Buying LInks: Is It A Good Idea?

You can buy anything on the W3 - even inbound links - something search engines love. But is it a good idea to pay for in-bound links?

What do you think?

Links Buying:

Traction or Tricks

If you’ve been in the search engine marketing business for more than five minutes you know the importance of links – in-bound links pointing to your site. Search engine spiders like sites that are plugged in and linked up. In fact, you can buy links at auction where you can create auctions, bid on links from higher ranked sites and create some web buzz about your site that keeps showing up as a link off sites with the same topics.

You Don’t Have to Start at the Beginning

Starting an online business is a time-consuming chore for many people. It’s the adventure of a lifetime for others. If you don’t have the time or inclination to start from Point A, but would rather start at Point B, you can buy existing web links from highly-ranked web sites – everything from a newsweb with a page rank 8 (PR8 and excellent) to a blog with a traffic rate of 35,000 hits a day.

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One important point to bear in mind during links auctions. There’s no deal you can’t walk away from so don’t be afraid to walk.

Links Quality

First off, if you are planning on placing a bid on 1,000 links it’s nice to know something about the businesses behind those links. Now, because the sellers of these links are webmasters themselves, you can be pretty sure you won’t link to a bunch of porn sites when you buy 100 links targeted at hardware shoppers. Even so, do the spade work and check on who you’ll be linking to should you win the links auction.

Now, not all links are created equal and, in fact a bunch of low ranked links farms can pull a PR8 right down into the gutter so conducting research is essential before buying or bidding on a links bundle. 1,000 junk links won’t do you as much good as 100 quality links. And the only way you can determine the quality of the links you’re buying is by checking the seller’s website on Alexa (see below) to see who’s hooked in. Buy quality links, even if you get fewer of them.

You can also bid and buy a link on a homepage with 95,000 natural backlinks. Your association with a site that maintains that many backlinks connects you to those 95,000 online clients. Instant, online networking.

It’s a Snake Pit

Be careful. The buying and selling of site links completely lacks any kind of legal oversight so getting ripped off is an unpleasant possibility, unfortunately. After all, we’re dealing with something as ephemeral is back links to your site and that’s a lot different than buying a house that you can actually stand in.

The best way to avoid rip offs is to work with a reputable company – one that’s been in the web links sales business longer than last week. Serious digital brokers perform their own due diligence before posting an offering so you can assume some protection going with a reputable company.

Other protections you should take and research you can do:

• Again, check the site links on alexa.com. You can learn about links popularity, site changes and all inbound links in one place.

• Check the site with Whois, the site owner directory to determine if the links seller even has the right to sell those links. Are you going to buy a house from someone who may not even own it? Of course not.

• Ask for a current list of outbound links. You can find this information (some of it) using Alexa but you don’t know what you don’t know so checking to see that the links owner is a straight-up guy or gal goes a long way in the peace of mind department.

• Draw up a contract. If you’re buying a PR8’s links inventory, know which party is responsible for what. And, if there’s something you don’t understand or your legal representative doesn’t understand (remember, the W3 creates buzz words faster than a beehive), then take that walk. There is no deal from which you can not take a hike, so if anything sounds or feels hinky, you don’t need the headaches.

Buying links can turn a PR2 into a PR6 or PR7 if you go with a reputable links auction house (Google it for options) – one with a good history. It doesn’t take long for bad news to spread across the web so, with a bit of research, you’ll become adept at buying useful and productive backlinks – links that generate real site traffic, FAST.

It’s a growing industry and as more and more web users buy online, it’s only going to grow faster and bigger – much bigger. So, if you’ve got the capital, buy 100 quality, embedded text links.

Then watch your traffic grow.