Data Means For Link And Embed Buyers

You’re likely to stand out from the pack if you buy links or embeds disproportionately to your video quality and popularity. This is especially true if you have very few impressions (eg under 1000).

One possible way around that is to buy traffic to send to your video. You can buy StumbleUpon traffic or you can even buy traffic from Youtube’s own sponsored video ads. See also Barry Schwartz’s screenshots.

But again, you may not have sufficiently good star-ratings, enough saves-to-favorites-and-playlists or other quality metrics to legitimize your embed buying and link buying.

One possible workaround is that the same way people sell Diggs, Stumbles etc., there’s likely an underground market for people who will manipulate Youtube quality metrics. Think of them as your own army of Google quality raters!

The bottom line is that there are some interesting opportunities here if you have a budget for experimental tactics.

You’ll probably need to do a fair amount of testing to get around Google’s data beasts. But if you can find a quiet spot under the ratings bell curve, and in a midrange area of the tail, you might pull in some nice video rankings.

If you liked this post, please add my RSS feed to your reader. That way, you can read more posts from me on link building, greyhat SEO and watch videos I create.

Downloads:

• Updated Feb 8, 2010: Internal Link Building, a Wordpress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so that you can rank like Wikipedia. General info: Check the Internal Link Building page. Update info: Check Marios' updates.
• SEO ROI Calculator spreadsheet.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  

Downloads:

• Updated Feb 8, 2010: Internal Link Building, a Wordpress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so that you can rank like Wikipedia. General info: Check the Internal Link Building page. Update info: Check Marios' updates.
• SEO ROI Calculator spreadsheet.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  

What are the pros and cons of buying links? What risks and rewards should I consider in a cost-benefit analysis of a strategy of paying for backlinks?

Pros:

1) You typically control the anchor text and page that a link goes to.

2) Buying a link can engender less resistance than asking for a [free] link.

3) It can be faster than asking for a link.

4) Paying for a link can be easier than asking for a link.

5) You can control additional relevance factors, such as the surrounding text and the page title.

6) It can be a quick way to boost AdWords Quality Score. Michael Gray’s split-test proved this by testing the age and trust of links; landing pages with more links got better QS.

7) There’s less dealing with rejection, which is something many link builders (including yours truly) struggle with.

The corollary is that there’s more certainty in the results of a link buying campaign – pay $X, get #Y links.

9) You don’t need to invest in quality content.

Cons:

1) You don’t need to invest in quality content.

2) You’re spending money for something that might otherwise only cost you time.

3) Your link building is limited by your budget.

4) Your competitors are more likely to take your paid links out to the crowd.

5) Competitors can more easily kill the value of the links you’re buying.

6) There are a number of ways you can mess it up, and increase your chances of getting caught. You might:

• ‘Over-optimize’ anchor text and risk getting filtered or penalized, since you won’t fit the normal patterns in Google’s link data. Use N Grams to stay safe.
• Focus on the wrong metrics, like Pagerank. PageRank barely correlates with higher rankings.
• Only use one technique and again end up looking unnatural.
• Buy text links directly for the money site. Instead, buy links for intermediary sites that funnel the value onwards and absorb the risk.
• Not disguise your highest risk purchased links.
• Go through a network whose inventory is known to search engines.
• Overlook footprints that are associated with buying text links. Note: This is a risk with organic link building, too.

7) Google may penalize your site or those you’re buying from by reducing traffic or Toolbar PageRank.

It may devalue the clean links you’ve already built for a site, if the whole site gets penalized because of a few paid links.

9) It makes selling a site that much harder, according to my friend Jon Kelly of Sure Hits, who spoke on the subject at SMX Advanced 2009.

10) There are ethical issues with disclosure when buying links.

11) Paid links are easy to replicate. You’re not building a sustainable competitive advantage when you pay for links.

Conclusion: Choosing to buy text links can reduce the hassle of building link popularity and help you catch up to competitors. It won’t replace quality content, a viable business model, or a unique value proposition.

If you want to do it right, you need to follow that big principle of link buying: study link patterns, and do your best to minimize the risk involved.

If that’s not for you, then you can contact me to help you with your link buying, or approach one of the following pros that I recommend (and none of whom paid for the recommendation ).

Michael Gray’s Wolf-Howl SEO Consulting, a well known proponent of link buying
Brian Chappell, who has spent hundreds of thousands buying links
Wiep Knol, an all around link building pro whose articles I read
Debra Mastaler, another link building expert I read
Todd “Stuntdubl” Malicoat, who doesn’t advertise the service but is probably open to hear you out.

Downloads:

• Updated Feb 8, 2010: Internal Link Building, a Wordpress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so that you can rank like Wikipedia. General info: Check the Internal Link Building page. Update info: Check Marios' updates.
• SEO ROI Calculator spreadsheet.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  

by Stuart Frisby

1. Who is linking out?
2. Who is obtaining links?
3. Why are links being given?
4. What ads exist here (all types, not just text link ads)?
5. What goals do the advertisers have?
6. What targeting are these ads using? (See also how link buying is evolving to be demographically driven.)

Duplicate the patterns, but involve money.

I shared this idea in different words at Affiliate Summit East in NYC recently. I look forward to seeing what people do with it! If you liked this post, add my RSS feed to your reader!

@Search Engine Journal readers – Welcome! If you find this of interest, you may like to check out my text link buying services as well.

Downloads:

• Updated Feb 8, 2010: Internal Link Building, a Wordpress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so that you can rank like Wikipedia. General info: Check the Internal Link Building page. Update info: Check Marios' updates.
• SEO ROI Calculator spreadsheet.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  

I posted Part 1 “What 70+ Hours of Backlink Checking and Research Shows…” on Search Engine Journal, in which I covered:

• Practical uses for this competitive intelligence,
• My methodology in conducting this research,
• Some fun data points for niche research,

Here, I’ll go over these three points:

1. Screenshots of the data,
2. My analysis and conclusions,
3. Some caveats.

At the end, I’d love to hear comments from people of all experience levels. Don’t worry about sounding “dumb,” because there are no dumb questions: a desire to learn shows great intelligence!

Again, big thanks to Alex Chudnovsky and his excellent team at Majestic SEO. They created the historical backlink comparison tool that made this all possible. They’re awesome !

The Raw Data From Majestic SEO

The screenshots below illustrate some of the data I used in making this analysis. The full data spreadsheet and all screenshots (including those not on this page) are available for download if you add my rss feed to your reader. If I put all the screenshots in this article, it would be data overload and look ugly.

Pay close attention to the vertical axis, as the increments it is measured in change from graph to graph.

Where 1 or 2 leaders were way ahead of their competition in backlink and/or referring domain counts, I took a second screenshot without them in the picture. This shows a clearer graph for comparison’s sake.

First, the single word keyword data:

Astronomy:

Nasa’s relationship depth is 50 M/210K = 238.1 links / referring domain on average. The people who like NASA, like it A LOT.

However, that probably also includes some major blogroll and/or sitewide link love. And as a general remark, NASA is just a really remarkable organization…

Yet despite that, NASA ranks second for astronomy… behind Astronomy.com.

Baseball:

So the MLB is killing it, and then the other competitors are average Joes. Impressive that you can rank without being ESPN, TSN etc.

Also, notice how Baseball.com is second only to the powerhouse brand that is the MLB? Despite having fewer links and referring domains by far?

Cars:

Exact match domain + ridiculous amounts of links and referring domains FTW! Ahead of the big brand! Damn…

Education:

Good luck beating the government for that keyword.

Food:

What’s really interesting about this market? Three things:

• 4/5 Ranking sites are major players in the food game – they’re big brand entities.
• 4/5 Have keyword rich domain names.
• 4.5/5 Are backed by major ideas that are in the popular conscience. FoodNetwork is a TV channel. Epicurious is a premium content brand, by that premium content brand company, Conde Nast. FoodTimeline is a ridiculously well researched resource that’s turned into linkbait. Whole Foods is of course the mega “healthy food” supermarket. And Slow Food is an anti-junk food reationary meme that got lots of press.

Jewelry:

I don’t really get why, but Blue Nile isn’t in the top 3 for Jewelry, despite killing their competitors in backlink and referring domain counts.

Jobs:

Newspaper:

Next, some 2-3 keyword data:

Archaeological Dig:

Buy Computers:

Cat Food:

Domain Names:

The most ridiculous numbers in absolute terms, by far. But according to Alex and various observers, these are inflated by links from parked domains that don’t have much real value.
Movie Reviews:

Nutritional Supplements:

Analysis and Conclusions

All keywords are not created alike!

Different commercial niches with comparable search volumes could have radically different competition levels.

For example, cat food and nutritional supplements show comparable exact match search volumes. Yet the number of links and referring domains you need to rank are significantly different. Cat food has a median 19K links, and 2K referring domains. Nutritional supplements has 71K median links and 4K referring domains.

For a business with its choice of niches, this literally means that each hour spent researching amounts to months saved link building.

You still need qualitative data.

If I were only to look at the numbers, I might conclude that cat food is a much better niche to go after than nutritional supplements. But that might be misleading, because if you look at who is actually ranking, you’re likely to recognize several national brands of cat food, but only 1 brand in the nutritional supplements game.

This maybe means that you need lots of trust to rank for cat food, in which case you need to focus more on PR and brand advertising.

These metrics are guidelines, not the 10 Commandments.

In other words, they’re just data points to consider in making a decision. If a metric shows great or terrible, investigate further. Don’t stop your research there.

For example, while I consider sitewide links to be one possible indicator of a strong brand, it’s not perfect. Indeed, the cat food brands didn’t seem to have high backlink/referring domain ratios that would tend to indicate a brand (I explain this metric in more depth below).

Furthermore, it’s unclear to me what referring domain count is useful for, except to find nepotistic junk if all of someone’s links are from a single site.

You absolutely need to start doing SEO asap.

This is because your competition are building links at a really aggressive rate.

• 60 of the 150 domains examined added over 1 million links last year.

• 72 of these domains have 1 million plus links now.

• 26 sites have 100,000+ referring domains. An additional 23 have 50,000 + referring domains. So 1/3 of the sites have 50,000+ referring domains. That’s some serious branding and relationship breadth to contend with!

Therefore, the historical numbers show that resting on one’s laurels isn’t enough, particularly in commercial niches.

Generic keyword domain names probably make life easier.

The data shows a really strong correlation between generic domain names ranking despite having fewer referring domains than competitors. As SEOs, we know that people link to us using our site names as anchor text, so this  likely explains what happens with a generic domain name. You need fewer sources linking to you as “abc” to rank for “abc,” when your name is “abc.”

While generic domains that ranked often had their referring domain counts mostly below the median, they had as many or even more backlinks than the industry median. In other words, they can focus on link numbers and pay less attention to link diversity.

There’s a separate sheet in the Excel file I’ve created that addresses generic domains only, for those of you who want to see the numbers more closely.

Caveats and Limits on the Research

The exclusions I made are a significant limit on the validity of my research:

• I underrepresented blogs and other sites are located on subdomains of other sites, such as state government departments and university divisions.

• These exclusions lead me to the second or third page of search results for 2-3 keywords (eg Law)!

• Majestic SEO’s tool limits you to five domains to compare at once. So my research ended up looking at a broader selection of niches, but in less depth.

• I excluded many powerful domain names like CNN that compete with everyone. Analyzing them repeatedly would be pointless.

• Download.com – a redirect to Cnet – and few others’ numbers were odd, but don’t change much in the big picture. They’re highlighted in the spreadsheet.

If you liked this post on backlink research, check out my link building archives and add my rss feed to your reader. That will bring you my latest posts and research as soon as they’re published, AND let you download the spreadsheet and screenshots with all the raw data so you can run your own analysis.

Downloads:

• Updated Feb 8, 2010: Internal Link Building, a Wordpress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so that you can rank like Wikipedia. General info: Check the Internal Link Building page. Update info: Check Marios' updates.
• SEO ROI Calculator spreadsheet.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  

This post started as response to Todd on outings and Brent on Digg’s outing. But it got long for a comment, so voila:

I wrote about finding competitors’ links and getting site owners to slap nofollows on them. That got a very positive response from the SEO community.

Yet ironically, outing them  – and thus being more efficient, which most SEOs claim to respect – is problematic.

Personally, I used to think outing was bad, but now I’m not so sure.

I’ve achieved sweetass rankings on mid tier and even high-competition keywords by remaining 100% whitehat w/ my links, techniques etc. Why should I accept to give others a shortcut and choose the hard working path myself? Why not do whatever it takes – out my competitors, for example – and get the rankings myself?

The flip side is that I don’t want to make the Borgle’s work easier, as a rule. The exception is where it’s a consumer protection issue, eg government grants or searching for blues clues and getting b33$t1alitee pr0n, to quote Todd.

The question is: if someone justifies paid links by saying “do what it takes to rank” (eg no knife @ a gunfight argument) why can’t “what it takes” include outing? Are bazookas at the gunfight “cheating”? Why are only pistols allowed? Pfft, wimps. I like a heavy dose of ordinance myself .

The argument about shooting yourself in the foot by outing paid links doesn’t make sense to me, at least not 100%. Because “what it takes to rank” includes not shooting yourself in the foot with badly implemented paid links. And “what it takes to rank” can mean not taking risks that competitors can capitalize on by making Google look stupid.

Besides, anyone buying links is hard-pressed to say they didn’t know the risks inherent to it, which include outing.

Therefore, people complaining about outings are arguably not doing “what it takes to rank” and just whining about others competing with them when they could work harder and smarter, right? Who’s really whining there?

I guess the middle road is attacking competitors’ paid links by notifying the link sellers of the search engine penalty risks the link buyers probably didn’t mention. You attack competitors links, without helping Google. It’s largely about how you out the paid links, and to whom.

If you liked this post on paid links, here’s what my thoughts were on the ethical problems with buying links, and you should also add my rss feed to your reader ! And now, for a beautiful baseball tune. “… Oh buy me some peanuts and craaaaacker jacks!”

Downloads:

• Updated Feb 8, 2010: Internal Link Building, a Wordpress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so that you can rank like Wikipedia. General info: Check the Internal Link Building page. Update info: Check Marios' updates.
• SEO ROI Calculator spreadsheet.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  

Version A of the 2-for-1 Link Building Technique

Step 1: Get a link, preferably from a site that can rank well for mid-tier or longtail keywords, solely based on its domain strength plus onpage optimization.

Step 2: Find a site that frames Google and figure out a specific query to just make your page and some non-competitive ones show up.

Step 3: Get said Google-search-results indexed. Recall that you don’t need a link to get indexed. See Andrew on indexing, which includes a technique I shared earlier.

The result? You get a second link, free. 2-for-1. In plain English, you increase the value of your links after getting them. Yet another reason PageRank is meaningless for link prospecting…

Version B of the 2-for-1 Link Building Technique

Step 1: Build a link on page X.

Step 2: Find a site that’ll frame anything. (Do you see where this is going? If you add my rss feed to your reader, you’ll certainly be one of those that do in the future…) Frame page X.

Step 3: Get page X indexed. (Then have it charged for first-degree spamming! That is, any search marketing technique that doesn’t make Google money.)

The result? You build 2 links for the effort of 1.

by hymedom As you can imagine, this is not Google approved. See your thought-enforcement-official before trying this at home, and see your priest afterwards [for confession].

Then check out my other link building posts (includes whitehat tips) to get your jollies, or my grayhat and blackhat SEO categories. Finally part, you should also add my rss feed to your reader so that you stay appraised of the latest fun times in advanced SEO.

Downloads:

• Updated Feb 8, 2010: Internal Link Building, a Wordpress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so that you can rank like Wikipedia. General info: Check the Internal Link Building page. Update info: Check Marios' updates.
• SEO ROI Calculator spreadsheet.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  

What didn’t occur to me is that the tool, since it also lets you set custom fields and values for them, can be helpful for directory submission or registering social media profiles (it doesn’t, unfortunately, break captchas).

This is great both for link building and reputation management, as well as preventing phishing by users posing as your employees on social media networks.

Here’s the one I’m using, though there are several around:

http://autofillforms.mozdev.org/

Liked this tip? Add my rss feed to your reader!

Downloads:

• Updated Feb 8, 2010: Internal Link Building, a Wordpress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so that you can rank like Wikipedia. General info: Check the Internal Link Building page. Update info: Check Marios' updates.
• SEO ROI Calculator spreadsheet.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  

First, non-cash spending is a slippery beast. My high school economics teacher, Mrs. Guedon, actually taught us this and yet I dismissed her preference for using cash as being silly and old-fashioned when an ATM can easily give you an update on your account balance.

Unfortunately, ATMs are not especially good at keeping your spending in check. Especially when you’re paranoid like me and feel the need to destroy your ATM receipts – your memory of account balances ends up being pretty weak.

In 2009, I’m going to review my monthly cash-flow – in all accounts – much more closely.

Second, StumbleUpon ads have a very variable ROI and pricing. I experimented heavily with StumbleUpon ads over the past year and spent roughly $1400.

From what I’ve seen of other StumbleUpon advertising case studies, this is some of the most extensive advertising anyone will publicly recognize. I’m sure there are bigger spenders, but they don’t want their social media success to look fake.

Personally, I’m in the online marketing business, I know that distribution is key and I’m not embarassed to say I advertise my content. I’m proud of it really, because it shows how much effort and pride I take in my material.

That’s a big digression though. What you need to know about SU Ads is this:

• The bounce rate is about the same as other SU traffic – often around 95%. For you money, that means that you’re really getting 5 cents on the dollar worth of traffic that is going to pay attention to your content. Though SU prices their traffic at 5 cents a visit, you’re really paying $1/visit.
• But wait! StumbleUpon traffic is unique: It generates its’ own follow-up traffic when your paid visitors give you thumbs up and reviews! So you’re not really paying $1 visit.
• It’s hard to quantify precisely how much follow on traffic you get. I tried digging into my analytics to tell you, but it’s reporting fewer visitors than I even paid for. That’s normal, since we’re talking about web analytics that relies on javascript, which many stumblers block. Test SU ads yourself if you must know.
• Complicating things further, when you’re buying large quantities of StumbleUpon traffic as I was, and “friending” the stumblers who give you thumbs up, this leads to more reviews and traffic. So there’s a latent benefit.
• The catch is that those relationships, if not kept up, wither and the latent traffic dissapears. Except for my loyal friend and reader, Ann Smarty (internationally famous link building pro, and noted blogger), I rarely get folks stumbling my content any more *sniffle.
• In fairness, that’s largely my fault since I didn’t know what to do to keep building the relationship, after friending those stumblers. I reviewed some of their blogs when I liked them, but most had no sites…
• On a related note, I think I rarely if ever added StumbleUpon buttons prominently above the fold and throughout my content – this may improve your results.
• The StumbleUpon analytics aren’t that insightful – most posts get ~1-2%  of folks thumbing them up or down. You only get more than that with controversial content. No offense to the StumbleUpon team – but there’s just not much you can do based on that info, imho. At best you can promote content on the same topics that do well…
• StumbleUpon no longer lets you advertise SEO content in their “search” category. Considering SEO industry voices like Search Engine Watch made the category, that’s ass-backwards to say the least. Heck, I stumbled the search category recently and saw a meta search engine displaying an award from SEW!
• For all the talk of quality content gaining links, exposing my content via StumbleUpon attracted hardly any links except for when I released Internal Link Building. FYI: I spent my StumbleUpon budget on original feature length content like disguising text link ads, measuring distribution to project link building success (ironic, I know), domains not being legally equivalent to real estate, how Google would rank for mortgage calculator terms etc.

By comparison, my search engine traffic bounces much less and I suspect is responsible for gaining me various social media links etc.

Third, you really have to know what you’re doing before messing around with buying Facebook ads on their app traffic. And you need a large budget so you have time to optimize. I got myself smoked for hardly any conversions on ~ $300 of testing. Not a big loss, but the ~$30-$40 I made was a punch to the ego. I didn’t have the thousands nor the patience necessary to test that into profitability.

Fourth, launching Internal Link Building was one of the coolest but also most time-consuming projects I handled this year.

1. I had to handle a bunch of bugs at the outset that slipped through my beta testing.
2. I got links.
3. Two more sphinns and it’ll be my first post to make 100! .
4. It taught me to shutup until things are really ready to launch or you piss people off. I announced it before my download counter was working properly, delaying launch by several days and wasting MEGA traffic.
5. There is a HUMONGOUS search marketing community in the former Soviet Block. Besides the Russians, you have Poles, Ukrainians, Romanians and many more who are deeply involved in this business.

Fifth, if you’re not in it consistently, the domain name game isn’t for you. You need to put up or shut up. While it saddens me to an extent, I hereby resolve to liquidate my domain name portfolio this year.

Amongst other gems:

• Motocyclette.ca (Motorcycle.ca in French)
• MontrealHotelReviews.com
• UserGeneratedContent.ca
• PMEs.ca (SMEs.ca in French)
• Gvn.ca, which gets typeins from people presumably looking for the government.
• NorthfaceJacket(s).org – check the search volume kiddies … can you say ecommerce?
• WebmasterWelfare.com (aka Adcents)

I’d prefer a buyer who can pick up the whole portfolio, to be honest. Email gab at this domain if you’re interested and have a budget in the low 5 figures. My finance domains are particularly sweet generics.

The same goes for affiliate marketing. I haven’t figured out my approach towards affiliate marketing for 09, but I suspect it will be a merely residual monetization stream as I work to develop Original Monetization.

At the end of the day, you need to focus on what you do best – for me, that means coming up with new ideas, not domaining or affiliate marketing or stumbling. It sucks to look back and realize that – even though I knew it from my first year in online marketing – you can’t focus on more than one or two fields at a time, and you have to limit your projects too.

Sixth, search marketing shows rock. Go SMX! The great folks at Third Door Media and their mods gave me my break at SMX West last year (thanks Vanessa!), and then again at SMX Advanced (thanks Stephen!), and I’ve been fortunate enough to be accepted back to the podium this year. Let me know if you’re going and we’ll hang out! Also, fyi, you can use “SMXSpeaker” as a discount code to save $100 off the registration for SMX West.

Downloads:

• Updated Feb 8, 2010: Internal Link Building, a Wordpress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so that you can rank like Wikipedia. General info: Check the Internal Link Building page. Update info: Check Marios' updates.
• SEO ROI Calculator spreadsheet.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  

According to everyone’s favourite content network guru, keyword selection on the content network needs to be based on demographics. That’s why I saw the following weight loss ads on a page that had nothing to do with weight loss, and nor did the site hosting the page.

Their very similar copy suggests to me that the “rules” ad copy formula is successful.

In 2009, I think that we’re going to see the savvy link buyers use content network data to make their text link ads more effective.They’ll be asking interesting questions, and likely closing the loop with customer surveys to discover with greater precision what their customers’ demographics are and what their content consumption habits are.

• What sites convert?
• What keywords are we targeting to show up there?
• What does this tell us about our likely demographics?

We’ll likely see customers being asked questions such as the following:

• Are you male or female?
• How old are you?
• What is the highest level of education you have completed?
• What is your religious affiliation?
• What is your ethnicity?
• What magazines do you read?
• What email newsletters do you subscribe to?
• Which of the following subjects are of significant interest to you?
• What do you like best about our product?

And that likely means that text links ads will look more like adsense, and be integrated above the fold in areas known to generate clicks. The ad copy will likely be adapted to the features customers said they liked best. There should be less of the footer and lower sidebar crap you see currently. And of course, more banners will likely make their appearance on the scene.

What does that mean for search engine algorithms?

We already know what Google wants – and relevance isn’t king. User experience is king. And if it converts to a sale or lead generation, the user experience is positive. Ergo, these paid links should be counted towards lifting a site’s rankings.

Of course, engineers perceive usefulness of a ranking factor partly according to how easily it can be manipulated. So this could get out of hand. But like I said – the succesful ads will be those relying on content network data. Therefore, by cross-referencing their own PPC and Analytics data, the search engines should be able to keep crap link buying’s effects in check. If the analytics MSN provides to webmasters ever work, MSN might even gain enough adoption to make this a useful tool in their algo…

So maybe link buying advice isn’t wrong, but it’s certainly incomplete. And link buying is nowhere near done evolving. Here’s to a great 2009 for search marketers!

Downloads:

• Updated Feb 8, 2010: Internal Link Building, a Wordpress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so that you can rank like Wikipedia. General info: Check the Internal Link Building page. Update info: Check Marios' updates.
• SEO ROI Calculator spreadsheet.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  

Downloads:

• Updated Feb 8, 2010: Internal Link Building, a Wordpress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so that you can rank like Wikipedia. General info: Check the Internal Link Building page. Update info: Check Marios' updates.
• SEO ROI Calculator spreadsheet.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  

While I’ve been doing online marketing for a while now, I’ve had little to do with the link buying aspects of link building so far. That isn’t to say I haven’t read about it or even shared some new ideas on disguising text link ads … but my clients to date and my own sites have been able to rank using Google-approved tactics. Not to say I haven’t done it on my own test sites, but I’m admittedly short on experience here.

Well, between Jim Boykin and We Build Pages quitting the link buying game, and my growing interest in learning how to buy links properly, it seems that now is as good a time as ever to learn the trade. Therefore, I’m making this ridiculous offer to the first 3 takers: I will handle your link buying for free, for 3 to 6 months (up to you how long you’d like the engagement to last). Considering that my retainers typically start at $5000/month, that’s a pretty good deal.

You’ll get my high quality link building reports – which are pretty popular based on the 1000+ downloads my report template got over just a few weeks worth of promoting – every month. Any traffic or sales generated from my link buying is yours to keep.

What’s the catch on this paid link management for free stuff?

1) You have to have a minimum link buying budget of $1000/month. The higher the budget the better. I will aim to spend as much of it as possible, obtaining as many quality links as possible.

2) You have to have the stomach to risk your site on my skills. I take no legal responsibility, express or implied, and make no warranties or any of that other legal mumbo jumbo.

The fact that my services are free reflects my relative inexperience with link buying as well as the risk allocation we’re agreeing to – namely my time and your site.

3) Your site can’t be penalized already … not a problem for most sites.

4) You can’t be promoting/selling stuff that I find objectionable or sketchy. No porn, pills, gambling, etc.

*) This one’s a star because it’s not a catch – I won’t be working through any text link ad networks/brokers like TLA so you needn’t worry about that.

Let me know if you’re interested – write to “gab” at the domain this site is hosted on (without the quotation marks around gab). You can also call 514-483-2535 and leave a message.

Update: Some frequently asked questions as to the specifics of the paid link management:

- Will these be permanent links?

Yes, they will. I’m not interested in monthly rentals. On rare occasions we might do a yearly-buy, but I’d run that by you first if anything. The point is that I like permanent links best, they’re better for ROI and that’s what I’d be purchasing.

- Would we get the added benefit of any regular SEO advice (the site in question could use it).

I might answer some simple questions or offer tips, but I won’t be redesigning your navigation (”site structure” or “architecture” for those who like buzzwords) etc.

- Will you be disclosing any of our website info on your site or just general info as you report on the progress?

I won’t be disclosing the info. If I blog anything, I’ll let you see it before it goes up so you can suggest edits beforehand. I’m not interested in burning the sites any more than you are – it would limit the educational value for me.

- The site I’d be interested in working with you on is an affiliate site.  Is there any way for you to guarantee that you won’t be duplicating our site/offers, etc.?

Tell me the industry and I’ll tell you whether it’s a niche I’m in or preparing to enter. If I’m not already in it/preparing an entry, I won’t copy your site/offers.

Downloads:

• Updated Feb 8, 2010: Internal Link Building, a Wordpress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so that you can rank like Wikipedia. General info: Check the Internal Link Building page. Update info: Check Marios' updates.
• SEO ROI Calculator spreadsheet.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  

Which is why I was as surprised as the rest of the community to hear Jim Boykin saying that he’s finally throwing in the towel and quitting link buying.

Alright, so Jim can sleep easier at night now that he’s stopped buying links. Methinks that’s one of the reasons…I have thoughts on others that may have been at play as well. I mean, Jim could have slept easier for a long time already, so why the sudden change? Eric Ward highlighted that, though perhaps rhetorically since he doesn’t buy links.

On a related note, if you have the stomach for the risk and the cash to buy enough links to see a positive ROI from it, I’m happy to serve as your new, discrete link buyer. Get in touch and we can discuss a link buying program to reach your goals, meet your budget, and fit your risk tolerance.  On a related note, I offer site buying services if that’s more your bag.

Like this post on text link ads, the purchasing game and the search industry? Add my RSS feed to your reader.

Downloads:

• Updated Feb 8, 2010: Internal Link Building, a Wordpress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so that you can rank like Wikipedia. General info: Check the Internal Link Building page. Update info: Check Marios' updates.
• SEO ROI Calculator spreadsheet.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  

Downloads:

• Updated Feb 8, 2010: Internal Link Building, a Wordpress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so that you can rank like Wikipedia. General info: Check the Internal Link Building page. Update info: Check Marios' updates.
• SEO ROI Calculator spreadsheet.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data