How to Buy Links Ethically

Google, the major search engine, hates paid links because their intention is to give quality driven results to their users all over the world. So, they have a lot of restrictions.

According to Google Web Master Guidelines, buying links is a direct violation of its rule, especially the manipulative links that aim to increase search rankings and PageRank through unnatural anchor text usage.

But still other risk free link buying techniques are available that are patterned to indirectly acquire the links that ultimately help to increase your search rankings and PageRank. That’s what we’ll be discussing in the following paragraphs.

Measure the value of a paid link:

Before trying to purchase links for your website, first analyze them based on the following factors:

Whether they will generate good traffic and leads

Whether they have the ability to pass Domain Trust, Domain Authority and PageRank

Whether the acquired links are scalable for the campaign

Are they relevant to the destination page?

It is important to know the worth of incentive driven links that you are trying to obtain for your website, so that you don’t get penalized by Google.

1. Sponsored reviews:

Writing a review for products and services offers incentives (payments, commissions, freebies, etc.) to the blogger on one hand and offers high quality links to the sponsor, on the other.

This strategy will work only on your own link building campaigns. Because this method is focused on producing external content that is strictly about the services and products that your website is offering.

But to increase the success rate of this strategy, you need to first build good relationship with the targeted bloggers. You can engage with them through various interactions (for example: following their blogs, giving some worthful comments, social networking and email) before sending out actual request for the review.

Apart from review, requesting bloggers to do an interview (either of your own or your client) can also help build quality in-content links. It further helps to develop your website’s brand.

It is a great strategy to promote your services and products since the content revolves around your business and its industry, where you usually have full control over the links that will be used in the content.

While choosing bloggers for your campaign, make sure:

The blog has high traffic and leads.

It offers high quality content related to your business/industry.

It has a strong brand identity and loyal subscribers and followers.

It has good Domain Authority and PageRank (It is better if it has a PageRank of 3 up).

2. Buying content from influential bloggers:

Invite influential bloggers from your industry to publish content on your website with their names under the content; it will considerably improve your websites linkability.

This approach will also work in a similar manner like sponsored review/interview but with a little difference. In this method, the paid content will be posted on your website. For each article, it may cost you around $100 or more, but don’t worry, it will give remarkable results.

Now, you may have a doubt as to how it will add benefit to your website. Here is how it does:

The high quality content added to your website from the industry experts will have the potential of attracting natural referential links.

Since famous bloggers are contributing to your campaign, your website or brand will get more attention.

It will generate viral effect and also has the ability to attract the followers of your guest bloggers. They will share their contributed content in their own social network, and this will again increase the chances of gaining more natural links to the content.

The quality guest content will remain in the web for a long period of time, as long as your website is live, which means that it will keep bringing organic traffic to your website.

It will help you develop a relationship with the influential bloggers in your field; and further helps to build more relationship with other bloggers in your niche.

3. Sponsor or organize contests:

Contests are a great way to get attention in the industry, especially if they offer valuable prizes to the participants. In each and every stage of this method, it is very easy to bait contextual links because sponsors and organizers are usually indicated from the promotion process/outreach of the contest as well as the phase in which the winners of the contests are announced.

Participants are usually required to give link to the sponsors through social sharing, blogging and of course via contest entry.

Instead of organizing the contests yourself, if you want to sponsor them, then you can contact popular blogs in your niche and ask them whether they are interested in organizing the contests.

In either case, make sure that the blogs you go for have an identity for themselves in the industry, receive excellent amount of traffic, have high domain authority, are active in the social networks, and so on.

4. Offer case studies and fund research:

Offering case studies and funding research to universities and other competent organizations related to your business will help you acquire valuable links. As a result of the research, your company name and/or website address will be published on their sites and it will in turn get you natural links.

Universities have a high tendency to accept this approach because the result of this method is educational and due to that they are ready to publish your content on their website.

5. Affiliate programs and JV partnership:

Of course, this will not generate any dominant links to your website because most of the links generated by using this technique are 301 redirects created to track traffic referrals, and additionally they are nofollow in nature.

However, offering commission to the people who promote your products can enhance your traffic and sales, since they are sending relevant traffic to your website… traffic that is already aware of what you are offering through information-based campaigns (insightful promotions and reviews).

6. Donate to charities:

It is always good to help non-profit foundations and organizations. It will definitely help you expand your reach and awareness of your cause.

Besides the links, it will mainly give two advantages: karma and press release. If your cause is newsworthy, it will be fetched up by news sites, thus helping you gain popularity.

While choosing charities, make sure the organizations are confined to your business and within your geographical location. And also ensure that they have a history of linking out to their sponsor’s websites. Many charity web directories are available which includes Network for Good, Charity Navigator, Charity charities and Just Give. Choose the one that suits well for your business.

7. Sponsor events:

Don’t forget to support events, both online and offline, because they will definitely add benefit to your link development efforts and website branding. Most of the event organizers mention their sponsors’ name in the actual event, marketing stage of the event, on their website, etc.

So, be ready to sponsor seminars, conferences, blog awards, webinars and the events that relate to your industry at any point of time.

8. Get testimonials from your customers:

It is a simple yet great indirect link buying method. Just ask for testimonials from your customers when they buy services or products from your website. Request them to add your website link in their feedback.