1. Link Buying
Is it (still) working?
Ofer Dascalu
Founder & CEO, WiseImpact
ofer@wiseimpact.com

2. Highly Controversial Subject
• Is being used for many years (and still kicking)
• Whether you like it or not, approve or
disapprove - it exists and many site owners are
still using it
• Buying links that are search engine friendly is
against Google TOS
• If buying links was ineffective, it probably
wouldn’t be against Google TOS
• I will present the practice then let you decide for
yourself
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3. Understanding how
buying backlinks
can produce
positive and
negative results is
an imperative part
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4. Google Caught Buying Paid Links Again
Jan 3, 2012, by Barry Schwartz
http://www.seroundtable.com/google-caught-for-paid-links-14539.html
Google’s Chrome Page No Longer Ranks
For “Browser” After Sponsored Post
Penalty
Jan 3, 2012, by Danny Sullivan
http://searchengineland.com/google-chrome-page-will-
have-pagerank-reduced-due-to-sponsored-posts-106551
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5. There are many ways
to get backlinks to
your website… There
is no one tactic.
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6. Are we partners?
I wish we were
partners !!!
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7. To Buy or not to Buy? It Depends…
• What is your industry?
• How well established are your competitors?
• Do your competitors buy links?
• What is your marketing budget?
• Are you willing to take the risk?
• How heavily does your business
rely on search traffic?
• What are your real alternatives?
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8. How to Locate Opportunities
• It's an entire industry on its own
• Analyze your competitors’ backlinks
• Contact link brokers and SEO agencies
• “Google” relevant forums, look for sellers' posts
and also publish a buyer post (never write your
site name)
• Facebook, LinkedIn & Twitter
are goldmines
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9. Is it a buyers
or sellers
market?
Buyers !!!
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10. How to Evaluate an Offer
• Use common sense, be smart and carefully
evaluate each opportunity
• Look for real sites – meaning, real content that
attracts real visitors. Be wary of fake sites whose
sole purpose is selling links
• Be carful of SEs’ honey pots
• Be carful from PR scams, they
are everywhere
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11. How to Evaluate an Offer (cont.)
Very important:
stay away
from link
networks
and link farms
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12. How to Evaluate an Offer (cont.)
• Evaluate the whole site not just a page, make
sure a few pages have PR
• Avoid pages with more than 10 outgoing links
• Check how the seller site got its backlinks
• Focus on your niche, and truly seek
relevance
• Don’t move too fast – develop a long term link
buying text based advertising strategy
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13. For sure it will not
last forever !!!
Are you joining
the party?
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14. Thank You for Listening
Q&A
Ofer Dascalu
Founder & CEO, WiseImpact
ofer@wiseimpact.com
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