Free Links & Buying Links

Garbage Links:
Guestbooks and the like are loosing their relevancy in search results each day. Many of the holes in blog software which permitted heavy spamming are also being taken care of (although there are some sophisticated spam scripts on the market). Some people have stated that Google is even filtering out pages with the file extension of links.htm or other page filepaths that would obviously indicate the page was created for link exchange. Make sure you do not have a page with the filepath of link or links. There are many legitimate long term free link opportunities available, though they may take a good bit of work to find.

Have a Good Idea:
The web is a big social network where good ideas will want to spread naturally. It is far easier to spread an idea worth spreading than it is to push a bad idea. A link is a vote for a site. It is a citation. It is a remark. Oh hey, I found this over here. By being remarkable or different it far easier to build a linking campaign without a large sum of money or tons of effort. It is worth it to take the extra time to think of a good idea that will naturally want to spread itself.

Submitting Articles:
There are tons of places on the web where you can submit articles. In addition to submitting them, if you provide an extremely compelling article with reprint rights you will find that it may just end up all over the web. Learn who the experts in your field are and pattern some of their actions with your own unique content.

Becoming the Resource:
Danny Sullivan is known as one of the world’s greatest search engine resources. You or I could try to become the same thing, but we would likely fail time and time again. That spot in the web is already occupied. It usually is much cheaper to position yourself in a new field or a niche field than a field that already has a dominant player in it. If there is a dominant player in your field look for ways to focus your idea or bring it to a new or different audience.

Writing Testimonials for Links
I can not tell you how effective this technique is! A good testimonial almost requires they post a link to your site. Use specific details in your testimonials and make sure you approve of the item you are endorsing or you will hurt your credibility.

Renting / Buying Links:
*-- This is an advanced SEO technique most webmasters do not need to do. I would learn and practice SEO for at least a month or two before I jumped right into any type of link rental advertisements. --*

Make Sure Your Site Works Well First:
Many people aggressively advertise on other sites without fixing internal conversion problems. If you can double your conversion rate without much additional expense why should you concentrate on more exposure first? With that being said you can boost your link popularity by renting a few strong inbound links. I usually prefer to rent links from related sites as they may also send direct traffic as well as provide a direct boost to link popularity.

Register with Directories First:
By registering your sites at many different directories it makes your link popularity look like a natural part of the web. If you only have one or two sources of links and those sources are selling to other sites it may stick out rather easily to search engine algorithms. Renting links is extremely expensive if you do it incorrectly. Registering your sites with many tier two directories costs a one time fee of $50 or less each, which continues to pay for itself month after month.

Importance of Anchor Text:
When renting links ensure you use the best anchor text possible and do not rent links based exclusively on PageRank. When I rent links I make sure I am renting extremely descriptive anchor text (as anchor text is the single most important part of link reputation in Google or Yahoo!).

Renting Banners:
I prefer to rent static text links vice renting image links. Sometimes certain sites sell banner space. If they are going to sell you a banner ask if it needs to be an image or if it just needs to be a banner in shape. One of my good friends ordered a banner filled with a ton of text links from college newspapers dirt cheap. You may want to try to point a few links at your site in contextual relevant sentences instead of using an image banner. If you do use an image banner make sure you use descriptive ALT text on it so search engines will have some idea what the link is about.

Single Link vs Run of Site Links:
If it is a useful on topic link I get run of the site links. Some sites will rent you a single link for $75 or let you have a link on every page of their site for $100. Frequently the prices are exceptionally close to one another. Most of the link renting I have done is sitewide sponsorship from relevant sites. If you are renting links from off topic sites it would be advisable to not get run of site links.

Importance of Number of Links on the Page:
Any page only has a certain amount of link popularity (Google calls this PageRank and Yahoo! calls this WebRank) which it can redistribute to other pages. Each additional link on a page takes away from how much voting power the other links on that same page get. A page does not lose link popularity for linking out to other sites, it just splits what link popularity it can give amongst all pages it is linking to. The link popularity of a page is split up amongst the pages internal and external links. When evaluating a potential link buy it is important to consider how many links are on the page. If you see north of 60 links or so on a page then you need to consider that you will only be getting a small amount of link popularity from that page. You can make up for this a bit by getting run of site links (which add cumulative value) versus renting individual links.

Ease into Link Renting:
Many sites will still do bad while renting links, so you want to ease into it. It should be a controlled process. By doing it in a somewhat controlled manner you guarantee you know what links are working and how many you need.

Location of Links on the Page:
A friend of mine is a database programmer / SEO who has friends who work for Google. He stated that Google is trying to look to change their link algorithm to where they can provide both positive and negative linkage credit for link location on the page and site link patterns (most likely discounting footer banners full of links and other common link rental locations). Ideas like these are what make building lots of natural link popularity important and are why I am not a huge fan of large scale link renting. The link renting business will evolve as the algorithms do, but link renting will continue to increase in price and become increasingly confusing.

Link Brokers:
There are many link brokers on the market which jack up the prices considerably as middle men. You may want to look around to find a website selling links directly. Many sites pose as link brokers while selling the links at an extreme profit from prices charged by other link brokers. When you buy links from a link broker you want to go to the source and not pay middle men. If you want to use a link broker directly I do know who the most prominent link brokers are. Send me an email and I will let you know who I recommend.

Shop Around:
You may want to look at a few link brokers to view prices for various linking opportunities. Prices fluctuate in the link market from person to person and site to site. I would honestly say that the link market prices are more volatile than the commodities or futures market. It is worth taking the time to shop around.

Getting Links from Various Sites:
Getting a ton of links from any given site can only pass a finite amount of link popularity. To improve the effectiveness of renting links it is recommended that you get links from multiple different websites. This is part of the reason I recommend registering your site with many different directories.

Cheap Linking Opportunities:
Often times you would be surprised how cheap related sites are renting links for. I have rented links from a few of the search engine marketing industry hubs at exceptionally reasonable prices. In addition blogs and 501 C charity sites are havens for low cost links. Some blog type sites will give you a link for a minimum $5 to $10 one time donation. Some powerful 501 C sites will give you year long links for as low as a few hundred dollars. NetworkForGood can help you find a worthy cause located in your area which may be worth sponsoring which can also help you build link popularity. I view sponsoring charities as one of the rare true win / win situations. Some blogs are out to lunch on their price. Some blogs are exceptionally link heavy and provide almost no value on a per link basis. Many bloggers are just having fun and are not out to make a ton of money though. For this reason you might be able to find some exceptionally cheap blog links. An additional bonus with blog advertising is that blogs are viral in nature, meaning if you have a viral type product then you may get many ongoing secondary links for free. The greatest value of advertising on a blog may be opening the doors of communication to the blog owner.

Rent Static Links:
When renting links from anywhere ensure they are static descriptive links versus links with a tracking code or links that get redirected through some sort of ad server. Search engines usually are not able to evaluate the links which are redirected or sent through an ad server. Think of creative ways you can induce free inbound links before spending a ton of money every month on renting links. The best ideas tend to find ways to spread themselves. Money spent improving the idea behind your site is better spent than money spent on renting links since improving your idea or site does not usually have expensive recurring fees associated with it.