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“Buy links.” [Bad] Advice given for SEO
I attended Will Reynolds’ seminar on Monday at Affiliate Summit West. One of the things he said really got under my skin. He suggested that if your competitors are ranking better than you and they are buying links, you should do that to. Whoa! I couldn’t believe a SEO expert was recommending doing something that could potentially get your site banned from Google. This advice was totally contrary to the title of the seminar “How to Futureproof Your SEO Efforts” “…develop strategies….for the long haul”.
He suggested to buy links “for a while… until it stops working”, or reading between the lines… until you get caught. Several in the audience called him on this and his defense for this advice was that he needed to do “something” for his clients to justify his monthly consulting fee and not just sit there and say he can’t do anything further to improve the client’s ranking.
Google has deemed buying text links as bad. It seems to me that advising clients and Affiliate Summit attendees to do so seems very short sighted.
My advice would be to buy relevant/related links and also get freebies from producing great content. Use lots of free links to build authority for your site and use targeted, anchor text rich links to direct it to rank for your desired keywords.
Wil was right to say that buying links is necessary for may SEOs. Look at any competitive commercial search term and every company with a commercial product ranking on the first page has purchased links.
It would be nice if everyone could abide by Google’s rules and rank…unfortunately, trying to rank in competitive verticals without purchased links is like taking a knife to a nuclear war.
Just my 2 cents.
James-
“unfortunately, trying to rank in competitive verticals without purchased links is like taking a knife to a nuclear war.”
I don’t think that’s the case if you’re taking the time to make good content. Economically speaking, it’s “cheaper” to spend more time making quality content for the long haul than throwing money down the paid link drain for short term gain.
Just my two cents based on experience.
Sam
I think you can manage the good content angle in some verticals, but show me a site that ranks for the top mortgage, debt or insurance terms that doesn’t buy links in one way shape or form.
Heck even the companies you would think could get rankings based on online mentions from the millions they spend on traditional advertising are buying links.
I dunno, maybe I’m just hanging in the wrong markets or shooting for keywords that are too competitive.
Sam - can you give me an example of a tight keyword that you’ve seen affiliate sites rank for without any link buys?
I’ll fish through my keyword lists and pull out some good ones for you in a few. I guess I should include that I don’t do much with the debt/mortgage/insurance financial type offers, so perhaps you’re right on those sorts of sites and keywords. With the product based stuff, it’s fairly easy to get to the top without even doing much of a keyword buy or social media marketing, though.
That makes some sense to me…I think the product based vs. lead gen. stuff acts a bit different in the end, mainly because the lead gen market relies on some very tight head terms on only a handful of product names (i.e. auto insurance, health insurance, etc.). The tail is there, but the traffic drop is huge the further out you get.
Too bad though…I’d love it if I could rule the lead gen world on content alone
How would Google possibly know that you purchased a link? Crawler sees only the code unless it is defined as a relationship within the url and if it is bear then it is transparent to them, unless someone squeals like a little girl which is what they want you to do (Social Control). You want to know the truth about SEO well Mr. Reynolds just dispelled some of it to you..(Rebel)
Google would prefer you have to pay for placement not get it for free.(Mechanism)
Sam is right - Some verticals are content driven concerning keyword density patterns - However James is also right some verticals are more link heavy concerning dependencies.
My mom taught me never to be a tattletale however she also taught me how to play a mean game of poker..(~23)
“Wil was right to say that buying links is necessary for may SEOs. Look at any competitive commercial search term and every company with a commercial product ranking on the first page has purchased links.”
FIRST - Buying links GUARANTEES NOTHING! Just because your little green bar says a page has PR does not necessarily tell you much, if any, PR juice will flow to your website. Remember this, and manage your own risk profile accordingly.
SECOND - This statement is UNTRUE! Over the past 4 1/2 years we have EARNED hundreds, if not thousands of Top 5 Rankings in Google w/o having purchased any links, or using any shady SEO practices. And yes, we are in a very hyper-competitive niche. OK, so how have we been able to rank so well? Want to know the secret? Keep reading!
IT’S CALLED BUILDING TRUST (TRUST RANK_ - OK, so it’s not a secret, but it’s a concept often missed by people who are used to marketing and advertising that drives a result, NOW. Well, you’re just going to have to wait to earn trust (we’ve had our domain since 2000). And you are going to have to engage in tactics that allow you to build trust over a longer period of time. That is, if you’re plan is to build a long-term, sustainable business. Otherwise, you can engage in any tactic you want to. Just realize what you might be risking for a quick buck.
p.s. In my reference to buying links, my assumption is that your reference to buying links was for the sole purpose of purchasing PR value, not for driving traffic as the primary objective. And if you think it’s not easy to spot footprints, think again.
I’m definitely NOT against buying links, but you have to do so only as your risk tolerance can bear. I don’t wanna see you crying about getting banned in my RSS feeds pretending you didn’t know the risks. (:
p.s.s. It is your job as an SEO to be honest with your clients about the tactics you use to acquire top rankings/traffic. If a client can’t deal with your tactics, you might want to consider letting them go.
I hope people view Wil’s session video later, once Missy and Shawn put it out there, because Wil said a lot more on this topic concerning it’s range and scale and impact and reasoning and also addressed the ethics of this as well, at some length. I think there’s much more to it that him saying “do it”. At least that’s what I heard sitting there.
Completely aside from that…
In my mind, it’s horribly similar to going over the speed limit. It’s:
+against the rules of those who enforce it, and in principal, it’s basis is righteous to most of those who grant power to the enforcer.
+in place for the greater good (in the mind of the enforcer and its supporters).
+can damage others when ignored, yet is done in small degree by most, including the supporters and the enforcers at times.
+has penalties that can seem overblown given that the majority of people do it.
+is considered a minor, excusable offense by most on the same road, even by those that don’t do it.
+isn’t something the driver would want to use beyond marginally exceeding the limit.
+isn’t enforced to the letter.
+doing it can get you someplace a little faster, but it’s not really scalable due to congestion and enforcement at its outer edges.
+it easy to build or buy a vehicle capable of well exceeding the limits.
+sometimes natural occurances outside of your vehicle and completely unknown to you can cause you to temporarily exceed its limits, often without guilt or punishment.
+others along for the ride want the driver to ignore the posted limits.
+there are professionals that do it to a degree that would be very, very dangerous for most of us.
+advanced technology, experience and a pit crew can help you push way past its limits without getting you in trouble.
Spot on Pat - great list.
Eric, any chance you’d like to share some examples with us? I mean, if you haven’t got anything to hide, and you have built the rankings solely on trust, there is no reason why you can’t provide examples.
Thanks James, no problemo! You want a list? Here you go! Enjoy!
Over the past 4 1/2 years, here are some of the things we’ve done that have no doubt helped us to acquire many Top 5 rankings.
Surprise! The forthcoming tactics are those you’ve been reading about for years. Now, you have even more proof that you can use squeaky clean, bleached whitehat SEO to gain domain trust, which ultimately gives you a better shot at gaining top rankings.
Examples:
- Streamlined previously long URLs to shorter more concise URLs. Makes linking to us easier. (:
- Added niche content for specific customer segments like Military and Students
- Made sure we maintained listings in appropriate directories (i.e. Yahoo Directory)
- Created free tools and content to help our customers know how and when to call other countries around the world
- Linked out to worthy websites without requiring reciprocal links
- Approached people with websites that fit our theme and asked them to mention us in future articles
- Gave away free phone cards to select organizations that were already using competitors’ prepaid phone cards, and asked them to do a comparison. As a result some of the groups were compelled to link back to us.
As I stated previously, it takes time and if done right you get to reap the rewards guilt free. This is crucial to long-term ranking success.
Sorry about that Eric - I appreciate the list but I was looking for keywords and URLs that you have successfully optimized, not so much the tactics. I totally understand if you don’t want to or can’t give that away, but if you could, I’d love to check out your work.
I think what I’m really learning from this thread is that the need for paid links depends a lot on the market you are aiming at. I think some verticals are so deep in the paid linking muck that that only way to get decent rankings is with paid links…but on the other side of the coin you have sites in verticals with less SEOs playing the paid link game, and those people can use cleaner tactics to get high rankings.
In the end, I’d say that Wil wasn’t wrong in all cases, and wasn’t right in all cases either. Like most things SEO, there is a lot of gray, and paid links are one of the issues that fall between must-do and never-do.
Example Keywords:
phone cards
prepaid phone cards
prepaid calling cards
international phone cards
international calling cards
india phone cards
india calling cards
japan phone cards
japan calling cards
any country you wan to add in front of phone cards
any country you wan to add in front of calling cards
James, at the end of the day your SEO strategy and tactics should match your business model and goals. If you want to make a quick buck, go crazy–try everything. And don’t forget to have some fun learning.
Pat- As usual, excellent analogy!
Eric, James and other readers - I just want to emphasize that my beef was Will’s recommendation to buy links *in the context of* a “Futureproofing” and “long term strategy” seminar.
In my opinion, buying links is not part of any long term SEO strategy. It’s a risky practice. The only long term part of buying links will be the negative consequences your site will endure when you get caught.
As a side conversation… those of you who are pro-link buying. Do you agree with professional athletes taking steroids?? I mean, talk about your competitive environment! Should they take them as long as they can ’till they get caught? What if a couple of the other top athletes that they have to compete against are taking them? Justified then?