This weeks discussion is an extension of my post from last week about buying links successfully.  I want to know what your “red flags” are when you build links.  I’m not concerned whether your purchasing them, trading them or even receiving them “naturally”.  What kind of factors would concern you enough to warrant attempting to remove an existing link to your website or just avoiding the link opportunity all together?

Below are a couple “red flags” in my book that what would scare me when looking to build one off links.

• Websites that aren’t indexed in Google and aren’t new sites.
• Websites that have issues with their entire site being indexed in Google.
• Does the website link out to questionable or “bad” niche sites?
• What type of links does this website have coming in? Are they quality, full of spam or from questionable neighborhoods?
• How many outbound links does the particular page i’m targeting already have?
• Dropped domains – especially ones that have been picked up and the theme radically changed.

These are just a few qualities I look for when building links to my clients and personal websites.  I have been told several times that I am far too picky about my link building prospects but I argue its a good technique to last the “test of time”.

So what are your “red flags” when building links?

picture courtesy of FLICKR

Let’s first get the facts straight.  I’m not a “white hat” nor “black hat” SEO I’m a “do what it takes to rank” SEO.  With that said a couple weeks back I was cruising through my Twitter timeline where I read a tweet from someone asking why everyone posts the same crap about “X SEO tactics to avoid“.   This tweet was followed up with a comment along the lines of “it would be much more interesting if someone posted about getting away with X black hat tactics”.   In addition a lot of hoopla was published last week about Google purchasing links that has caused the SEO industry to freak out. At that point I set out to do the obvious, to share how you can buy links but get away with it!  I talked to several individuals I know that are highly involved in the link purchasing world and received an absolute ton of information about the game.  One individual shared with me that he has a 2000 site network created strictly to sell links via blog posts.  In the last handful of years even with all the algorithm changes and Panda updates he has had a total of ZERO sites penalized.  These techniques he shared have helped net over $50,000 a month!  Naturally questions ensued and I was able to further find out exactly how you can buy links and get away with it!  Best yet the individuals were perfectly OK with me sharing them with you.  So on to the goods!

Passing The Sniff Test.

Even when you buy links the first goal is to make them not look like paid links.  This is where the “sniff test” comes in. The sniff test consists of any “obvious” signs of a paid or manipulated links such as unrelated anchor text links, several links pointing to the same domain in a single piece of content and even the authority or health of the linking domain.  Think about this, outside of the blatant anchor text links from non niche related sites or text that says “paid” or “sponsored” how can YOU tell if a link is naturally given or paid for?  It’s pretty common for authors to link out within blog content and Google even encourages this.  The key to passing the sniff test is not being able to blatantly tell if the link is paid.

What You Need To Look For When Purchasing links.

When you purchase links the smart way it’s going to include work – nothing in life is easy.  Just like organic “White Hat” SEO there are different types of value you want out of each link acquired such as:

• IP Diversity
• Niche Relevance
• Anchor Text
• Authority / Trust
• Page Rank (to a lesser extent)

Now remember that you don’t need every link to fit every one of the requirements.  Focus on achieving 3 out of the 5 of these for every link.  Get your authority / trust / PR from one site, get your anchor text from another, and your relevancy from another.  The goal is to achieve natural looking links.  Naturally acquired links very rarely touch all 5 of these characteristics so your paid links shouldn’t either!

What To Watch Out For When Purchasing Links.

As mentioned earlier buying links isn’t as easy as it sounds.  Everyone tries to cheat the system and link brokers / sellers will do the same thing.  Below are several techniques or things to look out for in general when purchasing your links.

• Hosting a ton of sites on same IP/C-class
• Interlinking their own domains
• Not hiding their SOA records
• Overusing the domains (such as posting 3-4 posts each day with highly optimized outgoing anchor text links)
• Using dropped domains (check archive.org to verify this)
• Linking out 3 times to outbound sites — This seems to be extremely popular with the crap paid blog posts!

In addition to the points above you also want to look at any sites overall health before purchasing a link.  How long as the site been around, does it get regularly indexed, are all the pages indexed in Google etc.  If they don’t meet these basic requirements you should run away as its a good sign that Google may have dinged them.  The last thing you want it a crap site linking to your site.

If The Deal Is Too Good Then Avoid It!

All SEOs have seen the 10,000 blog comments or directory submissions for $29.99 gimmick.  Most of us wouldn’t fall for this these days so why would you consider taking up an offer for 100 paid links for $200?  Most of the time the sellers have to cut corners to be able to offer such a service.  It’s not uncommon for the following red flags to be tripped with these types of offers which could completely ruin your site.

• Purchasing bulk blog post links typically includes the seller writing 1 or 2 unique posts and then using the best spinners to spin the article 50 or 100 times.  Red Flag #1
• These sellers sell their entire link network each time someone buys a “package” which can be a clear sign of manipulation to Google regardless of different IPs or niche website.  Red Flag #2
• Since each one of these blog posts are nearly the same they have the same outbound link pattern. Red Flag #3
• Blog posts are all published around the same time which builds new links at a unnatural rate.  Red Flag #4
  

Remember that the key to purchasing links is to make them look NATURAL!  The get a million links in 5 days for $10.00 gimicks aren’t going to work.  Don’t waste your time, money, or your website authority.

Impatient and Don’t Want To Build Links “Over Time”?

Building links over time is very important and a rush of “naturally” acquired links can cause red flags.  Once again building links (paid or organically) is all about making it look natural.  There are quality signals you can “game” to break this rule and build tons of links right away.   Think about it, how often is content going viral, companies exposed on the news, or even mentions in a newspaper that causes a flood of editorial links to be given?  These are the types of signals you will want to replicate.

• Push out a press release – make it good with an exciting “announcement”.
• Purchase blog posts in which the entire post is in response to the press release.  If you really want it to look natural consider buying one or two posts that tear apart your company as nobody buys links in negative press right?
• Fire up social media accounts – Tweet about the “announcement” and start conversations online.

These are the same type of signals that naturally occur when a rush of links are acquired.  These can all be replicated but you have to put some thought into it!

Anchor Text – To Vary Or To Not?

I found this technique especially interesting.  Use your favorite back link research tool and plugin the top 5 or 10 websites that are currently ranking well.  Replicate their types of back links!  If they are using heavy anchor text then do the same as Google is obviously not being too picky.  If they are going strictly after authority/domain type links do the same.  Of course since your purchasing links you will want to probably buy more links but keep the same ratio of optimized anchor text, URL, “click here” type links.  If these ratios are working for your competitors then you can bet it will work well for you too!

Avoid Patterns, Avoid Patterns, Avoid Patterns!

Search engines typically bust paid links because they fall within a pattern.  A lot of paid blog posts for instance have three outbound links to the same domain within a post.  This doesn’t look natural!  Why not link out to an authoritative website that doesn’t compete with you directly and then include a link of your own later in the post?

In Google’s situation a simply search in any search engine for the phrase “This post was sponsored by Google” shows every single post they purchased that links to their chrome browser.   These are the types of patterns you absolutely do not want to happen!  Every blog post should be unique, use different by lines and link to different pages within your domain.  As I have said about 50 times now in this article it’s all about recreating NATURAL and AUTHORITATIVE links.  Google wasn’t smart enough to replicate this but are you?

• Your website is brand new so no age, authority, or existing links exist (unless you’re using your budget to purchase a domain).
• The end goal is to make a recurring monthly income – this can be via Adsense, affiliate marketing, E-books or any other way you want to monetize a website.
• No rules for tactics used but a strict budget of $500.00 is enforced.
• You can assume you already have web hosting paid for.

Some things you may want to consider covering when “spending” your money includes domain registration, content generation, design, logos, e-mail lists, link building etc.

How I Would Spend $500.00

It’s only fair that I go first in this weeks discussion.  Here’s my breakdown.

• I would look to create a small niche website based on an affiliate product.   COST: $0.00
• Research affiliate programs and do keyword research for what I believe would be the best “selling” keywords in the niche.  COST: $0.00
• Purchase an exact match domain or domain with the keyword in the domain that is also brandable COST: $10.00
• Install WordPress on the domain and purchase a relevant theme COST: $40.00
• Lay out the exact way I want my content written in a word document that I can send to a copywriter. COST: $0.00
• Pay someone to write 5-10 pages of content for the website. COST: $100.00 – $150.000
• Pay someone to write 5 blog posts that will be used as guest blog posts later on COST: $50.00
• Purchase 1-2 of the affiliate items and run a contest on the new site COST: (Depends on value of affiliate item: lets say $50.00 each) $100.00
• Manually scour websites that accept guest blog posts and offer them one of the blog posts already written COST: $0.00 (already paid for)
• Manually search niche related directories COST: $10.00 – $20.00 each depending on value of directory $50.00 total
• Press Release advertising launch of website and product give away – COST: $75.00
• With the remaining $25.00 I would probably use it to entice a blog owner that typically doesn’t accept blog posts to make an exception.  COST: $25.00

My goal with the outline above would be to rank on the first page of the search engines for some of the “selling” keywords and also rely on long tail keywords generated by the additional content found on the site.  The press release and contest will hopefully generate buzz, social sharing and build ‘natural’ authority links to the site.   Assuming all works out (cause it always does right!? ) I could use the monthly income to further invest in the site or start up another fun project.

Your turn – What would you do with $500.00?

2012 Goals

• Post less on NickLeRoy.com and make sure that when I do post that the content is of the most quality.  No more feeling guilty when the site goes untouched for a couple weeks.  If I can’t offer you advice or tips to effectively change your SEO mindset then I won’t post.  I do plan on posting more weekly discussions but I don’t consider these traditional “posts” but more of an opportunity to share opinions and encourage discussions between other SEOs.

• Slowly remove myself from client work and make money off my other web properties. The “easy” money is in making money for my clients.  I want to go another direction and start building some more sites that are more to my interest.  Not only will I have more interest in the projects but I will have 100% control of the website and SEO.  No more excuses for why a site doesn’t rank or why something hasn’t been done.   I’m excited to get more serious in the Affiliate and Adsense scenes to generate some extra cash that I ordinarily would make from client work.

• No more bullshit SEO – Do what works and don’t worry about what anyone else says/thinks.  It’s taken me over 3 years to realize that I shouldn’t care what anyone thinks about SEO and trying to be “e-cool” doesn’t pay the bills.  You will see far more posts that MAKE YOU THINK and may even anger you (Like these types of posts for instance).  Expect a post around the new years that may cause some controversy.  No more “White Hat” or  “Black Hat” posts – simply posts, tips, and reports about what works in the SEO industry.

• No more Sphinn – As many of you know Sphinn is no longer around (which is unfortunate) so my responsibilities as an editor have gone away too.  While I enjoyed my time as an editor it was time I probably could have used for my own projects.  Working on other  sites so they can make money and hopefully build up little more online reputation is no longer a priority of mine.

• Streamline SEO Audits – As I mentioned above I have an idea to build some sort of e-book or process for people to create their own audits using the knowledge and techniques that I use for my custom audit services.   I realize that not everyone has a budget for a $500 audit and i’m a huge proponent of  do-it-yourself SEO.  Hopefully i’ll have the time to put this together and it will help do it your selfers at a fraction of the cost of what it takes to hire me to write up a report on their site.

• More Family Time – Getting out of client work will allow me to work on my projects on my time.  This means more time for my new baby boy and family as whole.  I refuse to be that guy tied to a computer and ignore my family.  If that means making a little less money then so be it.

• Lose Weight – Isn’t this everyone’s goal each year?  Sitting on the computer all day doesn’t exactly make the pounds fall off.  Time to utilize the gym membership and get back in shape.  I’ve even contemplated starting a weight loss blog simply to keep me motivated and on track… talk about integrating  a passion of SEO into becoming more healthy!

• Learn More About Motorcycles – A hobby I got into last summer was motorcycles.  I recently purchased a Harley Davidson Dyna Wide Glide and I want to know more about it, how to work on it and generally enjoy riding more.  Going for a nice long ride on a warm sunny day is a great way to “get away” from everything and just relax.

So just a couple goals for the next year off the top of my head.  Can’t wait to turn this blog into a more actionable and useful blog and try a whole new type of SEO role.  It will be exciting.  What goals do you have for 2012?

This weeks discussion is one based off the knowledge that no free back link analysis programs exist anymore.  The ability to freely dissect and replicate competitor link profiles ended when Yahoo Site Explorer (YSE) died last month.  The alternative to YSE are paid solutions such as SEOmoz, Raven or MajesticSEO.  With that said is it in your best interest to block these link analysis tools from spidering your website?  Each one of these tools are not affiliated with a search engine so it won’t have a direct effect on your search results.  Allowing these spider bots into your website could give up your link building tactics to your competitors.

The obvious draw back to this is that you don’t get the value that SEOmoz, Raven, or MajesticSEO offers you.  But I would argue that SEOs should know what links they are building to their own sites and they should have access to their link profile through Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Tools.   This might be easier for brand new websites then established sites so that’s why I ask you this week is it to your advantage to block SEOmoz, Raven & Majestic link analysis tools from spidering your sites?

photo credit

Now it’s your turn.  To what extreme have you gone to acquire a link for yourself or a client?