Purchasing inbound links for SEO
Here's my strategy for purchasing quality links:
- Make a list of your desired keywords, and perform those searches on Google.
- Make a list of the first 10-20 websites that come up in the results for each keyphrase.
- For each of the sites in that first list (b), do a Google search for "link:TheWebsiteName.com". This will show you which sites are linking to the first sites. In other words, it will reveal which websites are making the primary sites so popular for your desired keywords. Make a list of the first 5-10 sites from each of those searches.
- Visit each of the sites on both lists, and weed out the ones that don't seem like a good fit for your search engine optimization goals.
- For each of the remaining URL's, contact the webmaster/owner and inquire about paid linking. You can either submit their contact form, find an email address on their contact page, or get their email from Whois. I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think you'll be accused of sending spam when making contact like this -- as long as your inquiries are well targeted, most people like being offered money, and being told how "wonderful" their site is.
Here are some sample emails:
Subject: Question about YourSite.com
Hi Chris,
I was wondering how much you might charge for a simple text link on your website?
My site is www.clicktropolis.com
Please let me know. If you're not interested, sorry to bother you!
Thanks
Damien
Hello Nicole,
I was wondering if your website accepts any kind of advertising, even just a simple text link on any of your <enter subject>-related pages?
The site I want to advertise is www.clicktropolis.com
If anything is possible, I would be interested in getting pricing information. If not, sorry to bother you!
Thank you very much,
Damien
Expect the offers to be all over the board, and just forget about the "unreasonable" webmasters. I've had people ask for hundreds of dollars per month for a link from their low traffic site, while others offered a lifetime link on their high traffic site for a small one-time fee.
In your follow-up negotiations, try to request a text link that includes keywords in its anchor text, and direct it to a page on your website that is well-targeted for those keywords. Deep linking within your site is a good thing for search engine optimization -- a normal ("reasonable") website will have people linking to pages other than the homepage.
Confirm that any links you're going to purchase will be direct links, and not forwarding scripts. Although webmasters will often want to "count" clicks by redirecting links through a tracking script, you really want to get a direct link, as it will appear more "natural" to search engines.
Finally, avoid using paid services for buying text links. Being one URL in a clump of links, or appearing on all pages of a site, may result in Google identifying you as a "link buyer". That's bad; very bad.
