Looking for a link building service that can deliver on a budget

[S_G_Parkinson]

My company is in the electronic cigarette industry and we are looking for a link building service for around £200/month. Our aim is to get to page one of Google and possibly the other two engines for at least 2 keywords; electronic cigarettes and ecig. We are already top of Google for the keyword 'vapour cigarette'.

Can anyone point me in the right direction of maybe a company you know? Could you give me examples of what they offer for £200 a month?

Cheers!

 

[JonathanSEO]

Not gonna happen on that kind of budget.

 

[S_G_Parkinson]

Not gonna happen on that kind of budget.

What kind of budget do you think would be required for my industry? Also what would you get for said budget?

Sorry I forgot to add, I can also get links in the form of guest posts on pr4+ blogs for £49. They last 12 months. Is it worth it?

We are also waiting on 5 reviews which will be published on various different ecigarette review websites.

 

[Fresh Dimension Media]

What kind of budget do you think would be required for my industry? Also what would you get for said budget?

Sorry I forgot to add, I can also get links in the form of guest posts on pr4+ blogs for £49. They last 12 months. Is it worth it?

We are also waiting on 5 reviews which will be published on various different ecigarette review websites.

I wouldn't recommend "buying" back links whatsoever. Spend your time and effort on quality content that other websites/people will want to link to, Tweet about and discuss. This way, you have more control.

Guest posts on PR4 blogs - or Paid for Posts at £49.00? Are these blogs related to your industry niche? Are they "follow" or "no follow" websites?

Maybe you should speak with an SEO specialist - there's enough of them around here (some not so much, but that's for another thread) but I wouldn't just assume X number of purchased backlinks will deliver the holy grail. You may get a short term boost (even page 1), but sooner or later you will drop down the index like a stone...

 

[S_G_Parkinson]

I wouldn't recommend "buying" back links whatsoever. Spend your time and effort on quality content that other websites/people will want to link to, Tweet about and discuss. This way, you have more control.

Guest posts on PR4 blogs - or Paid for Posts at £49.00? Are these blogs related to your industry niche? Are they "follow" or "no follow" websites?

Maybe you should speak with an SEO specialist - there's enough of them around here (some not so much, but that's for another thread) but I wouldn't just assume X number of purchased backlinks will deliver the holy grail. You may get a short term boost (even page 1), but sooner or later you will drop down the index like a stone...

The thing about my industry is that it's so up and down in terms of who is top and who is not. There aren't many authority sites on electronic cigarettes. I've carried out a search on the vast majority of page one's sites for our keywords and their best links arent even relevant to their site in any way. There is one in particular who only has 50+ links. Most of them are poor but 21 of them are guest posts on PR3+ blogs and they are bouncing around page 1 and 2 for most keywords, mostly page one.

Also, I'm really looking for a quick boost to page one because I'm not sure how much longer the e-cig industry will last because the European comission will make a decision on whether or not to ban them in september.

 

[Fresh Dimension Media]

The thing about my industry is that it's so up and down in terms of who is top and who is not. There aren't many authority sites on electronic cigarettes. I've carried out a search on the vast majority of page one's sites for our keywords and their best links arent even relevant to their site in any way. There is one in particular who only has 50+ links. Most of them are poor but 21 of them are guest posts on PR3+ blogs and they are bouncing around page 1 and 2 for most keywords, mostly page one.

Also, I'm really looking for a quick boost to page one because I'm not sure how much longer the e-cig industry will last because the European comission will make a decision on whether or not to ban them in september.

Stephen, where are you gathering 50+ Links data from? There may be many more which aren't visible to you, so it does depend on your source data. Are those ranking higher have keyword rich domain names? How old are their domains? How fresh is the content on their website?

There are many, many reasons outside of back links that may cause your competitors to rank higher - but again, where are you getting positioning from, software of manually? Firefox, IE10 or Chrome whilst in Incognito mode?

Five month's is a fair amount of time to throw your natural search engine rankings down the toilet, but it's up to you - cheap paid for backlink services are all over the place ($ivver for example), but any industry professional who makes a recommendation of a paid for backlink service... worry.

Other operators in your sector use affiliate marketing. Just a thought and maybe a wiser way to spend £200.00 x 5 months +

 

[S_G_Parkinson]

Stephen, where are you gathering 50+ Links data from? There may be many more which aren't visible to you, so it does depend on your source data. Are those ranking higher have keyword rich domain names? How old are their domains? How fresh is the content on their website?

There are many, many reasons outside of back links that may cause your competitors to rank higher - but again, where are you getting positioning from, software of manually? Firefox, IE10 or Chrome whilst in Incognito mode?

Five month's is a fair amount of time to throw your natural search engine rankings down the toilet, but it's up to you - cheap paid for backlink services are all over the place ($ivver for example), but any industry professional who makes a recommendation of a paid for backlink service... worry.

Other operators in your sector use affiliate marketing. Just a thought and maybe a wiser way to spend £200.00 x 5 months +

I use backlinkwatch/href to view competitors backlinks.

The main guys who rank well are theelectroniccigarette, skycig, intellicig, vapourbase and vapouriz. Ours is vapourmate. Their domains are a few years old apart from vapourbase I think.

The best links I can find on these sites are all high pr guest posts and one or two .edu links. The rest are just garbage really.

Now that I think about it, I used to update the blog on our site once every week or less and I haven't done it at all this month. We were topof page 2 for electronic cigarette but we fell to the bottom of that page just before my last blog post. Since then we are now on page 4.

What can affiliate marketing do for us?

 

[Fresh Dimension Media]

I use backlinkwatch/href to view competitors backlinks.

The main guys who rank well are theelectroniccigarette, skycig, intellicig, vapourbase and vapouriz. Ours is vapourmate. Their domains are a few years old apart from vapourbase I think.

The best links I can find on these sites are all high pr guest posts and one or two .edu links. The rest are just garbage really.

Now that I think about it, I used to update the blog on our site once every week or less and I haven't done it at all this month. We were topof page 2 for electronic cigarette but we fell to the bottom of that page just before my last blog post. Since then we are now on page 4.

What can affiliate marketing do for us?

So, like I said, maybe it's not just the backlinks that cause your competitors to rank higher.

Google Affiliate Marketing and read more, but in a nutshell, many affiliate marketing people write reviews, blogs and provide links to e-commerce websites. Those website visitors are tracked (via cookies) and any resulting sales earn them money. Think of it as "commission only sales people" and you're not a million miles away. You just have to decide an appropriate level of commission to pay to attract the good ones.

Good luck and enjoy your weekend.

 

[MASSEY]

I wouldn't recommend "buying" back links whatsoever.

Hardly helpful. The guy has no choice if he wants to make money from his website. It is a competitive market.

Spend your time and effort on quality content that other websites/people will want to link to, Tweet about and discuss. This way, you have more control.

He wants to generate quality content and link build to it. Quality content alone isn't enough to generate quality backlinks. When is the last time you picked up a natural link to any of your content that was quality? My guess is hardly ever.

 

[JonathanSEO]

Also, I'm really looking for a quick boost to page one because I'm not sure how much longer the e-cig industry will last because the European comission will make a decision on whether or not to ban them in september.

If you think the industry only has a few months left I'd be buying backlinks on PR4 sites all day long.

 

[allthebestuk]

We use a company called essential marketer - £300 p/month for working on linkbuilding via a recommendation - they are doing some really good stuff for us from a nowhere starting position. Worth a look.

 

[Fresh Dimension Media]

Hardly helpful. The guy has no choice if he wants to make money from his website. It is a competitive market.

He wants to generate quality content and link build to it. Quality content alone isn't enough to generate quality backlinks. When is the last time you picked up a natural link to any of your content that was quality? My guess is hardly ever.

Did I miss the helpfulness in your reply? Of course he has a choice and above all else, I thought affiliate marketing was an incredibly helpful suggestion.

It's pure speculation that the industry won't exist beyond September and the practise of buying backlinks is now more damaging than good. I feel the OP has a choice, so I guess we have a difference of opinion. We pick up natural links for our clients and whilst I agree, it's not easy, it does work and they usually hold more value.

If you think the industry only has a few months left I'd be buying backlinks on PR4 sites all day long.

Really? From where and at what price? Just so it's a transparent recommendation for everyone reading.

And if the industry goes beyond a few months? Then what is your strategy?

 

[Suzuki]

and the practise of buying backlinks is now more damaging than good.

No, the practice of buying links badly does more damage than good. Do it in a sensible way and it leads to ranking websites....

We pick up natural links for our clients and whilst I agree, it's not easy, it does work and they usually hold more value.

The individual links might hold more value, but the guy buying links will win if its a competitive niche. If anyone thinks that is not the case, then feel free to point out the top 10 ranking site for a major phrase that isn't buying links

 

[JonathanSEO]

Really? From where and at what price? Just so it's a transparent recommendation for everyone reading.

And if the industry goes beyond a few months? Then what is your strategy?

The OP posted he can buy PR4 blog posts for £49 a throw.

This is a churn and burn business anyway, so by the time you have spent 6 months coming up with ideas to generate links naturally you've already missed the boat.

Any form of content that generates links naturally is going to take quite a bit of investment either in both time or money. It's doubly hard for a product like this and if it gets outlawed in Sept then it will have been a pointless venture.

 

[SEO Lady]

.... I'm not sure how much longer the e-cig industry will last because the European comission will make a decision on whether or not to ban them in september.

That's bad news to me as I'm on the road for quitting and have been buying the black cherry flavour e-cigs

 

[MASSEY]

They better not ban them, haven't had a fag for at least a month now thanks to my e-lites.

Someone needs to start one of those gov petitions and tell them we'll all vote ukip if they allow a ban in the uk.

Fresh Dimension It's pure speculation that the industry won't exist beyond September and the practise of buying backlinks is now more damaging than good. I feel the OP has a choice, so I guess we have a difference of opinion. We pick up natural links for our clients and whilst I agree, it's not easy, it does work and they usually hold more value.

I don't think i've ever looked at the backlinks of a website ranking for decent terms and found a natural link profile.

 

[lovelopez]

I have seen several listing of link building on ebay where they are selling link building services.

Some example listing are:

Permanent Pagerank 5 Blogroll Backlink Anchor Text Link Building Service TOP

Pagerank 5 Backlinks Building Service NEW PR 5 Blog Sitewide Text Link Keywords

50,000 SEO Website Link Building Backlinks Blog Commenting Backlink + REPORT

Can we trust these commitments. Is buying links through them is safe as per Google policies.

 

[S_G_Parkinson]

They better not ban them, haven't had a fag for at least a month now thanks to my e-lites.

Someone needs to start one of those gov petitions and tell them we'll all vote ukip if they allow a ban in the uk.



I don't think i've ever looked at the backlinks of a website ranking for decent terms and found a natural link profile.

E-lites are garbage. I'm surprised you're not back on the biffs

 

[S_G_Parkinson]

If the industry goes beyond September then we have a new domain in mind anyway so we will use a 301 to gently switch.

 

[Young Recruit]

The thing about my industry is that it's so up and down in terms of who is top and who is not. There aren't many authority sites on electronic cigarettes. I've carried out a search on the vast majority of page one's sites for our keywords and their best links arent even relevant to their site in any way. There is one in particular who only has 50+ links. Most of them are poor but 21 of them are guest posts on PR3+ blogs and they are bouncing around page 1 and 2 for most keywords, mostly page one.

Also, I'm really looking for a quick boost to page one because I'm not sure how much longer the e-cig industry will last because the European comission will make a decision on whether or not to ban them in

Why don't you use your knowledge of the product to become an online authority and then get back links naturally?

 

[adsengine]

I'd say give Adwords a shot for a quick win but thats not an option for e cigs

a quick and easy way would be to look at what your competitors are doing and copy the best links and leave out the crap ones.

just had a quick look at ecig wizard on open site some of the links are great however some down the list are a bit crappy.

use some of the review sites to get build up a bit of a rep. do some review videos for the forums that will be a quick win.

atb

Dave

PS mail me a link to your site i'm an e cig user you might get a sale from me

 

[S_G_Parkinson]

I'd say give Adwords a shot for a quick win but thats not an option for e cigs

a quick and easy way would be to look at what your competitors are doing and copy the best links and leave out the crap ones.

just had a quick look at ecig wizard on open site some of the links are great however some down the list are a bit crappy.

use some of the review sites to get build up a bit of a rep. do some review videos for the forums that will be a quick win.

atb

Dave

PS mail me a link to your site i'm an e cig user you might get a sale from me

Thanks for the reply Dave.

I've been looking through competitors links for weeks and o have copied a few, paticularly two .edu ones I found.

Most of the review sites have either already reviewed our suppliers products or are part of a network which I think is owned by skycig. I cannot find a contact anywhere.

I can get PR4 links from a network I found searching a competitors site. I found an excellent quit smoking one too. It has a pr6 and moat of its inner pages are pr3,4,5. They are offering a link on their hone page and 4 other pages. It will cost $500 for 4 months. The da is over 50 and its a very, very good site. Skycig and VIP are on it. They get around 5000 uniques a day and 25-30% are from the UK. Does this seem like a link worth buying? Will it increase our ranking a lot short term?

P.s if you type vapour cigarette on Google we are position #1

 

[S_G_Parkinson]

Sorry. Dunno why I called you Dave haha

 

[OldWelshGuy]

Sorry. Dunno why I called you Dave haha

Perhaps his name is Rodney?

 

[adsengine]

Yes its Dave

 

[S_G_Parkinson]

Perhaps his name is Rodney?

Yes its Dave

Aah I just realised you signed off with your name. Haha.

 

[MASSEY]

Most of the review sites have either already reviewed our suppliers products or are part of a network which I think is owned by skycig. I cannot find a contact anywhere.

Yes, that's one of the most infuriating things about trying to build links, competitors that own most of their own links.

When i first started optimising my own sites i built my own link network and was getting all sorts of emails from competitors trying to get links from the same places as me

 

[zigojacko]

This is a churn and burn business anyway, so by the time you have spent 6 months coming up with ideas to generate links naturally you've already missed the boat.

Not necessarily, one of our clients is a rapidly growing business selling high quality e-cigarettes and flavoured vapours for them and are opening up new shops (bricks and mortar shops) all the time.

Very successful and growth increasing week on week. Soon to be a lot more when we've finished the design and development of their new ecommerce store.

 

[adsengine]

Not necessarily, one of our clients is a rapidly growing business selling high quality e-cigarettes and flavoured vapours for them and are opening up new shops (bricks and mortar shops) all the time.

Very successful and growth increasing week on week. Soon to be a lot more when we've finished the design and development of their new ecommerce store.

Agreed Wish i had discovered e gigs a few years back there is some serious money to be made TW have to be making a fortune. Problem is the bits and bobs are very low cost so its easy for anyone with a few grand to get a load shipped in from china. Hence there are now loads of guys all flogging identical low profit gear online.

The guys who are making the money are the ones who have been a little more savvy such as e cig wizard & vape escape.

If we we were not facing a possible ban on e gigs I would give serious consideration to putting some money this industry.

 

[minttwist_ross]

Out of curiosity, given the nature of your product (I'm a recent e-cig convert), have you looked into how your budget could perform on Facebook advertising?

 

[S_G_Parkinson]

Just to quickly jump in regarding budget, I know of companies within your industry that are paying over 3k per month for SEO. There are also a number of SEO agencies who have taken to selling them themselves.

Personally I think that these companies are being massively overcharged but the quality of work is still good on occasion.

Sent from my GT-I9505 using UK Business Forums

Thanks.

I have actually taken to doing my own SEO for the past 6 months and have recently reached page one for two major keywords; electronic cigarettes and e cigarette

I did this without purchasing massive amounts of links and hopefully we can stay there.

We have also been position #1 for vapour cigarettes, vapour cigarette and electronic cigarette starter kit for the past 2 months

 

[S_G_Parkinson]

That's great news, congratulations! What differences have you noticed in organic traffic?

Sent from my GT-I9505 using UK Business Forums

Well before googles update at the beginning of may we were on pages 2 and 3 for most keywords and hitting about 200-300 uniques a day. From that point I got us back up and we hit page one for 3 half descent keywords and say our uniques return to about 300 a day, then we hit page one for e cigarette and we saw our uniques rise to around 500 a day. Then when we went to page one for electronic cigarettes too we now get around 1000.

For the last week we averaged 919 unique hits a day.

I busted by arse off trying to keep our blog updated with new content and was writing an article every 4 or 5 days but now that we have a bit more to spend i have hired a blogger who already has her own blog in this industry. I'm just not that good a writer you see

 

[a4nthony]

Yes its Dave

Thanks for clarifying that Rodney

 

[a4nthony]

Hi, not sure if I need to open a new thread but been reading through this one and can anyone explain what backlinks and PR4+ blogs actually are, how you get them and whether they work or not ?

The latter seems to be of mixed opinion, does it depend on the market your in ?

Thanks

 

[Annoying Donkey]

Hi, not sure if I need to open a new thread but been reading through this one and can anyone explain what backlinks and PR4+ blogs actually are, how you get them and whether they work or not ?

The latter seems to be of mixed opinion, does it depend on the market your in ?

Thanks

Backlinks: also known as incoming links. These are links from other sites to yours. G counts these as part of it's ranking algo. The more links you have, the higher you'll rank (usually).

PR4+ blogs: Blogs that have a page rank of 4 or above. Higher PR might indicate a more authoritative site.

You get backlinks by guest blogging on other sites. High PR sites might be more powerful links than low PR sites.

Yes, they 'work'. G's algo is based on the number of backlinks, modified by other factors.

 

[daisyrogers]

You're right

 

[a4nthony]

Backlinks: also known as incoming links. These are links from other sites to yours. G counts these as part of it's ranking algo. The more links you have, the higher you'll rank (usually).

PR4+ blogs: Blogs that have a page rank of 4 or above. Higher PR might indicate a more authoritative site.

You get backlinks by guest blogging on other sites. High PR sites might be more powerful links than low PR sites.

Yes, they 'work'. G's algo is based on the number of backlinks, modified by other factors.

Oh right, I see, so they are worth having, how do I go about getting backlinks and PR4's (excuse ignorance).?

 

[LeighCar]

I use backlinkwatch/href to view competitors backlinks.

The main guys who rank well are theelectroniccigarette, skycig, intellicig, vapourbase and vapouriz. Ours is vapourmate. Their domains are a few years old apart from vapourbase I think.

The best links I can find on these sites are all high pr guest posts and one or two .edu links. The rest are just garbage really.

Now that I think about it, I used to update the blog on our site once every week or less and I haven't done it at all this month. We were topof page 2 for electronic cigarette but we fell to the bottom of that page just before my last blog post. Since then we are now on page 4.

I like the point that you update your blog on weekly bases.well as i concerned about it you have to update your blog articles on daily basis so you make boost to your keywords and also the website for which you are doing SEO.

 

[cclint]

Yeah 200 is too low especially for the industry you're targeting.

Id speak to an SEO and ask them to identify your keyword pools. they will need full access to your websites code and probably rewrite and add content all over the place to give you the largest visibility in search

expect to pay in the region of £500 per keyword pool