Linkrain Articles

I’m a member of the biggest webmaster forums out there and most of these forums have a link sale section. Today while I was browsing through Digitalpoints link sale section, I saw again a lot of webmasters spending money on worthless links, so I decided to write down some tips on what you should check before buying a link from a certain website.

1)Make you sure you are not buying a link on a link farm. A link farm is a page of a website or a whole website with hundreds of outgoing links. Usually they accept every kind of website. This means that a link farm backlink is worthless because it’s content is not related to yours. 

2)Check the number of outgoing links on the page you are going to buy a link at. If there are a lot, check the PageRank. Buying a link on a page with PageRank 6 and 50 outgoing links is acceptable, buying a link on a PageRank 1 site with 50 outgoing links it’s not.

3) Before buying a link you will need to check the domain and make sure it is not an expired domain. This can be done thanks to whois.net. Checking the domain before buying a link is one of the most important things. In fact the PageRank of an expired domain is only a “virtual PageRank” and it will go down to 0 with the next Google PageRank update. Many people don’t know this yet and are buying links from people that bought a domain with virtual PageRank just some days ago. Read more about Fake PageRank

4) Use always a Backlink checker tool for the site you are going to buy a link at. Have a closer look on the quality of the backlinks to the site you want your link on. If you see that it is getting some backlinks from spammy websites, link farms or guest-books don’t even think about buying one…

5)Instead of the quality also the quantity should be checked. More backlinks usually means more traffic and a higher PageRank. Also check if the backlinks are coming from different domains and are not only “a single sitewide link placed on thousands of page on the same website”.

6)Check the PageRank. You will not only have to check the Google Toolbar PageRank but also the PageRank trough different Google Datacenters. Here is an excellent tool to do so: Raket PageRank check. If all Datacenters show the same value the site can be considered a “strong PageRank website”. Often websites show different PageRank values for different Datacenters, if this happens you should wait for the next PR update before buying that link. For example if the site you checked is showing PR5 in 10 Datacenters and PR3 in other 10 Datacenters than it has an “unstable PageRank” because it is not really predictable before the next update.

7)Validate the PageRank! An expired domain will show PageRank not only in the toolbar but also in different Datacenters. That’s why PageRank should always be validated. There are a lot of tools to do this like: Seologs Fake Pagerank Detection Tool. I don’t trust them at 100% so I suggest you to use the “site:www.thewebsiteyouwantalinkat.com” function in Google to see if the website is cached and the “link:” function to see if it has got some indexed backlinks.

8 ) Check the Alexa graph to have at least an idea (even if it is not precise) on how much traffic the site is getting. PageRank is not the most important thing. Usually you buy links to get higher search engine rankings for a certain keyword or a higher PageRank with the next Google update, but if you can also get some traffic thanks to them it’s even better. 

9)Contextual links are better than an image linked to your site (or at least that’s what I always thought and what I still think). So get some real contextual backlinks instead of some expensive pixels.

10)Don’t pay more for a link just because it is coming from an .EDU or a .GOV domain. Read more about the Mith of EDU Domains.

11)Avoid buying links from websites that lable their links like this: “buy a link” ,”sponsored links” , “link for sale” and so on. Google is against link selling and it looks like they are becoming smarter on how to find out if a backlink is natural or bought.

 Finally there are some considerations to make about the price. Usually the price is based on the PageRank of a website. Let’s take a PR6 link as an example. Getting some backlinks from PR6 or above websites is expensive. If you see people selling a PR6 link at 10$ a month, there is something wrong with that website. Maybe the owner bought the domain some days ago and wants to make some quick money before the next PageRank Update when the site will go down to PageRank 0 . Usually the cost for a PageRank 6 link is around 30-60$/month. Some niche sites will charge more and accept only content related websites and some general websites will charge less but also accept non-related ones.

If a link is really cheap you should consider buying it even if the content of the website and the other links on it are not related to yours. A PR5 link, on a word cloud site with not more than 50 outgoing links, for 2-3-4$ is still a good investment.

Let’s make a brief summary:

• Buy links that are not to expensive on websites that get good traffic.
• Make sure the PageRank is high, valid and strong.
• The website you want your link on must have as many backlinks as possible from quality websites.
• Read this article before buying a link

Happy link buying.