Keeping Under the Radar

At every PubCon there is at least one bloke who asks me what my sites are then gets miffed when I decline to tell him, taking it personal. Nothing personal, it's just that I have my niches and don't want anyone coming near them. It's so important to keep stealthy that I don't even outsource link dev for my meaningful websites. The last thing I want is an army of aggressive SEO's stomping all over my hunting grounds. Ack!

Keeping your link buys under the radar
Text link buying is a case where discretion is of the essence. Websites with a high PageRank are conspicous and potentially puts a bullseye on the text link buy. Unless you're selling PageRank yourself through a directory it's a waste of money, if you ask me. If you've been paying attention to the serps then you'll have noticed that it's not the website with the highest PR that's been walking away with the serps. More and more it's quantity that is playing a role.

No less than WebGuerrilla has been cautioning about staying under the radar with your text link buys for a long time- at JupiterMedia/Internet.com's Search Engine Strategies conference no less (hehe).

So I was surprised when someone who I thought was knowledgable asked me if I could turn him onto any PR 9 links. I said, "Um, you mean to be like with a ROS from a high PR site and that's it?" and he answered affirmatively. Now you see, if people can count your link buys on the hands they were born with then you seriously need to reconsider how high above the radar is safe.

I was talking to somebody else who does link text buying, and he said he only sticks to high profile high PR pages. I knew he was doing these buys- the whole SEO world knows he is doing it.

What surprised me was that he was putting zero emphasis on quantity of links from lower PR websites. And from the looks of it, the high PR campaign seems to be doing zilch for his website.

Repetitive Link Syndrome
Talking about a handful of high PR links and that's all. They positively scream for attention. And it looks bad in your backlinks. Seems to me it's a better idea to mix up the inbound sources as much as possible. And if it's a link from a pr 1-3 then that's even better. I'll take one hundred pr 2's over a few pr sevens or eights any day. With a few exceptions, for many websites, I'll generally walk away from a PR 8 or 9 unless it's a totally natural link.