Is This A Reasonable SEO Strategy?

[Jay-Art]

Hi All
Trying to do what I can to promote my art site

www.scottishartistspaintings.com

I am aware of the onsite issues with the site and am trying to get help with that.

I want to start adding one way back links to my site. My idea is to look at what my competitors are doing, and try to get links from the people linking to them. Is this idea valid?

Am I also right in saying that related topic, in my case, original art links are more powerful ones to have pointing to my site? Other than look at what competitors are doing, is there another way of finding potential art links?

Is it possible to commission someone to only seek out art related links or is this not the way to do it? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
All The Best,
Jay

 

[RedEvo]

It's easy to look at competitor links and see if you can get links from the same places. However, this doesn't take account of any special relationships that might exist presenting a barrier to your site securing the same links.

With any site's link profile there's usually a lot of worthless links so filter with care and if you choose this tactic be selective.

d

 

[MASSEY]

You dont want to get into paying for links, the services i see offered in most cases appear like scams to me, and if you end up being related to a link farm, your site will be screwed

 

[MASSEY]

By all means copy the links the competitors are using. ;-)

 

[Annoying Donkey]

I want to start adding one way back links to my site. My idea is to look at what my competitors are doing, and try to get links from the people linking to them. Is this idea valid?

Yes it's valid. Best also look at the PR/authority of the site linking and focus on the high PR sites. If you can't get exact same link, get one from similar PR. If you can match for all top ten, then you should beat them

Am I also right in saying that related topic, in my case, original art links are more powerful ones to have pointing to my site?

Not necessarily. Nobody truely knows how much relevancy is taken into account, but any link from, say PR4 or above, will help, relevant or not. Authority is currently more important than relevancy and likely to remain so. If the site has PR4 or above, then don't be too concerned about relevancy. But if you can get both...

Other than look at what competitors are doing, is there another way of finding potential art links?

Yes, use google, bing etc to search for possibilities and approach sites with something you can offer... Quality article or similar. If you can persuade an authority site to review your site, service, whatever, with an in context dofollow link with keyword as anchor text, that will be one of the best links possible.

Is it possible to commission someone to only seek out art related links or is this not the way to do it? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Yes, but perhaps expect to pay more... Also you need to be careful of where the link is coming from, as others have said.

 

[RedEvo]

You dont want to get into paying for links, the services i see offered in most cases appear like scams to me, and if you end up being related to a link farm, your site will be screwed

I agree but the sad fact is every man and his dog, and especially large companies, are buying links and getting away with it. We've been approached by some large organisations, household names, offering links on their sites for a fee. Falling ad revenues are being replaced by link revenues.

The net will be dominated by the clever and the rich (rarely the same beast) with Mr SME being left out in the cold once again.

d

 

[Jay-Art]

Thank you very much for all your answers. Very much appreciated, and a big thanks to those of you kind enough to send me a PM.

I guess I am somewhat of a risk taker by nature, so supposing I wanted to get best results, perhaps by going into grey hat areas (not saying I will) how would one go about getting paid links, if as you say a lot of successful people are doing it? How does google identify what is paid and whats not?

Once again, not saying I am going to do anything naughty, just hoping for some info. I guess this may be of interest to a lot of us uninformed people.

All The Best,
Jay

 

[RedEvo]

Google a company called Smart Traffic, they sell link building services.

d

 

[zigojacko]

Google a company called Smart Traffic, they sell link building services.

d

I wouldn't recommend them, have outsourced link building campaigns to them before (whilst in employment) and some of the links sought were part of link farms, whilst they did get clients to page 1 in Google, it still puts them at risk for potential penalisation.

But then, I think most link building companies obtain links wherever they can get them!

 

[RedEvo]

I wouldn't recommend them, have outsourced link building campaigns to them before (whilst in employment) and some of the links sought were part of link farms, whilst they did get clients to page 1 in Google, it still puts them at risk for potential penalisation.

But then, I think most link building companies obtain links wherever they can get them!

I wouldn't use them either, just putting it out there

d

 

[Green Jelly]

I was contacted by Smart Traffic and they sounded good. But when I looked into their company I found lots of negative comments on review sites.....

 

[RedEvo]

Yeah, but look at the results they get

I dislike link sellers with a passion and would never use one but you can't argue with their results.........sadly....and the guy wants to buy some links........possibly.....

d

 

[Jay-Art]

Thanks again guys. Much appreciated.

Is there a difference between paying a website owner for a link, and engaging a company like Smart Traffic to get links for you in Googles eyes? I guess they both amount to the same thing but where is the line drawn?

Surely we are manipulating the search engines somewhat by having any un-natural links to our site, whether paid for or not? If we actively go searching for free links from strangers who dont know our company from the next, then what difference does that make to Google etc?

Or am I missing something here?..

Thanks again fellas..
Jay

 

[RedEvo]

Buying links is buying rankings, that's what they are getting at. Free links are based on merit with the exception of self publicity like forum spam.

d

 

[adventurelife]

You have to think about why would a website owner give you a link from their website ?

And I am not talking about a link from a link page mixed in with a lot of other irrelevant links.

You have to give the owner of the website a a really really good reason reason why they should link to you. This is not easy it is probably the hardest thing to do in SEO, and it is getting harder.

The link should help the host websites customers, it should help the host websites owner being there.

It should help you by driving potential customers from that site to your site and the SEO benefit should be a secondary issue.

I do not have the answers as every business is different and you need to think of a strategy that will work for your individual business.

It is getting harder that is for sure

 

[KidsBeeHappy]

What about your artists? Presumably some of them are online, posting in places etc. Get them to include links back to your website, will work doubly well for them as it will help you sell more of their pictures.

 

[Bob1]

There is no proof that paid links have a negative affect on your rankings.. people just assume that if its not natural it isn't good...As you look more into paid linking you will see lost of people warning you away.

Never use these companies that will source the links for you for a fee etc because you have no control over which sites they list you on. This could have a bad affect because they will list you on any site they can and more likely irelevant sites which can have a negative affect. Look for the sites yourself and pay for the link if you want.

 

[JElder]

There is no proof that paid links have a negative affect on your rankings..

Google has this to say:

However, some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links that pass PageRank, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google's webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results.

Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such. This can be done in several ways, such as:

Adding a rel="nofollow" attribute to the <a> tag
Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file
Google works hard to ensure that it fully discounts links intended to manipulate search engine results, such excessive link exchanges and purchased links that pass PageRank. If you see a site that is buying or selling links that pass PageRank, let us know. We'll use your information to improve our algorithmic detection of such links.

So if you use paid links there are two risks - a competitor will report you for using paid links, or Google will change their algorithm and detect your paid links. Either will cause a loss of ranking in Google, and even if there is no penalty, the money paid getting the links will be wasted.

However, you have to balance this against possible short term benefits, and the odds that Google may NEVER discover your paid links...

It's a tricky one!

 

[KidsBeeHappy]

Google has this to say:


So if you use paid links there are two risks - a competitor will report you for using paid links, or Google will change their algorithm and detect your paid links. Either will cause a loss of ranking in Google, and even if there is no penalty, the money paid getting the links will be wasted.

However, you have to balance this against possible short term benefits, and the odds that Google may NEVER discover your paid links...

It's a tricky one!

No it's not. Because there is one more very real risk (no, certainty) of using paid links.

That you'll stop paying one day, and you'll loose them all and have absolutely no benefit for all the cash that you've spent on them whatsoever.

 

[JElder]

'Course - hadn't thought of that one. most of the links will be on rings of sites at least partly controlled by the link builders, so I suppose if you stopped paying the links would be replaced pretty fast.

Of course, if you were paying a person to do the hard work of locating legitimate links for you (such as researching and getting links from suppliers, customers, related industries, etc) then the links should stay around at least for a while.

 

[MASSEY]

Does any one know how much smart traffic charge to just build links for you?

 

[zigojacko]

Does any one know how much smart traffic charge to just build links for you?

Depends on how many links you want/what position in the SERP's you want to get but your looking at a good £1000+

 

[RedEvo]

There is one simple truth with this approach to link building. For any company to offer a set number of links for a set fee they have, and I mean have, to be using a dodgy technique. This could include:

Link farms
Hosted content
Blog spamming
Forum spamming
Zombie sites

Securing merit based links can't use the set fee set number model.

d

 

[MASSEY]

Dam, that's more than I wad thinking,

How much for roughly 300 links?

 

[MASSEY]

There is one simple truth with this approach to link building. For any company to offer a set number of links for a set fee they have, and I mean have, to be using a dodgy technique. This could include:

Link farms
Hosted content
Blog spamming
Forum spamming
Zombie sites

Securing merit based links can't use the set fee set number model.

d

I think I'm gonna take the risk, the words I'm aiming for the first page has sites with hardly any backlinks, I guess I just want to get my site seo'd so it's not causing error, and hit it with backlinks and see what happens,

 

[zigojacko]

Dam, that's more than I wad thinking,

How much for roughly 300 links?

Probably best just contacting them via their website and they can give you a quote, when I was using their services, I was getting discounted rates.

It could vary depending on your target keywords. Most link building companies do charge thousands for link building campaigns though, in most cases it such a scam as well as they promise not to mass auto submit to directories/article sites etc and that is exactly what they do, link farm or not!

And they charge thousands for the five minute job of clicking a 'Submit' button!

 

[RedEvo]

the words I'm aiming for the first page has sites with hardly any backlinks...

This means nothing. Link QUALITY will always beat link QUANTITY, of course Quantity + Quality is unstoppable

But hey, fill your boots

d

 

[Jay-Art]

In which case does anybody know of a company who will supply only these quality links. I realise you may pay a lot of money for not a lot of links but if thats the way to do it..

I also read somewhere that one big hitter of a link can do can do more than a thousand poor quality links? Is this correct? If so, how do we get one of those? I hear they can be "rented" but surely the big G wouldnt like that either? Any thoughts?
Thanks guys
James

 

[MASSEY]

I just think of buying links when i get pissed off with seo ,

Its true a good quality link can be worth many times what the links you buy are worth to your site.

I have just seen a site today which i am going to approach for a link which i will either rent or buy for a set period,

That link alone will be worth probably 400 of the irrelevant links that companies like smart traffic offer,

do you think it will be too hard to seo your site to naturally compete in the organic listings?

 

[Ryan Doherty]

Its difficult when trying to compete with the larger companies when only using trust worthy methods.

I would advice against any under the table link collecting. If the major search engines catch wind of this it could result in a hefty slide down the search results which could take forever to come back from.

I'm trying my best to compete with the big players in my field but finding it very difficult, I just hope SEO is really a slow burner like I keep reading.

 

[RedEvo]

Big companies are buying links and Google isn't detecting them. It's a problem.

d

 

[Annoying Donkey]

Big companies are buying links and Google isn't detecting them. It's a problem.

d

Why? In past years I bought and sold property through the classified ads. The papers were dominated by big budget estate agents, yet my little ad invariably sold the property. Why should it be any different with the internet - indeed I believe it's far easier.

Example 1. Friend asked me to help with a project. He had a domain which he had owned for several years and hadn't used and he had a keyword with a little over 100 searches per day with 25,000 competing pages. We set up a simple wp site and used a subscription service that I've been evaluating to:

1. Find some other related keywords bringing the total potential searches to 800 a day.
2. Submit one article to a number of article directories.
3. Submit 4 blog posts.

In addition, I created 8 high PR profile links. In a matter of a couple of weeks we have him in the top 5 and making sales... cost £100 monthly subscription which I've used elsewhere, plus maybe 4-6 hours of work? I estimate it won't take much more to get him to number one.

Example 2. A couple of weeks back I heard of an idea for getting traffic without SEO. I experimented and in a week we had a list of 500 and 10 sales, all in effect for free - the sales more than paid for the fee we paid to get this traffic. Cost ~£130 plus a couple of hours work. Even if it's uneconomical to compete with SEO, there are numerous other sources of targeted traffic which can be used.

How many sites on here fulfil the criteria of example 1? If you're a local business, then I suspect most... Do you really need to pay large sums for SEO?

 

[RedEvo]

If buy buying links is OK then companies with deep pockets can buy rankings, which they do. They won't have to do any of things you did to get your friends site to rank, they simply write a cheque and bingo, their site's rank.

This is exactly what wealthy businesses are doing, zero effort, splash the cash zoom up the rankings.

I'm not suggesting clever folk like you can't help web pages to gain valuable traffic, I'm stating the simple fact that if Google can't detect paid links, which it can't, then the best pages don't appear at the top of the rankings.

d

 

[Webtistic]

As I have mentioned on here before, we do a lot of link building on behalf of clients, and only use techniques that do not involve buying links, link farms, internal linkwheels, etc.

There are lots of ways of securing links editorialy and naturaly, without the need for paying for them in any way. In addition, we are always thinking of new ways to 'encourage' webmasters to want to place a link to us. The key is in offering webmasters content that they WANT to add to their site, or link to.

You just need to give a good non-paying incentive for webmasters to WANT to do it...

 

[Webtistic]

If buy buying links is OK then companies with deep pockets can buy rankings, which they do. They won't have to do any of things you did to get your friends site to rank, they simply write a cheque and bingo, their site's rank.

This is exactly what wealthy businesses are doing, zero effort, splash the cash zoom up the rankings.

I have to disagree.

I know of a number of companies who have been penalised for buying links. Also, in my experience, most larger, reputable companies know the risks of buying links and steer clear due to the potential penalties.

Google does have a number of ways of detecting paid links whether they are obvious or not and encourage any reports of known offenders.

Buying links, or using link brokers is not a good idea, and any persistent link buyers will be found out eventually.

 

[adventurelife]

If google does not stamp on it and there does to be any signs that it is in a big way we will end up with big companies taking control of 10 slots on page one.

The big boys are waking up to the web is where the business is at and much more so in the future. It will enable them to reduce costs and increase profits. What may on here forget is that we were all early starters and adopters. The big wave is just building but it is coming.

The very thing that makes the web great ie anyone can use it to find information and make money could be lost as the big boys dominate it.

Many , many big businesses both private and public are losing money. Newspapers, Councils, Universities etc etc all desperate for revenue of any sort.

I suspect you seo guys would be interested in 50-100 links from those sort of sites?

10 links from the Times sir No problem that will be £XXX

It you are small and intend to stay small or medium sized and their is big players in your sector you should be very concerned with this.

 

[RedEvo]

I have to disagree.

Disagree with what? Big companies - FTSE100 companies - are buying links. I think it's wrong, we refuse to do it, but it's happening, that's all I'm saying, and if Google doesn't do more then as adventure life says, rankings will not be (are already not) based on merit.

d

 

[Annoying Donkey]

I'm not suggesting clever folk like you can't help web pages to gain valuable traffic, I'm stating the simple fact that if Google can't detect paid links, which it can't, then the best pages don't appear at the top of the rankings.

My point is that it didn't take anything clever, just a £100/month subscription which easily pays for itself...

Google is not the be all and end all of the internet.

 

[RedEvo]

Indeed it isn't, but it's influence is not insignificant and its index is a mess.

d

 

[Jay-Art]

Am I right in saying that, if you get punished for link farm links or other dubious links, telling Google that "A big bad SEO company did it" is no excuse?

What would the legal position be there between the website owner and SEO firm? Suppose I hire an SEO firm and specify "no dodgy links please", then the SEO firm go and do just that, then Google knocks you back 10 pages or whatever for naughtiness.

What would be the likely outcome?
Jay