Free Links & Buying Links (Part 1)
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!).