All My Top 12 SEO Tips – Published – Tip #1 – Links
Hi All,
I’m going to publish every one of my Top 12 Tips for 2010 individually because I am working on videos for each to post later.
Links – I thought I’d tackle the bull by the horns from the start. I have a lot to say about links, and since at least half of the questions I get in the forums, at conferences and from clients is about links, I’m guessing it’s what you are most interested in.
So Google has said over and over not to buy links. If you do buy them, then you have probably seen some damage, depending on your techniques.
Establishing what links to buy and where you buy them from has always been a bit speculative because everything from page size, site size, the number of other links, the quality of the links, the relevancy of the site and various other factors have affected what a link is actually worth. Then you had to deal with things like checking the integrity of the link was still intact, or even still there. There are dozens of tools out there that were built just for this purpose.
So what do you do? I had a look at all the different methods available and several are still effective (I.e. blog posting, blog rolls, establishing forum links, Yahoo Answers and so on) and in the end, what I’ve found is that the clear winner for my money is going out there, doing the homework and negotiation and actually buying sites. If I own the site then I also own the content, and more importantly the links I’ll put in the existing content. I’m looking for related content or a website with a silo of related content that I can take existing keyword phrases and change them into hyperlinks.
I usually look at the overall spend on “sponsorship – wink, wink” x 18, in order to establish a maximum offer. So if the total amount the client is spending on links is £1000 per month, I look to buy a site for up to £18k. Anyone that has looked around at brokerages that sell sites knows that £5k can buy you a lot, let alone £18k. Take into account the money saved on maintaining purchased “sponsorship” dues versus your campaign expectations. Outside of hosting and domain renewal you will own the links forever – they will never expire.
There are a few other factors to look at before buying a site;
- Domain Age – 2 years minimum unless other factors outweigh this factor
- Page Rank – yes it does matter when buying a site because it represents G-Trust
- Number of existing back links
- Quality of those back links and are they to any deep pages?
- How many pages are indexed with Google?
- Install McAfee Site Inspector on your computer. It will flag any issues to do with bad history, malware or any one of many other problems it may have
- Other pluses are host location vs. target location, the number of registrants of the domain, DMOZ listing and rankings. If it’s a forum, the number of active members and recent posts are important.
