Buying Textlinks: the Latest SEO Craze

By Veronica Dubak

With search engine algorithms changing seemingly daily, the quest to rank high in the search engines and stay there is proving to be quite the challenge for most webmasters. One of the more recent popular ways of achieving this is through buying text links on websites that have high PR’s (page ranks) on Google and that also rank well in the other major search engines. Is buying text link placement worth it?

Purpose – the primary purpose of buying a text link on a website that ranks better in search engines than yours is to receive a backlink to your site, without having to reciprocate a link back (as this dilutes the quality of a link). This backlink counts as a “vote” for your website and especially if coming from a site that is credible to the search engines, helps your site establish credibility as well. For example, a website has been online for three years and currently has a PR of 7. Your site is three months old and has a PR of 2. The 3 year old website places a link to your site from their homepage. As this site has history and is therefore established, this “vote” from a PR 7 website holds a lot of value. Compare this to a site linking to yours that is only a year old and holds a PR of 1 – it makes sense that you would want links coming from older sites that have high PRs. The higher the number and the better the quality of backlinks your website receives, generally the higher your rank on the SERPs (search engine results page).

Not only are text links great for search engine purposes, but if placed well, can actually drive traffic to your site. And whose website nowadays couldn’t use more traffic? Enough said.

Those are the benefits behind purchasing text links. But what are the disadvantages?

1) Cost – it’s not uncommon to pay $100 monthly for a 3 word textlink on a PR 6 website. If you do choose to go this route, choose your text carefully and budget wisely.

2) Relevancy to search engines – if you’re running a homemade toys website and have a popular online pharmacy website linking to yours, this won’t be as relevant as say having Mattel® linking to you. Remember that search engines are becoming more and more sophisticated and they can tell whether two sites have complimentary, competitive, or completely unrelated website content.

3) Limited link length - rarely are you given the option of selecting more than three words when purchasing links. You may have difficulty coming up with only three keywords relevant to your website, so this can often prove to be a difficult task.

4) Page is already populated with other text links – online auction sites that have sellers auctioning off website text links are notorious for selling textlinks on websites that already have 50 more on the same page. Look for sites that limit the number of textlinks sold.

5) Search engine spam – your site linked on every single page of a 3000 page website using the same keywords and url can be considered spam to a search engine. If you choose to purchase multiple text links on multiple websites, make sure your linking text varies.

The lesson is to be simply cautious. Using a textlink broker to find relevant and complimentary websites to buy links from can prove to be highly beneficial – just do your research first. Would a $100 monthly textlink investment be better spent on a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign, or will the long term benefits of buying a text link outweigh a temporary influx in visitors? Return on investment is key – whichever route will yield you the highest ROI should be your ultimate determining factor.