Do you see all those link give away campaigns happening around?

“Subscribe to my feed, I link to you” - “Comment on my post, I link to you” - “Subscribe to me, I give 100 bucks” goes the hype.

Now that he page rank thing is abused, and carries less weight, bloggers are focused on the feed count.

What’s the catch? Clearly, the owner wants to increase his subscriber list and is trying all that he can to pull you in. Fair enough.

But, does it work all the time? Is it a sure shot strategy to win you readers? Can everyone copy the same strategy?

Well, yes and no.
Yes because everyone who wants to increase their reader base or get more traffic can copy it. It does not require any investment or any particular wealth. All you need is a well planned strategy and an attractive “reward” for participants.

Many a times, it’s a linkback or cash. Some bloggers prefer cash while some prefer linkbacks. I think linkbacks works best for grabbing new and young bloggers while cash works for established ones.

No - because the campaign is just a number focused game.

True that you get to increase your reader base (in numbers), but apart from the numbers does it give you real value and quality?

Are these readers likely to read your articles and comment on them regularly? Yes they are. But hey, they would do it even if you didn’t offer them a backlink or money. 

Ethics - Another concerning factor is the blogging ethics part. Running a campaign is not really unethical but sometimes Google thinks that they are. Remember what happened to John Chow, running the “Review me-I link you” campaign..it got a backlash from Google. And anybody who links to John now are likely to be counted as bad neighborhood now. So these campaigns carry a risk of penalty from Google, since they are counted as “artificial methods to get backlinks”. An increasing feed count campaign may not be treated as one, but yes there is some amount of risk as the links are involved.

Bottom line - Loyal readers subscribe to your blog willingly. You don’t have to offer them anything to. The reader base you collect offering a reward is probably second quality. They are not your loyal readers.

Mohsin from Bloggingbits inspired me to write this post. He’s running a “Link giveaway” scheme at his blog, where if you subscribe to his RSS feed, he’s rewarding you with a linkback. Young bloggers who are looking for linkbacks, can try your luck there.

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The title may bring a frown on your face, I know.

After the Google page rank slap, a good part of blogosphere is keeping away from buying and selling links, at least in public. Of course, there are deals happening underground. But I guess, smart people will always find a way out. And I personally don’t think that buying links is bad. But it must be done with a right purpose.

The reason why google hates you buying links is that, when you buy links from all over the place without looking into any ethics, there are chances of you corrupting their algorithm or chances of giving the crawlers wring information about your site and others. That’s it! They don’t have any problem with you ranking high in the SERPs if you have great content and information.

Where can buying links go wrong?

Buying links from all over the place is the main villain. Webmasters are crazy for links and they buy links from everywhere possible, thinking that every link will count in increasing their PR or relevancy. Wrong!

More than helping you, link placed at irrelevant places will harm you in fact. Let me illustrate with an example.(See figure)

In this example, Site A and Site C are linking to Site B. Site B bought these links from sites that were selling text links at cheaper rates but with high PR. Site A and Site B boasted of the following while selling links.

- High PR (7 and 5).
- Many ad slots available.
- Any anchor text.
- Premium placement at homepage, above the fold.

Now, honestly, none of these really helps the link buyer. A high PR is fine but, many a times this may be a forged PR. Either they might have done the redirect trick showing you a false PR, or they might have bought few links from top domains. But irrespective of what the PR is, it really doesn’t matter to the link buyer because;

- Anybody can buy links from them.
Which means that anybody who can spare 5 bucks can buy a link for any anchor text from them. So you end up having a link with guys selling online poker and viagra.

- There are many more links available on the page.
Since there are many more links at the page linking to totally unrelated sites, your site relevancy is diluted.

So ultimately what happens is that you end up being in bad neighborhood.

So how does it affect Google? After all I have a PR7 incoming link isn’t it?

Great question. Yes indeed you have a PR 7 incoming link but Google also checks for other factors on the page that linked to you.

- Google checks how many outgoing links are present on the page that linked to you.
- Google checks how many incoming links are present to the page that linked to you.
- Google also checks the anchor text of the links that are present on the page that linked to you.

Now what will Google find? Okay, let’s say the first two checks are OK. The page has numerous incoming links from high quality sources (practically, this is not likely though), and the page has only a few outgoing links from the page(say 10).

Now, what’s going to hurt you most is the anchor text in the links to other sites. Since these guys were link sellers, many guys would’ve bought a place from them for cheaper rates. So what do you end up with? (See diagram) Your link “Make money online” is placed along with “Free online poker” and “Free gambling” or “Mesothelioma” and other sites.

Now, that’s bad. It gives google an impression that your site is also related to those keywords. While actually it’s not. So when Google comes to know that you guys are totally unrelated, it can easily make out that you bought the link. Penalized! Kaboom!

So are you trying to say that I should not buy links at all? Come on Mani, you must be joking!

Well, I am.. kind of. I’m not trying to say that you should not buy links at all, but just that you should be really careful with it and smart in selecting who links to you. Having said that, keep in mind that Google does not like you buying links.

Buy them the smart way.

Buying links doesn’t mean you going to text-link-ads and hunting for sites with PR5 and 7, neither does it mean that you’ve to go under the radar in those forums. You got to be smart!

Now, you browse a lot don’t you? You visit other sites from your niche which have similar content as your’s right? Find out which guy has the maximum traffic and a good PR. Write to him asking if he’d be interested to link to you. May be instead of a text link ad which juts out of his template, you can go for a relevant link.

For example, you have a blog on Acupressure, and you ave a friend who writes on medical information. This friend can put a footer link or where ever he can adjust some text, making sure that it doesn’t show off as a “paid link”. Probably he can make the text relevant looking like -

This blog features articles on medical treatment tips and terminology. There are interesting articles on Acupressure(your link) and ayurveda (another guys link) too.

Now this is a smarter way to place links. The links are relevant and does not corrupt the algorithm a well.

To sum up, here are the points that you should keep in mind while buying links. (I don’t personally think that it’s a good idea, but if at all you have to buy links, then make sure that these points are taken in to consideration.)

- Do not buy links from link farms which will sell links to anyone and everyone.
- DO not buy links from sites that are not related to your niche. Buy them from related sites.
- Make sure that there are not many outgoing links from the page, probably a few will be OK.
- Make sure that the text link does not stand out awkward, but wrap it up in a paragraph where the link is placed in between, with relevant text.(See above example)
- Do not share links with junk sites like poker and viagra sites.
- Do not buy links from very new sites, go for sites that have been there for some time and have some authority to brag.

And, if you are looking for traffic alone,make sure you add the “nofollow” attribute, Google is OK with it. But if you are looking for some link juice and PR, don’t add the “nofollow” attribute,but keep in mind that relevancy of your links is the primary concern.

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