Link Buying: Nine Ways To Get Them For Cheap
When I was in New Orleans for the Advanced Link Building Seminar, I was able to learn a TON of smart ideas from some very smart people. I absorbed everything from outside of the box link bait ideas to some very interesting ways to conduct outreach. One topic that was discussed was link buying. When the term was first introduced to the listeners, I could feel a collective cringe go around the room. It wasnt a cringe of oh my gosh, did XYZ just mention link buying? All of us in this room do nothing, but white hat SEO tactics. Instead, it was a feeling of Tell me more, but let me act like Im not too interested, just in case Matthew Cutts is listening.
Image via Zazzle.com
Let me set a few things straight. When I say link buying, I am not talking about something in the footer that looks like this. A lot of you shaking your head in discontent participate in link buying and you don’t even know it. The problem with link buying is that when people hear it, it comes off as if I was scratching a chalk board with Gail Devers’ nails. Let’s break link buying into it’s two main components: Link and buying
Link A clickable reference from one site to another
Buying Engaging in the voluntary exchange of goods, services, or both
So, by definition, link buying is the voluntary exchange of goods/services for a clickable reference to another site. Did you give that blogger a free sample of your product in exchange for a review and a link to your site? Yup, you just bought a link. Did you pay a site $250 to become a sponsor that happened to come with a link back to your site? That sounds like a link buy to me. Did you pay a content writer $25 so that you can shop a guest post? C’mon! Don’t make me look in the Yahoo Directory ($299/year?) and start calling all of you out! Let’s be realistic, we all do link buying, but some of us just do a better job of making it seem grayer than others. So, now that we have established that we all do it, let’s be smart about it. Here are nine tips to help you stretch your marketing resources.
- Sponsor a youth athletic team. Check out this site. The registration for a child is $45. Do you think this site would turn you away if you said that you wanted to sponsor two kids for the year, every year, for a link in return. Be a good guy or girl, though. Show up to a game or two. Maybe take some pictures with the kids. Be a human being.
- Sponsor a meetup group. This was introduced in Adam’s post recently. Meetup groups that don’t have any sponsors yet are great targets. They are waiting for someone to notice them, and that lowball offer of $50 for the year may be enough for them to pay for some pizza for a meetup or two. Use this query to find meetup groups with no sponsors that are in your niche. Meetup.com also offers custom anchor text and dofollowed links.
- [keyword] “We want Sponsors!” site:meetup.com
- In case you have been under a rock for the last 15 years, you may know that it costs money to keep a site up and running. $10-12/year for a domain name and $5-10/month for hosting can be a burden for a site that has SEO value, but no visitors to balance everything out. Why not transfer some of that SEO value to your site and help a webmaster out at the same time? Check out this heartfelt letter that this webmaster has sent out to solicit people to donate money to the site. If I was in the restaurant or vegetarian food business, this would be a fantastic opportunity. This site owner is asking for anything from $20 to $1K. With the amount of effort that was put into this letter, I am sure a reasonable donation can get you a link somewhere on this site.
- Sponsor a local Codecamp/Barcamp/Wordcamp. Since I live in Philadelphia, I searched for some Barcamps around my area and I found one here. They will link to you if you provide just about anything. This particular Barcamp will even take lanyard donations. We once got a link from a Philadelphia camp by donating some old hats that a client had lying around. Be creative. Some of that old stuff you have lying around in the back office could be worth its weight in links. Looking for further in-kind donation opportunities? Try this query:
- Let’s make this really easy. How much do you want to sponsor? This is 2011. Type it in Google and see what comes up. Let’s say I feel comfortable sponsoring a site for $100. I tried this EASY query and I ended up here. For $100, I can get a link here. The page has minimal PageRank, but if my business is in North Jersey, I not only get a link, but I get all of this. It looks like my Benjamin just helped my site and I have something for the little ones to do all summer. Sounds like a good deal to me.
- Start a scholarship. I can’t take all the credit for this one as this was born from Adam’s idea. Remember that query where I showed you how to name a donation price to get a link? Why not try that with a scholarship? I found a page here that is linking to scholarships for as low as $50. How did I find that? I’m glad you asked.
- scholarships inurl:k12 100 – Be sure to include that inurl:k12 in there so that you can focus on the high schools
- Offer a service. One of my recent successes came from a link that I got for a client that cost nothing. There is a site out there that mentions wacky holidays. I found out that the site was linking to sites that were mentioning the details of the holidays and the one that related to my client was blank. I reached out to gauge interest and I found out from the site owner that her site had been negatively impacted by the Panda update. After clicking around the site, I had some recommendations. It took maybe 15 minutes to make about 5-6 easy recommendations that should help out. I sent these over in a nice email along with a link to the client’s blog post explaining the details of the national day. One day and two email exchanges later, the link was up on a topical PR4 URL. I do SEO all day and I love it. I almost felt like I owed more.
- Offer a student discount. I have to thank Jessica Hill for this one. Do you have an e-commerce client with a minimal linking budget? If they have a section on their site where you can input discount codes, create a special code that you can distribute to local colleges. A 5-10% discount really doesn’t affect the bottom line much and it brings in business that you wouldn’t have had otherwise. Schools have pages such as this one that will link out to sites that provide discounts for their students. Just don’t get greedy with anchor text here. This is one of the reasons that Staples got penalized.
- My last tip is one that I LOVE. I like to target events that have recently ended. I have reached out to many sites only to hear that the annual event that I wanted to sponsor happened a week before my email was received. Some link builders would put that in their calendar and follow up next year. Not me. I’d tell the site owner that I have so much faith in their organization that I would be willing to make an early donation for the 2012 event. Think about this for a second. The event is over and it took the organizers six months to raise the money to put on a successful event. When a person like me comes along that is willing to put money in their pockets for next year today, they are all smiles. Not only do I get the discounted rate since I am late/early, but since I am paying for the 2012 event in 2011, I get the link until the next event comes up in 2013. I just paid $100 for a link for the next 2 years. That’s about $4/month for a PR6 homepage link.
So, I hope that these tips make it easier to stretch that marketing budget. Do you have any other ideas that have worked well for you? Feel free to share those in the comments section or chat with me on Twitter.
Posted: 04.06.11
Minchala:
Re: tip #9 – BRILLIANT.
For clients that have physical offices, see if they’re willing to hold workshops for local colleges on whatever their area of expertise is. So for example, a tech company specializing in database management can hold a workshop for the local Comp. Sci. students. This query is a good place to start lookin at what kind of events get companies listed in university event calendars:
event calendar AND workshop AND resume OR interview intitle:computer intitle:department inurl:.edu
Swap out [computer] for whatever dept. is most relevant to the client. If you’re creative enough, the link might cost you a couple pizzas, some soda and some of your client’s time. This works even better if your client is hiring anyway ;-)
Nice work here, sir!
AaronH:
Like the previous commenter I also latched onto #9 – Great tactic. We may have to talk about how to get Hoops For Hope out there for this year’s tourney!
Napoleon Suarez:
@ David – Thanks for the tip! Also a GREAT idea. People would be surprised at how far something as small as office space and some pizzas can go.
@ Aaron – Anything Hoops for Hopes needs from a web perspective, I can handle it. Can’t make any promises with my performance on the court this year, though. Those high school kids schooled us last year :(
Ryan B:
I really like the idea of sponsoring a little league team, now that’s thinking outside the box. I’m still a little sad that our market has been so saturated that we have to resort to these type of things to get links. Even if it wasn’t, I think I would still do that one though.
Napoleon Suarez:
@ Ryan – I like that one, too. It involves the human element. I genuinely believe that people who do good things, will receive double. It’s something that I would do even if there was nothing for me to gain. Thanks for checking out the post!
Adrian Drysdale:
Number 9 is a killer of an idea. Sponsor next years events at a discount rate AND get the link up a year in advance. Genius!
Garret Akerson:
Great post! #9 is genius. @ Minchala great idea on opening up your doors for a local student club.
Kate Morris:
Nine is just awesome.
Napoleon Suarez:
@Adrian/Garrett/Kate – Yea, #9 was a secret I was almost not willing to share, but so many people in the community like yourselves have given me some great tips, it would have been a crime to hold that one in. Let me know if these tips work out for any of you.
Geordie Romer:
Some great ideas here. Sponsoring non-profits is a great way to get fantastic links. We have a local ski club that runs xc ski trails and one of their high PR pages is for “current conditions”. Local NPR stations often have arts or events calendars which can also be another nice link if you have an event to promote.
Napoleon Suarez:
Good ideas, Geordie. I’ll be sure to look into your ideas.
Dev Basu:
#9 is a head-smacking tip Napoleon. When we start working with enough new clients in a particular city, we literally draw up a who’s who of link prospects ranging from top blogs, to sports teams, and universities or non profits local to the city. Then applying #9 to their annual events, walks, runs, fundraisers and other such events is an awesome way to bring local high page rank link relevance w/o competing with the spam the competitors throw up.
Napoleon Suarez:
That “who’s who” of link prospects is KEY. It’s something that I have been polishing for my clients. Doing all the prospecting up front and them breezing through the list increases efficiency as opposed to “winging it” every day/week/month. Thanks for checking out the blog!
Jason Acidre:
Last tip – GENIUS!
I have a similar type of content that was just published 3 days ago, and I think all of the ones I’ve listed there were overran by the last tip. That is something that I really have to try on my own outreach! Great stuff Napoleon.
John Monahan:
Some really thought-provoking items in this post, thank you very much. It heartens me that linkbuilding doesn’t have to be evil or spammy, but can even be helpful to the community when sponsoring things.
Re: the last comment, do you typically let clients pick and choose from the list of link targets? Sorry if that’s a bit too specific to divulging your strategy but I’m very curious.
Napoleon Suarez:
@John Monahan: Whenever we are doing sponsorships, we always ask for the client’s approval. We want to make sure that we represent their brand in a way that works for them. That said, we would submit a prioritized list of targets to the client along with a brief explanation of why we think the link is valuable. Sometimes we get push back, but after a while, we start to understand the targets that the client is more willing to approve and we alter our research a bit. Thanks for checking out the blog!
Napoleon Suarez:
Thanks for checking the blog out, Jason. Care to share the link to your post? I’d like to give it a read.