40,000 High Value Links - Sold?
-
I'm a developer spending ever more time on SEO for SMBs. I've never had cause to buy links. Not one bit. I've done ok. Until now that is. Now I am getting my arse kicked into last year. By, I think, a top SEO company. Really, you know these guys and they are whiter than white. But what they have achieved seems an impossibilty to me using white hat techniques. Maybe they are from another planet than me. Or maybe something else is going on.
In six months they have built 40,000+ links. These are unbelievably high quality links in their thousands. Really top notch. Keyword rich anchors slap bang in relevant content on great, great sites such as newspapers, univertsities, government, corporate, charity etc. Nothing spammy at all. Amazing. I was skimming but I found nothing to question at all until link 800 which was a cloaked link on a well known review site's product page. But generally the high quality sustained. Gradually, some began to feel somewhat worked into the content, although worked very well. 2000 links in and there are still magazine and review sites, still page authority 40+. There are still local government sites at 10,000 links when the export file ends. I go dizzy at the thought of the remaining 30,000. How far down could this quality have gone?
Gulp. I am in awe, intimdated...and a little suspicious. How on earth do you do that with a pure white hat on? Actually, whatever colour your hat - how on earth do you do that?
Rand's position is clear. He doesn't do it. Other's are less unambiguous. Comments like "I do it, you do it, we all do it" go unchallenged. Even on a recent link buying question here on SEOMoz most comments say don't do it but one advocates "Paid, targeted, individually prospected links".
Am I too suspicious - a fool trying to rationalise my relatively pathetic link building? Honestly, you should just see these links. Of course, maybe some of you have.
Come on, please don't tell these guys simply worked hard. But maybe that's the harsh truth I cannot face. I have to say I cannot see the site generating an income to pay for the man hours needed for 40,000 high-value, white-hat links but then what do I know.
Tell me, what do you think: Is it possible to build 40,000 very high value links in six months using pure white hat techniques - or is there another way?
Phil
-
Ok here's the thing... QUALITY content building, and I mean really high quality, will generate buzz on its own. The trick is to get content (including videos, images, etc.) to go viral, with links included. Naturally people will share it, retweet it and links will build naturally. They obviously have a large team and a large budget, and likely have people working on quality, shareable, viral content. News sites can easily get that many links, as people are always linking to their stories. So no its not impossible, it's just a matter of working smart and not hard.
Can you give us the link so we can take a look at the site?
-
and then Google says that links only become a factor once they are gained naturally and not like 40,000 links in 6 months.. that is not natural. This should result in: What was it all for if Google ignores it? Well, personally, i think google does not ignore such a fact. In fact: In one of the many projects we've run we bought about 1000 links in 1 month and we got a number one position within 1 month after that.
Buying links still works (unfortunally) but 40,000 high quality links in 6 months is about sick..
-
Could I ask how many linking root domains out of the 40k 'high value' links?
-
One of 3 options really:
-
they have good contacts who will publish links for them (who you know goes a long way)
-
they bought the links (not that uncommon and really isn't paying someone to linkbuild essentially the same as buying links?)
-they lied to get the links
-they have the most amazing and linkable content ever, they are the new lol cats (unlikely though because of the anchor text)
-the company may have hired an offline pr firm to stir up controversy and get editorial articles. I have heard of people creating fake news stories etc just to create a buzz and get attention which converts into links
-maybe you misread the links and they are just from scrapebox or xrumer?
-
-
DM me and lets talk privately - dont want to out anyone in a public forum, which I am glad you didnt. But let me give you a few insights - seems like the co you are talking about is a UK one by the way...
-
Thanks for the reponses. Really fascinating stuff.
How does one aquire a "uniquely prospected, targeted link"? I mean how do you influence, say, the Guardian editorial? Along with the Independant and many, many other powerful sites. Is it a simple matter of building a 'relationship' (ie bribing) with journalists and site editors - and that the big agencies have years of relationship building under their belts? Really, is that what goes on?
I am concluding that link buying is more practised than discussed. I have read a lot about white hat link building and feel I know nothing. But these tutorials are not meant to inform are they? More often than not they are a rehash of the same old same old that really exist to get a few moz points and, more to the point, some juicy links to client sites which the post is ineviatably built around. I know how to get links the hard way and how to buy rubbish links but where is the post "how we buy high value links".
@russvirante
Thanks, yes that's the conclusion I am beginning to understand. I am not so much afraid of buying links I just don't know how to. How to buy valuable links that is.@Gerry Francis
How could an SEO company be in a position to urge, for eaxmple, the Guardians editorial to use keyword rich anchor text? How do they get that influence?@saibose
Well they have some ok tools attracting some links but that's not a lot of their inbound. They have all the social media links but I do not know how to research this thoroughly. I didn't see any social media links in my manual browse through the links. But maybe social media might start explaining the 30,000 I didn't even glance at.@Ian Auld
Well if my suspisions are correct the link builders may well read this. I also would love to hear how they did it - any chance? No chance! But maybe you could write a post explaining how you might do it with a multipronged approach.I'm sure it would contain gold for me.
@joelhit
I can barely imagine 400 such quality links in six months. The site has Moz DA of 83, homepage PA of 86.@Barry Smith
Very enlightening those figures. Or is it Professor Smith yet?@Dejan SEO
Mmmm, your comment chimes. The site almost 'misrepresents' it's commercial interests. Perhaps we are talking about the same team.
-
Genius!
That's my weekend sorted getting internet PHDs and becoming a doctor in useless stuff to get links on edus.
I may or may not be joking
<- poker face
-
Yes you can get links like that - and you know what works really well? Lies and misrepresentation. I know because I have seen it. Basically getting the link "Google legit" way (e.g. not buying links) but totally unethical in every other way. For example I know of a team who says they are a doctor of physics at some university and bull their way into gov/edu listings on the basis of false identity. Once their client found out they were fired immediately.
-
Almost definitely agency work, medium sized team, probably with a paid link strategy and some degree of automation.
For the sort of sites you're saying they have, it'd probably run you about £80-90k for the 6 months, at a conservative guess (probably top end it at £150k depending on what industry you're in).
There would have been a lot of hard work put into it, but almost certainly some paid stuff in there. Hard to compete as a solitary in house SEO.
Sounds like the guys know what they're doing, would be good to find out who they are
-
Sounds fishy to me. Its not possible to get links the white hat way. There are some possibilities that I can think of. Paying for inclusions, getting majority of links based on press release product announcements or some viral element on the website which has been covered by reputable media sources.
It would be interesting to explore the full set of links.
-
Of course it is possible, although it seems somewhat unlikely. Depends on the size of the site, the type of the site, their social media profile, how good their PR team are, what relationships they have with said review sites, magazines, newspapers etc.
I too would be a little suspicious if the links are very keyword rich, this suggests some engineering on the part of the site. Not to say they have used black hat techniques but maybe they have urged the comapnies to use certain anchor texts etc.
Without knowing what site you're talking about it would be difficult to guess efforts they may have made to accomplish this.
-
No. The truth is this - if your niche is profitable, people will buy links. If you are afraid of buying links because they may damage your site, create another site, and buy links to it. It is that simple.
However, you should be smart about it. Hire an SEO firm that does uniquely prospected, targeted links. It will be expensive, but that is what your competitors are doing, and it appears to be paying off.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Can affiliate links affect DA?
Hey guys, over the past two months my DA has gone down from 17 to 12, and I have no dura what could have caused it. I started putting in some Amazon affiliate links in my posts - could that be the reason why? Also, I have about 30 backlinks from a blog with a spam score of 11% - could this also be affecting it in any way?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AmyAed0 -
Permanently Moving Few High Ranking Pages from One Domain to Another
We are planning to move few high ranking pages permanently (301 Permanent Redirection) to another domain, Currently these pages are getting good traffic from organic search and ranking on top positions in Google search engine result pages. We have few questions in our mind right now, It would be a great help if anyone can answer following questions; Is it possible to move few pages from one domain to another by using 301 Redirection in .htaccess file? Will it have any negative impact on our website's current search engine performance? Will it be considered as a legitimate SEO practice by Google Search Engine? Will Google understand that these pages have been moved permanently to another domain and start showing URL's from the new domain on the same positions where they were ranking before moving to new location?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | tigersohelll0 -
Are back links from audio sites any good?
In light of G's view of links from directories and other sources I have heard that links for audio sites like soundcloud.com can be beneficial. Has anyone had any positive experiences building likes from sources like this?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Aikijeff0 -
Links from same brands?
Hi, We have around 25 sites around the world under different domains and brand names. I was wondering if its safe or not to interconnect (linking) all these sites. Please let me know, Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ferratum0 -
Which links should I remove?
What is your general approach when removing links for a new client? Just taken on some new work and found links that I wouldn't dream of building now (unrelated domain name, blogroll, single word, exact match anchor, dead sites). However some of these are brand anchor links, and some of the pages have decent Page Rank (2/3/4). Obviously I don't want to remove links that might actually be helping the site in a weird way. It would be good to get an idea of other peoples approach to link removal - what goes, what stays etc?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Coolpink0 -
Huge diifference linking root domains in SEO MOZ and opensite explorer
Hi there, I have fairly large site that has never really been optimised. I think an old forum i hosted has either been spammed or my webmaster at the time used some black hat techniques to get me more root linking domains. I am a newbie and would really appreciate if someone could just quickly look at my donain and confirm that this is a problem and something i should fix before i start my SEO campaign. I am also worried this will negatively effect my domain authority. I dont really want to broadcast my domain so if anyoone would be so kind to confirm the problem so i cant start to research the answer. Thanks v much
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | nimble0 -
Need a Service to get back links- info on Youtube PR Ranking
I have about 4000 you tube video urls that I need someone to submit for comment links, and profile links, and other links above pr2 and above. (will consider lower pr too). The ones I see when searching, don't seem to be able to understand how to use their submitters. Yes I know PR most likely will not be passed, but at least the vid will rank better with higher pr. My pr4 vids do. It seems to be that you tube vids are easier to gain pr. When I do a link search for pr5 vid urls, it doesn't seem to return links that justify the PR, so any info on that is appreciated. Any comments about how I should not do this or any form of this will not be appreciated. Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | joemas990 -
What's been your experience with profile link-building?
What have your experiences been? Short Term? Long Term? There isn't a lot written about it, and I'm wondering where it falls in the order of things. I was very hesitant to jump in, but have launched a few campaigns, both for local geo targeting phrases, and national accounts. Surprisingly, I've seen a surge in rankings, but also wonder how short lived they will be. I've noticed the links still don't come up in tools like open site explorer, but I'm able to find them when searching for the unique username I used while building the profiles. The sites I'm listing on have no relevance to industry, unless by chance, although the PR's I'm using are all 4 or higher. Is this considered gray hat?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | skycriesmary720