Tweet

Paid Linking – The Benefits And The Drawbacks

Written by: Omaro Ailoch

Article Overview: There are a number of methods to build website traffic, some good and some not so good. Text links are often considered to be the vehicle that helps to drive search engine traffic to your site, because the number and quality of links a page has is used to determine its relevancy and ranking.

Paid Linking – The Benefits And The Drawbacks

There are a number of methods to build website traffic, some good and some not so good. Text links are often considered to be the vehicle that helps to drive search engine traffic to your site, because the number and quality of links a page has is used to determine its relevancy and ranking. However, it is important to remember that text links can drive traffic directly to your site as well. Gaining links is always best done manually, in order to prevent links from bad neighborhoods and to ensure that you receive targeted traffic from your efforts.

SEO Link Profile

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is a popular method of building targeted traffic to a web page. By including well researched keywords on your web page, and building links using these keywords as anchor text, you can improve your search engine ranking. A link profile is a measurement of the quality and quantity of links that you have for each page on your site. This link profile is used by the major search engines as a guide to determine how relevant a web page is.

Why Links Matter To SEO

Building links is obviously important to any SEO campaign. Some marketers spend a lot of money paying for text links from other pages. Usually, the cost of a text link is determined according to the PageRank of the page – the higher the PR the higher the cost. A per-term fee is paid for a month or a block of months and the text link remains until that time elapses.

SEO Link Considerations

- When looking to purchase a link solely for SEO purposes there are certain factors you have to consider.

- The linking page should not use a nofollow tag. These prevent search engine spiders from properly following the link and your link profile will not benefit from any link.

- Ensure that there are not too many outgoing links on the page. The more outbound links on a page, the less benefit your link will receive. Definitely ensure that there are less than 50 links, although this figure is still too high in reality.

- Page relevancy is always a consideration when linking. The more relevant the topic of the linking page, the more benefit your page will receive.

Debate has long been waged as to whether buying text links is an ethical, and viable, SEO procedure. Buying enough links to compete for major search terms may certainly prove infeasible because it can take a large number of links to really make a difference. For more specific or targeted keywords it is a possible option.

Shopping For Traffic Building Links

Text links aren't only beneficial to SEO campaigns because they can directly drive traffic to a website without even considering SEO. Again, page relevancy is important because it helps to ensure that anybody seeing your link is interested in the topic of your page. Targeted visitors also mean better conversion rates and, therefore, higher ROI. But, there are other factors to consider with paid links for driving traffic.

- Page popularity should be measured in terms of traffic, rather than PageRank or any other factor. It is also unimportant whether links use nofollow tags as long as they can be clicked by visitors.

- Link placement should be considered, including the page where the link will be placed and the area of that page. Every page has certain hot spots and the more prominent a link is the more likely people will click on it. In-text contextual advertisements have proven both popular and effective.

Building Direct Traffic

Whether buying text links is considered ethical or not, it is a viable method of driving traffic to your site and while search engines may attempt to prevent the use of paid links in SEO campaigns they cannot negatively penalize your site for their use. If you are considering paying for text links, then you should try to ensure that you are doing so in order to drive traffic directly to your site via this link. Consider how well the link will perform, how many visitors it will produce, and whether they are targeted. Calculate an ROI and determine whether it is truly worth it.

Is Paid Linking Right For You?

Paid links certainly have their place. For a lot of sites, this place has proven to be in an SEO campaign. Care should be taken when buying text links for SEO, that the link is a genuinely powerful addition to your marketing campaign without relying on it to improve your search engine ranking. Check page popularity and relevance, link placement, and ensure that the link cost and results offer a good enough ROI to justify the purchase of the link in the first place. Paid links could provide you with good traffic if you find the right ones at the right price.

Related Articles
  Home Business Expert: How To Link To Other Websites
  Graduate Student Medical Insurance – Comparing
  Publishing Your eZine – the Cons
  Why Cross-linking Your Website is a Great Idea
  Allow Your Webinar Audience to Ask Questions Out Loud

Article Tags: anchor text, link profile, major search engines, marketers, measurement, money, outbound links, pagerank, relevancy, search engine optimization, search engine spiders, search engine traffic, targeted traffic, web page



Related Forum Posts
Re: Bad SEO techniques? - [quote="jacksonp":8b8rg2nw][quote="terriz":8b8rg2nw] re: Cross Linking, how do you define that? I thought linking to other pages on your website (that are related) was a good thing...maybe that's not what you meant.[/quote:8b8rg2nw] So my friend,Cross Linking is simply means the process of linking between two sites,Whether or not they are owned by the same person, cross linking is the process on which the Internet is built.It allows users to reference sites with content similar to that which they are already viewing, and may be of further interest to them.[/quote:8b8rg2nw] Thanks for clarifying!
Re: Bad SEO techniques? - [quote="jacksonp":1y3g8bot]that is quite true.We all should avoid these kind of techniques.I am here sharing few more points which we should take in mind..As an experienced person of SEO I want to share here some facts which should be avoided by us.I hope that these will help some of the newcomers a lot.. Choosing a title that has no relation to the content on the page Using extremely lengthy titles that are unhelpful to users Using a single title tag across all of your site’s pages or a large group of pages Stuffing unneeded keywords in your title tags Writing description meta tag that has no relation to the content on the page Multiple domains Multiple identical sites Cross Linking[/quote:1y3g8bot] re: Cross Linking, how do you define that? I thought linking to other pages on your website (that are related) was a good thing...maybe that's not what you meant.
Re: Has anyone used Spyfu.com? - I have also used Spyfu. It's good to find out what kind of strategy your competitor's are following in Organic and Paid SEO. We can also find out the list of organic keywords our competitors are working on along with their organic ranking in Google. It's really an interesting tool.
CEOs and Email - Slaves? - I wonder if the emails they are responding to are filtered thru their assistants first 'cos they seem to spend a lot of their off hours responding to them. True they are successful but I'm not sure I'd be willing to pay that price. I'd be interested to know what's the in the typical day planner of Entrepreneurs on the Forum. Entrepreneurs are a different breed than Paid Employees- so it would be interesting to view the contrast.
Re: Google Places Review | How to Get a Review on Google Places? - Hi Evan, Yes, I am planning more. I have multiple videos coming out this year on: Social media marketing Email marketing Lead Generation Organic search marketing Conversion rate optimization Analytics Content marketing Paid search marketing I am looking for SEO / Internet Marketing questions people have. I enjoy producing videos answer tuff SEO questions. Let me know if you are any of your members have any they want answered. Jeff


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Executives and Elevators Perfecting That Pitch

Earn More Money - Easy Home Business Ideas

Maximum Impact Restaurant Greening

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.