Buying text links

I've recently considered buying some links to my web site and have some thoughts on what the best approach is. I'll outline them here briefly and would be interested in hearing what you all think about these assumptions/guidelines.

1) Buying from a link broker is fine, but it is important to be aware of several things, including:

a) Link brokers are, ultimately, interested in selling as many links as possible - listen to what they have to say about what works, but take it with a grain of salt as well.

b) When PR increases, they'll likely be quick to point out the "new higher rates" for your links...but when PR falls, it's unlikely that you'll be contacted about your decreased monthly rates. You have to watch this for yourself.

c) They'll have plenty of links that are in unrelated categories or just on questionable sites. Choose how much you want to "walk the line" with linking. If you want a blast of links to quickly get to the top of the rankings in MSN and Yahoo!, you may have to buy on questionable sites. If you want to be more careful or "whitehat", choose relevance and be patient in waiting for the right opportunities.

2) Buy links on relevant sites - this conflicts with the options I've listed above, but in my case, I wish to only buy links that are from relevant sites with legitimate content. If the site appears to be fodder only for eyeballs and adsense clicks, I'll avoid it. But if it's related, or in an ancillary area of service (mine is a service business), I'll go with it. "Related" is grey area sometimes, but I have decided always to err on the side of caution.

3) Watch the IPs where the links are coming from. If you can't easily access a list of the IPs, it may be best to avoid that broker. You should at least be able to see IPs after you've signed up for an account and all links should be on different "Class C" IPs (e.g. - aaa.bbb.CCC.ddd).

4) Don't view a link from a PR 8-10 site as a magic tool to vault you to the top of the rankings. It likely won't happen, though in the long run it should have beneficial effects on your PR (in Google) and, more importantly, rankings and traffic.

5) Mix up your anchor text, using multiple phrases or words that are relevant and for which you'd like to rank well. Blasting many links using one set of anchor text may get you to the top in Yahoo! or MSN in the short run, and maybe even Google, but Google will likely "dislike" this as it doesn't appear to be "natural" linking. The current index update should be evidence enough of the strange things that can happen with the mother of all search engines.

6) Try to buy links that will actually deliver traffic by themselves. This may seem elementary, but with the clamor about buying links merely to increase PR or gain top 10 rankings, what is often overlooked is the traffic that can actually be delivered from links on relevant, high-traffic pages.

Canton , DP Forums

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