Backlinks Tangible Information & Question Please

[Craig Fenton]

Hi Weekend Warriors:

Hope Friday was great.

Could the fine folks please answer a couple of questions about backlinks?

There are several very well received Warrior ads about paying for backlinks and this is the information I hope you can help my decipher.

If you paid for (we can take any number) 30 links and did everything you were told on the first day of the month (use May 1st, 2009) after 30 days what would tangible evidence be of success for the investment? How many people would you want to visit your site per link after 30 days?

Secondly please if somebody could pay a quality Warrior a fair price for the backlinks service would there be a reason why everyone wouldn't take advantage of the idea? Are there things that the buyer has to implement on their own that some would feel take too much time or is this not the case and for whatever reason the advantages of backlinks have flown under the radar all these years?

As always I apologize if I am missing the obvious but I am always curious about the inner workings of different promotional tools.

Thanks as always.

[dotslash]

I'm afraid you simply can't predict the results that easily. It depends on a huge amount of factors. Of course back links help promote a website and there is no doubt they can help bring more traffic into your site.

But ...30 links could bring results ranging from absolutely no effect at all - right up to a flood of traffic. In reality more likely the first result than the latter.

Be careful with some of the over hyped offers, links from unrelated, zero PR pages have minimal effect - you can get hundreds of these and it won't help. There is much work to do beyond linking - your content, the keywords you are targeting - get these wrong and links will have zero effect.

The most valuable back links you can get are unsolicited ones places by other people - they nearly always bring in lots of traffic as they appear in a related context and it shows that your content is worthwhile.

Install SEO quake or go to Yahoo site explorer and start looking at the links that your competitors have - it's usually a great place to start.

[InternetMarketingIQ]

The only "Tangible" Evidence is that the person put the links in place and can show you they are in place.

EVERYTHING else is up to you. You are paying for the links, nothing more. There are no guarantees of anything.

The results of such a campaign are measured by your own ability to track and implement changes.

[Craig Fenton]

Hi Dotslash:

Thank you for such an articulate response. You opened up the picture in my mind as to how it may not necessarily be a success at any price to purchase the links.

Have a great night!

[Craig Fenton]

Thank you for taking the time to respond and for your information.

Enjoy the weekend.

[4morereferrals]

Possible to link me to a site that provides some more evidence this is actually TRUE vs. speculated? Not sure I can agree with that.

Not that I or anyone else would advocate you go on a campaign of seeking or aquiring or paying for ZERO PR backlinks. But how much effect do new pages on a high PR domain - many say quite a bit. Think Im in that camp.

So if the OP has Zero backlinks right now, and is targeting a modestly competitive niche/keyword phrase - are you insinuating that inner page links on medium or PR2-3-4 sites DOMAINS that arent "relative" wont assist?

Exactly how do we quantify how relative a backlink from a site is? Or how relative a site is to ours for that matter.

Whats the relativity of the Drudge Report to my site on backlinking? Would not a backlink from Drudge be worthwhile?

I buy the majority of the PR arguments - not sure Im onboard [ yet ] with the "relative" content theory just yet.

Not all backlinks are created equal - to be sure.

links from unrelated, zero PR pages have minimal effect - you can get hundreds of these and it won't help.

[Zeus66]

Steve's right. What he quoted is bogus (no offense). I have many personal examples of keywords I've targeted that have nice rankings with backlinks I posted on completely unrelated sites and on pages with no PR at all. As long as Google and the others can "see" the links (dofollow) and can navigate to the page they're on, you're good to go and it WILL help you rank higher. Obviously, if you can find a way to get some high PR one-way links on sites with content that is closely related, all the better. But the notion that unrelated and non-PR links don't help much is untrue. I've gotten some Google Page 1 rankings with several low competition keywords and just a handful of such links.

John

[Craig Fenton]

Hi John:

Thanks for the information. It is always interesting to hear a couple of sides of the coin. As mentioned when the post first started I had no knowledge of the inner workings. After a great response we see fine Warriors on the plus side, the minus, and on the fence.

As long as it it legal and ethical I hope all Warriors find a technique that they give thumbs up to.

Enjoy the day!

[dadoc]

I have gotten sites to the first page of google buy obtaining links on totally unrelated pages. One site I did had more than half the links coming from wordpress theme sponsorships. That was when you could get MANY links with a successful campaign. alas doesn't work so well anymore.

backlinks backlinks is the name of the game. I'll take em from anyone except gambling/porn etc...

[TheHutz]

Originally Posted by Craig Fenton

Hi John:

Thanks for the information. It is always interesting to hear a couple of sides of the coin. As mentioned when the post first started I had no knowledge of the inner workings. After a great response we see fine Warriors on the plus side, the minus, and on the fence.

As long as it it legal and ethical I hope all Warriors find a technique that they give thumbs up to.

Enjoy the day!

He he, there is nothing illegal with buying links - until Google is the law - as for ethics. I love being able to achieve high rankings over my competitors without paying for a link, but in some industries I have no choice.

If you do it properly then it will be fine.

Right, with regards to a thematic match - yes you will see evidence of it not mattering, but I bet thats either a temporary result, or just down to shear numbers of links you have outweighing the quality.

Think about the user - not the search engine for a minute. Why would a tennis site, link to a site about dog training? What would be the benefit to that site's users? Completely unrelated and useless. Why would the content be considered "good enough" to link to if it has nothing to do with the subject?

Thats not to say it doesnt work - especially as you can't control who links to you and how, but if you want the most bang for your buck, keep within your niche and surrounding niche.

If they're free links, a link is a link, so get them from whever you can. It gives a nice mix to your portfolio.

[Evita]

One of my competitors have almost 2000 links. The vast majority come from from 3 different blogs where his link is in the blogroll. The blogs have nothing at all to do with his topic, and while the domain has a bit of pagerank, the pages he is linked from do not.

Yet he is ranking well with all those unrelated blogroll links.

Evita

[BigHef]

There is a bit of an onus on yourself if you're going to pay someone to build backlinks for you:

1. Know your competition. Know what it's going to take to get you onto the first page for your keywords. Know how in demand your keywords are and decide which ones are worth targeting.
2. Make sure you're pages are optimized for your keywords.

If you can get the right anchor text, pointing to the right pages, your results will be incredibly better than if you pick a highly competitive, general keyword and your site is poorly optimized.

I tell this to prospective clients and help them where I can - if they do this properly, then my service is going to be much more valuable for them.

Taking a bit of time initially to make sure your backlink campaign is feasible and targeting realistic opportunities will be more than worthwhile in the long run.

[BigHef]

Forgot to add - I don't believe relevancy is a major component of the value of links - I've seen site after site rank just because they have got anchor text links from high PR sites - totally unrelated to their niche.

Relevancy helps - but it's far from vital

[TheHutz]

Originally Posted by BigHef

Forgot to add - I don't believe relevancy is a major component of the value of links - I've seen site after site rank just because they have got anchor text links from high PR sites - totally unrelated to their niche.

Relevancy helps - but it's far from vital

Yeah but how long will that value last? There is no guarantee that they will always be considered a worthy link if they are completely off topic sites.

I agree it does work. I've seen it time and time again. I'm thinking more if you're paying for a link, make sure the value lasts as long as possible.

All it takes is for a few crawls of the link later, and the search engines work out its not that relevant, therefore dropping the value.

I would much rather pay for thematic links than non thematic links and have the free ones on unrelated pages (if required)

[AnneE]

Originally Posted by Craig Fenton

Hi Weekend Warriors:

If you paid for (we can take any number) 30 links and did everything you were told on the first day of the month (use May 1st, 2009) after 30 days what would tangible evidence be of success for the investment?

To answer this question for you based on my personal experience. I purchased Angela's monthly package of 30 links in Feb. I have currently used Feb, March and most of April. I don't do all 30 links, primarily because some take more time to setup and unless these are a VERY high PR, I won't bother.

So what tangible evidence do I see in the success of my investment?

I have a main site and a Squidoo lens that I wanted to improve their position in the search results. The Squidoo lens is the second link that I put on, so I guess I would say that it has probably only been linked about 15 times a month, perhaps 40 times overall.

When I started this process my lens was listed about #150 for my keywords. Groan.... virtually no one looks that far down in the results. So I've seen it jump ... #120, #98, #102, #76, #60, #67, #38 (woo hoo... getting there), #49 (boo hoo... wrong direction), #36 (better), #28, today... ooh, bummer #43... BUT.... it is still where I might get traffic and I believe it will climb again soon (oh and I did have it in my Warrior signature and temporarily took it out, so maybe that is part of the drop).

So the tangible results are my Google search results. What that translates to in terms of visitors is a result of how wisely I chose my keywords. What it translates to in terms of sales is a result of what I have on that Squidoo lens. My main site is also climbing.

My goal is to get one or both hopefully in top 10 results, at least in top 20 results and then look at the traffic and decide whether it was worth it or not.

Does this answer your question?

[TheHutz]

Also Tangible benefits can be measured in two ways:

If you're doing SEO for a client, the tangible results are your rankings - period. It's down to them or a conversion expert to make sure they turn those visitors into customers.

If you're doing SEO for yourself, the best way to measure? Check your referring links for traffic. Does that convert well? Do you get money for the referrals?

Rankings can help you decide, but its hard to tell what link has made you achieve them - so in reality the only way to measure an ROI, is how much money that link is generating for you.