Michael Gray - Graywolf's SEO Blog

Posted: 06 Jul 2010 07:21 AM PDT

Last week I was having a discussion on Twitter about whether or not some links were bought. Quite a few people were confused about how you can use link buying to your advantage when you buy links to a website you don’t own (aka a third party). I thought I’d do a little ed-ju-macating and share some tips and tricks.

First off, standard link buying disclaimer: Buying links is against Google’s guidelines. If you engage in link buying, you may be subject to penalties up to and including complete removal from the index. The following post does not serve as an endorsement of link buying. It is for entertainment and educational purposes only. Happy, Matt? Ok, let’s get down to business … hypothetically speaking of course

Buying Links for Reputation Management:

The most common use of buying links for a third party website is for reputation management. You find a website that talks favorably about you or your client–preferably one that is already ranking in the top 20. You then buy links and point them to the website that talks about you with your name, company name, product name, or other desired KWD as the anchor text. If you buy enough links from the right places, you will see a jump in ranking. Ideally, these positive listings will displace negative listings. The great thing about this technique is you can boost multiple third party websites. This works really well if you can point links at trusted news websites, magazine websites, or other information-focused websites. The bad thing is that, unless you negotiate permanent or long term link buys, the results will change when you pull the ad dollars.

Building Up Your Supporters:

Instead of buying links to yourself, why not launder some of that purchased link equity by beefing up the webpages that are linking to you? Think of it this way: it’s like sending your backup singers for voice lessons. You get an indirect benefit. If you are going this route, choose some non-competitive anchor text. This is an expensive strategy if you want to do it right, because you really are looking to buy the most trusted and authoritative links you can get your hands on, and you are going to want to do it for a few months (I’d recommend at least 6 months).

Buying Links to Boost Non-Commercial Listings:

Let’s say you are ranking for a commercial keyword, but you have a lot of competition below you, and it would be really great if they weren’t up your butt, so to speak. One tactic you can try is buying links towards other websites that are ranking for the term but aren’t actually selling anything–like wikipedia. You buy some links and point them there. If you’re the only one selling in the top 5, you can get a nice boost in converting traffic. The danger of course is if you push too hard you can end up knocking your own listing down a spot or two, so using caution is advisable with this tactic.

Link Sabotage:

Floating out there in the nether regions of cyberspace are some poisoned web networks. After getting a few links from them, in 30 days most sites will take the plunge. If you can’t find one, go out and buy run-of-site links from a few warez or other auto-gen networks. These come really cheap and are easy to find on places like eBay. Choose one phrase (not too commercial) and completely throw off someone’s backlink profile. There’s no amount of links you’ll be able to buy to tip over a website like CNN or Amazon, but for mid level or below it’s just a numbers game. Personally I think this is pretty crappy thing to do and remember that karma is a bitch … but I did want to not leave any gaping holes.

There are some other subtle nuances and variations on the theme, but you’ve always got to have few tricks up your sleeve when you need them. Right?

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

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