Buying links in blog posts

[vbsaltydog]

OK. I see some of my competitors getting backlinks from posts in blogs with the same anchor text in every blog post so I investigated further and it appears that they are paying the bloggers to write an article about them and include a dofollow link to their site with specified anchor text.

While this seems like a good idea for getting backlinks from blogs where the article serves as the related content to the target site and you can get links from blogs with a Page Rank of 5+ with good alexa rankings and frequent cache dates, when I use a web service that puts blog post advertisers in touch with bloggers that sell articles in their blogs I notice a few things that throw up red flags for me.

Each of these blogs has a disclaimer/disclosure that sates that they accept payments for posting.

Seems easy for the SEs to search for the disclaimer in the blog page text and ignore any links if the disclaimer is present.

They have a badge for "perfect money" accepted.

Same scenario as above. SE looks for the "perfect money" badge and ignores the page links if the badge is present.

The bloggers that are selling articles are just like other spam outlets. They have articles about fake rolex watches and #*$! enhancement.

Seems to me that if an article about your product and linking back to your site is on the same page as obvious spam keywords like watches and #*$! will only harm your rankings.

Any thought on how to buy articles from bloggers with backlinks without having to deal with the issues listed above without having to contact the bloggers directly as this would be too time consuming.

Is there a service that connects advertisers with bloggers that deals with a better class of blogger?

[martinibuster]

as this would be too time consuming.

Need a shortcut?

[wheel]

Is there a service that connects advertisers with bloggers that deals with a better class of blogger?

I expect there's a number of them that address all of your concerns. I see them in my competitor's backlinks.

However, if you're not up to speed on who's who in the industry, have you evaluated the risks of using this type of service? Not to say you shouldn't - just that 'it's working therefore I should do it' may need some more consideration.

The other consideration you may consider is whether getting your own blog links from bloggers not part of a system like that is worth the effort. You've already discounted it in your post, perhaps you shouldn't.

[JS_Harris]

The blogs selling those links likely sell too many links to stay off the bad neighborhood radar for very long, link buyers tend to want PR to flow to their less than stellar sites.

Links purchased on pages long after they are published likely don't carry the same weight as links that existed when the page was first published (discovered by search).

With those two things in mind, and since they are blogs, you may be better off sticking with a comment or two on pages related to yours that seem to be well indexed. Don't worry about nofollow, I suspect search engines ignore the nofollow tag in time as they figure out a site is worthy anyway. (don't flame me if you disagree)

[martinibuster]

I suspect search engines ignore the nofollow tag in time as they figure out a site is worthy anyway.

(reaches for Acme Military Grade Flame Thrower) :)

JS_Harris, I am a fan of your posts, you post some great advice. ;) But I think with this issue we may have a difference of opinion. It's important to stress that what follows is opinion and not fact, because I only have indirect evidence as a basis for my opinion.

I understand there is a school of thought that believes nofollows carry value. From my experience in researching blogs and non-blog websites that use this as their link building technique, I have not seen evidence that it has resulted in an increase in ranking. The amount of traffic these bloggers have quoted me is pitifully low and I have never seen these bloggers/webmasters rank for anything significant in the niches they are competing in.

[JS_Harris]

Life would be bland without differences of opinion!

(puts on flame retardant underwear)

To be clear I don't subscribe to the notion that nofollow links carry value, in fact they specifically don't by design, but I do suspect that G is capable of ignoring the nofollow in time if they determine the link to be a good one.

In other words I believe there is a possibility that the nofollow tag can eventually "fall off" in the eyes of Google. This would of course be the exception, and perhaps only done by a human editor, but Matt Cutts has stated that G is able to control pagerank flow right down to individual links on a page and this would be an excellent use of such a tool on a site that has gone overboard with nofollow. I do have several examples I'd love to link up but I think you're right about blogs, I haven't seen one I'd suspect in a blogs comment section yet.

[CainIV]

Is there a service that connects advertisers with bloggers that deals with a better class of blogger?

Yes, and he is the guy who started the post. :)

After years in the online game, some of the best takeaways you get are learning the 80/20 rule and applying it to link building.

80% of the services you will find and pay for, often yield less results than the 20% of good links you dug in and built yourself.