I've been running an experiment with some dark-hatted links for several months, consistently hoping Google will catch them and remove their value. So far... Nothing. Well, except top 3 rankings for all the anchor text pointed at those pages. Google's webspam team has all the incentive, brainpower and money in the world, yet their bets seem to be centered firmly on Google+ and the social graph eventually subsuming the "natural" results with those biased to what our friends and connections share/+1. Fine. I get it. Link buying isn't going away, no matter how much we wish it would.
Even if link buying is working in the short-term and webspam's being less aggressive, I still think it's a waste of money for three reasons:
- Rankings are tactical: Earning your way to the top rankings is awesome, because it brings with it the branding, familiarity, trust, social sharing and dozens of other positive marketing signals that "earned" links carry. Spam and paid links just give you some more traffic (and not even as much as a trusted brand could earn in the same position). Conversion rates are lower than your peers, and the secondary traffic benefits from other sources, word-of-mouth, etc. never come into play.
- It's Overpriced: My wife's travel site gets offers for several hundred dollars to put in a few links on a single post, and that's not even an efficient market like those created by professional link sellers and link platforms. Playing the link buying game in the big leagues takes thousands to tens of thousands of dollars each month
- There's Always Risk: You're already familiar with the horrific pain of Google's Kafka-esque penalties, but maybe you're banking on not getting hit, given their relative ineffectiveness over the past couple years. Problem is, Google+ has created two new kinds of risk for link spammers. The first is that social search results, which have virtually no ties to the link graph, will overwhelm "natural" results and make those purchased links largely useless. The second is that Google+ gains enough momentum and data to leverage for webspam analysis. If you've been pointing lots of links at sites and pages that earn no social traction, get ready to feel some pain. Maybe you're risk-tolerant enough to scoff off both of these, but I don't think Google+ is going anywhere, and I give them even-odds to have a social content/sharing graph big enough to pull off both within 24 months.
"Blah, blah, blah, I've heard your white hat evangelism before, Rand" Yeah, you have. Fair enough. So how about instead of just warning about what not to do, I give you somewhere to spend all those earmarked-for-spam dollars.
Here's some rough calculations on link purchasing in a moderately competitive vertical:
- Ranking goal: single keyword phrase plus some slight modified phrases
-
Required: minimum of 50 unique root domains
- 35 will be one-time payments, but are relatively low quality, $100 is the average price (like I said, low quality)
- 15 will require ongoing payments to maintain the link, $100/month (on average) will probably do it
- Total cost over 12 months: ($100*35)+($100*12*15) = $21,500
So, for $21,500, you can probably buy your way into the top 3 rankings for a moderately competitive phrase in a vertical like niche travel, low-volume e-commerce products, etc. Many black hats I know would argue they can get it cheaper, and they can, but that's usually because they own networks and properties or have relationships for which they wouldn't pay directly. A marketing guy working in-house at a brand has none of the connections, no networks of spamfarms, nothing except dollars and a business model that can turn $21.5K in spammy links into $100K in CLTV at 50% margins for a net of $28.5K.
Now let's try an alternative: Buying a blog.
Say you're LastWear Clothing (a site one of my favorite Moz engineers, Marty, particularly likes). They could buy some links to key pages (in spite of all the many good reasons not to) and try to get rankings for queries like men's hakama or womens underbust corset. There's a small amount of existing search query demand, and they're one of the only sources on the web selling those precise garments, so there's a good chance that would turn into sales.
But, let's try another thought experiment. I'll head over to Google Reader and run a search for "steampunk" (the aesthetic of LastWear's clothing):
The second site that pops up has a blog with 6,647 subscribers... And it's talking about the fashion of steampunk! I think we're on to something.
The Steampunk Workshop blog has thousands of subscribers, and they're already clear proponents of LastWear (I know, at this point you're thinking I planned all this from the start, but I swear, it just fell into place as I was searching/writing). That Workshop site is also running ads on the sidebar and between posts, which suggests an attempt at monetization. While not every site like this is a potential option, many are likely to be interested in an acquisition.
Here's one way I might structure it:
- Steampunk Workshop moves their blog to LastWear.com/blog
- They continue blogging about all the things they normally would - no editorial interference or direction needed
- LastWear helps with a more professional design, subscription buttons, some marketing polish, etc. to help the blog earn more traffic, visibility and fans
- In exchange for the move, LastWear offers a monthly stipend to the blogger(s) and a lump sum payment at the end of 3 years. After those 3 years, they own the blog and the content therein, and both parties can decide how they'd like to proceed with the relationship.
If LastWear went down this road, I can promise two things; #1) they'll get far greater short and long term ROI than buying links and #2) it will be less expensive in the long run.
To my mind, this is a no-brainer. When you buy a blog or any form of online community, you're not simply acquiring links, you're getting:
- An engine for brand building and indirect customer acquisition
- An ongoing methodology to pull in links, tweets, shares, +1s, likes, etc.
- Brand evangelists who will help expand your reach and credibility
- A PR opportunity like few others, even in fields where PR is hard to come by (acquisitions are talked-about, blogged-about, and make the news, even those of relatively small blogs)
- Content that's already been proven to attract an audience
- All the organic signals that search engines love to see - from links to social to usage to content to branding
I honestly don't understand why this problem exists:
It makes you want to yell, "Why don't you just go get married already?!"
Here's five questions I'd ask brands considering online marketing to answer before choosing link purchasing tactics over a blog investment strategy:
- Which is more likely to be scalable in the long term?
- Which is more likely to work across multiple channels (content, social, SEO, referring links, etc)?
- Which carries a greater risk->reward ratio?
- Which is more likely to increase conversion rate and customer lifetime value?
- Which is more likely to earn you accolades from your community and which is more likely to earn you a rankings penalty one morning when you really need to hit your quarterly traffic numbers?
To be fair, there's plenty of challenges and hoops to jump through in these types of transactions and some won't work out. But, I see a huge disconnect between those who are naturally earning all the signals engines say they want (blogs and online communities) vs. those need them (commercial sites) and no reason the two can't co-mingle. If you're a marketer looking to invest dollars into earning a presence in the search, social and web world, you can either build it yourself or you can buy it. I hope to see lots of dollars flowing to the content pioneers who've already proven themselves effective earners of inbound marketing signals -- the bloggers.
p.s. In the future, I hope to cover this topic in more depth and detail and provide tools and methodologies to structure discovery, transactions, value-creation, etc. but for now, I hope this post offers at least a little inspiration and an alternative use for capitol that can do far more good in the hands of bloggers than fly-by-night spam operations.
This strategy was executed on Fashionsalade.com. A fashion site that consists of moving popular bloggers over to their website. unsuprisingly they have 33% of visitors coming from SERPS but the majority is coming from referral sites due to the nature of the blog content.
They now have a network of bloggers who write for them and their large following came with them. subsequently they now have an incredible infrastructure for both links and visitors. After 12 months they are now into the millions of monthly visitors primarily due to this strategy.
I really like the idea of this type of strategy - excellent post Rand and thank you Mike for giving a real example of how this strategy has actually been successful for a brand! The potential results are far greater than purely buying some links - that is very clear!
Awesome..thanks for the real life example! Rand great concept, keep them coming!
I think you mean https://fashion-salad.com/.
The idea is quite brilliant, Rand, and here in Spain I've seen it working well especially in all related to women fashion and makeup, with several video bloggers moving their vlog inside a major eCommerce site or even Entertainment one (as it could be a television site)
My biggest concern is about the community reaction to the "brandization" they are subject to.
Hence, maybe a wise tactic should be to become part of that community first and then, jus when you a highly reputated also as a community member, you may try to propose this kind of acquisition.
I say this because there's nothing more destructive for a brand than having a pissed off community.
We are in talks with the 2nd largest industry site with 400,000 users and 4M uniques per month.
The intention is collaboration by being provided a space on their site whereby we will be able answer questions relating to our niche that user audience will have. In return their is scope for SEO i.e. backlinks and for the brand to engage more freely with our target audience and build trust and reputation.
For us this will hopefully be a win for the consumer
that is surely a great alternative to "buy" a community.
Hey Rand,
Great post and idea.
Some logistics to consider of course are the transfer of those assets as well as deep level SEO, redirect, and user-based confusion.
I feel there will be some short-term pain, but longer-term gain for a large corporation that can afford the transition in terms of both time and money.
Some things to consider outside of logistics:
- The ability to continue to monetize the platform if it is known to be "selling out" to a brand -- niche sites often have steadfast users that hate corporate tie-ins.
- Continued buy-in from the current owners: Once the sale has been made, even with earn out bonuses and clauses, the owners are almost disincentivized to continue driving hard with the same quality of content they had before.
- Would Google consider it buying links if you kept the sites separate (for those previously mentioned logistical problems), while “sponsoring” the acquired sites and plastering links and ads all over the acquired site?
A possible solution to this dilemma would be if the budget allowed and the ROI was provable, to bring on the current owner/operator to take over content/inbound marketing for the acquirer.
This would create a win-win scenario where the “starving” blog owner wouldn't have to worry about paying the bills anymore, while also providing the acquiring company a fully vested, inspired and fresh partner that could focus on what they are good at without worrying about the "other stuff".
There are some huge synergies here, but some more color on the how-to would make this idea more polished and actionable.
I hope the above thoughts help you think about this from all angles.
Chris
All great points - I agree there's a lot of work and thinking that needs to go in to a transaction like this, and I hope to spend some time exploring those in a future post (or perhaps someone else will do so, and I can just link to it). :-)
I read this post and created a post that I will be releasing soon on topic of what you should think about before making a blog purchase check it out you might like it seoblogmaster.com
Dude, stop linking to yourself. Can someone ding him?
Chris--we take that exact approach at MovableMedia...we get a group of bloggers to take on inbound marketing for their content on a site hosted at the brand. We pay them based on audience. And they love it--they get paid upwards of $500 a post, and the brand gets their audience.
The risk/challenge here is can you convert those bloggers into brand proponents without alienating them and their audience. Too much control and you can kill the blog, too little oversight and you've got nervous managers getting twitchy at the prospect of damage to their brand.
As with any marriage, it makes sense to really know who you're getting into bed with before you make a commitment - for both parties sake.
This isn't going to be an option for every market either, especially business-to-business where there is zeo social awareness or interest in what you do.
Lots of discussion of ROI without examining the costs of acquiring this blog. How can this be a no-brainer. What if this blog wants a reasonable $50k per year for 3 years to sit their and blog for your company/their blog. What if they want $75k per year or $100k per year.
Now we are talking about $150k vs $64.5k to rank well in your niche clothing line with the hopes that social signals carry them on for years to come.
What is the value of 6600 subscribers. They only do .7 posts a day... when did they get these subscribers, what is their current rate of subscriber growth. Are we sure this blog wasnt popular in the past and now is fading away.
Its a nice theory but this is a major business decision not simple SEO audit.
Maybe instead of buying stuff, we should start by convincing Lastwear to not use 'Home page' as their homepage title tag.
I think thats the point: this is a long term strategic investment in your business and community, with payoffs that go far beyond simple seo rankings.
I do agree however that we are probably not comparing apples to apples in terms of costs/valuation.
+1 for home page title tag. :)
I must say i'm in agreement here. I'm one of the in-house guys referred to in the article and I can tell you that we don't have the extra money or time it would take to put this idea into motion. It does sound great but why do this when we can build a relationship with bloggers and other sites for free or at least MUCH cheaper to build our reputation and ranking. This seems like it would be much easier for larger companies or niche blog and e-mag sites.
Good post. You could also employ copywriters to work fulltime on producing content using this money and build up your own blog niche sites. Thats a lot of content. You could quickly get them turned on with social and developing link bait geared content,
How exactly are we determining the value of a blog? Traffic? Subscribers? Social network presence?
I am pretty much agree with what you are saying and if you still think Black Hat SEO is working and people are winning business by following these tactice. my question is 'How can i still keep doing ethical SEO and keep losing?'
p.s your wife's website got no. 1 rank for 'My wife's travel site' and you know why :)
I've always found it interesting how the first comment on a post can shape discussion in the rest of the comments and how the sentiment of that first comment influences thumbs here on the Moz blog.
I enjoyed reading through your ideas here, Rand. This line was especially powerful, "...If you've been pointing lots of links at sites and pages that earn no social traction, get ready to feel some pain." I think you're bang on with this prediction as we're already familiar with other check and balance scenarios in the algorithm.
You might be over-simplifying the ability of commerical properties to buy up blogging domains. I've studied some of the website sale sites and found them to be overrun with bait-and-switch and spam. One-to-one negotiations, where I seek out a website and make an offer, seem inefficient.
I can't wait to see how this topic plays out in your future posts. Keep 'em coming.
I think the theory is very sound, but often the logistic involved can be quite a bit more complex and problematic than the post suggests (if you go down the route of transferring a site and users etc onto a subfolder). I think it can become a big problem when you consider your letting someone else piggy back on your own brand under their control - if your value your brand, a throw the dummy out the pram moment from your new subsite owner could seriously damage your own site/brand.Having bought a few commnities in the past and tried to work them into something similar to what you suggest, I know how difficult and precious owners, mods etc can be - they see you as the big bad commercial outsider "who can butt off", so you really have to tread very carefully, and it can end up being a totally nightmare when one of them decides to drop the dummy.
I'm with you on all your points - but I'd be very cautious about thinking it as simple as ABC - all to often there will be a breakdown in relationships and you suddenly end up with a nightmare situation where you have a whole community set on causing as much disruption to your main business as possible - even if you are trying to be helpful and your motive genuine - they will not see it like that - you will be the big bad wolf who has come to take over "their" community for nothing more than commercial gain. One quick example of how this went wrong - I bought a large sports forum with the aim of integrating it into my own site, there was so much politics going on about this from the community members, I had to be totally hands off and leave the community just as it was and pay for the hosting for them. After a few years a VC start-up (with the backing of many sporting celeb's and a lot of cash) came along and thought they could buy this community to kick start their own site (very much like you suggested) - I watched as they tried to become more closely integrated, lost user, ending up in public fights..........and went bust after 6 months.
So although I think the idea is sound, I do think you can end up with a wolf in the room. I also look value that people want for such sites - people who are not in business seem to generally have some totally rediculous idea of what sites/businesses are worth - and as soon as you mention the word "buy" they think that they are not going to have to work for the rest of their lives. If you look at what the websites going on Flippa go for, I find it utterly unbelieveable - crap wordpress sites with illiteral english and a few hundred span links going for 5 figure sums - its mental! (I swear that most buyers must be school kids with more of daddy's pocket money than brain cells - and the sellers being equally young kids from the far east).
If I had the money you suggested $21.5K - here is what I would do:$500 - Wordpress Blog + Decent Skin and a bit of design $5475 - (365 x$15) - 1 decent quality article per day for a year, done by a decent writer (I can get very good quality at this rate.)$5460 - (182 x $30) - 182 decent quality guest blogs written on other sites in your niche.$1000 - Quality directory submission
That leaves me with $9,000 for any other promotion such as PR, marketing etc etc
TL;DR? Buy up blogs, Monetize if not already monetized, ??? Profit.
Greyhat Translation: Buy up sites so you have your own network.. then you can stop paying greyhats for links on their networks :P
YAY!
Kris - no offense, but did you miss the bit around how buying an existing blog with followers, fans and signals builds far more value than just the links? A network of sites with links on them won't do any of that. They won't boost your brand's likability, help your conversion rate, introduce new potential customers who have overlapping interest with your product, bring positive social signals or usage data to the domain.
If you're just looking for an alternative gray-hat method to get the rankings, OK, but that kind of shallow, singular, short-term focus is exactly what I'm arguing against (or rather, what I'm arguing is not nearly as valuable as owning an authentic, fan-building, inbound-signal-earning blog).
Rand I think you are misunderstanding what Im saying actually. Dumb greyhats buy crap sites. Smart ones buy legit sites. You can have both. If I buy a decent community site I can get all of what you mentioned up there, and go back through older posts and slap in a few links where they make sense.
I feel like I'm still not making my point clear... I'm saying a great blog that's proven the ability to draw in traffic/links/ subscribers/fans/social on your domain is far, far more valuable than merely a few links pointing to some pages you want to rank.
All the brand signals, the community of fans, the metrics, etc. on a separate site that's merely part of a link network does none of the good things (other than some anchor text links) I'm describing above. And I believe that over the last few years and certainly going forward, building a reputable brand on the web, in search results, on social, via word-of-mouth, etc. is massively more useful than merely moving up in the rankings.
Sigh. I give up. The point that I'm trying and basically have been trying to get across for going on oh.. 2-3 years now is its not black and white. You can build a great brand/product/site/followership AND still manipulate the link graph at the same time. I feel like you and a few others have it in your mind that anyone who manipulates the link graph MUST have a crap site/product/brand and basically fail at genuine marketing. And while Im not at liberty to disclose this client or that client I can tell you some of the most killer brands out there are doing BOTH not one or the other.
?? This is a whole new subject, and not something I disagreed with in the post, nor in the comments above. In fact, if anything, this post is suggesting subtlely that many are, indeed, investing in both white hat and black hat SEO (and the latter is, sadly, working).
But how it's a rebuttal to the discussion started with your comment 3 replies up is puzzling to me. I thought we were talking about the value of putting the blog on your own site vs. building a network of gray hat sites.
Hi Rand,
Am I to understand that if the blog owners do not agree to re-locate to your domain, any sort of investment will not be beneficial to your site? Basically, does the idea that you document above only work if the blog is hosted on your own domain, or is it possible to reap the same benefits if the blog is still hosted on its own domain?
That is acutally the discussion Kris and Rand are having, Dan.
Rand is talking about "buying" a blog and community for your website and brand, when the brand doesn't already have one beyond simple customer transactions. So yes, Rand is saying the blog owners "relocate" and become an integral part of the company's website/brand.
Kris seems to be focusing more on the external aspect of purchasing blogs, but leaving them as they are... on their own demain, and keeping the purchased blog's own "branding" intact as it is. Instead of integrating the blog into your website, you just sprinkle little goodies like links throughout the blog in places like old posts and such.
Both ideas have their benefits. Rand's idea, however, has the added benefit of growing your brand's community strength, and not just pure ranking strength.
@Frank - I love both ideas but I agree with you about Rand's premise being more valuable. Having a healthy blog on your website, at least in my opinion, is worth more than having an external blog that you own that also links to you in careful places.
That said, there's no reason why you can't do both. =)
Frank, you actually bring up a great point. You are saying if you don't have a blog, buy a blog and blogger. What if you already have a blog? Is Rand suggesting hosting an additional blog on your site? But then this could cause blog conflict. And how many of these additional blogs should one host on their site?
I like the suggestion that Rand has here. I can see some great potential. But I can also see some problems. Giving a blogger the company or brand's voice could cause some additional concerns. So you impose rules. Yuck. And then you have followers that see the blog as a corporate sellout. ...just a few potential problems. Plus blogging for money could change the blogger. Tricky.
The point is that the blogs are hosted on another domain. This is the only way you get the benefits of backlinks/social weight from another entity.
Yes...BUT....the value of 301'ing all the link juice from the existing blog pages to your own domain is HUGE compared to the value of just linking to your own domain from the blog, and leaving it where it is.
Let's say the existing blog has 300 domains linking to it. Relocating the blog bumps your unique domains linking count by 300 (well, more likely something like 250, as there probably is some overlap). Just acquiring the blog and leaving it where it is, and linking to your domain from it: +1 unique domain linking (actually in Rand's example, +0 since they already linked to it).
Dan - The wonderful thing about 301 redirects and the canonical tag is that the original domain name and the original URL structure can still be used, you just need someone technically minded enough with SEO to setup redirects so that the original blog's URL, steampunkworkshop.com in Rand's example, is now a vanity URL that points to domain.com/blog.
My worry, like you said, is that if the blog owner doesn't want to lose all control of their blog, and doesn't want to become "an employee" of the company, that they then create an opportunity for drama. What happens if the blogger wants to talk about a product that is unrelated or even competing to the sponsoring companies product, etc.
From an SEO standpoint, talking about competing products only strengthens the value of that content, because it's a chance for more people to come into the blog and thus be turned onto the brand, but at the same time, you're buying some editorial control over that blogger, or at least you should, to not risk content now on your CORPORATE site to suddenly not be on message.
Rand's idea is asking a lot of faith to be put into the hands of this blog owner, who may or may not like the idea of towing the company line once he's done spending the sponsoring companies money.
Though I guess Rand addresses that as well in that he gets a lump sum final payment after three years, a decent motivator to keep the blogger in line.
Love this!
Hey Rand,
It's actually relatively easy to combine black hat link building methods for raw ranking, and still get the social buzz, and building of a community in a relatively scalable way that creates genuine value (word of mouth/click).
One way is to buy links, then point social signals at those links. For example, I can buy likes, tweets, and +1's from real people on https://fiverr.com/facebook_agency/get-500-real-likes-to-your-website-url-blog-fanpage-or-vote-to-your-contest-and-tweet-your-website-to-my-4000-real-twitter-followers
An SEO can pay someone to promote a link, SM profile, blog post or anything else to their facebook friends, or twitter followers. A certain percentage of those people will engage the content, and then choose to subscribe.
Granted the quality is of these social profiles is low, and much of it is automated, but you can get your content in front of real people, and build a real community for pennies ($5 for every 2000 or so social media impressions). This is a method that scales and results in real people engaging your brand on a continued basis.
If you add to that real copywriting skills to retain people via email marketing, and solid community management skills to make people talk about you in social media channels, then you have a black hat method of feeding the funnel which results in increasing conversion rates (if the brand is running CRO) and increasing CLTV (if the company is sophisticated enough to approach marketing this way).
"Your smarter then the average bear"
*You're
I'm not sure going after a top ranking on a high volume term would be something I'd call shallow or short term.
A good, non-brand term can introduce hundreds if not thousands of new potential customers to your brand every month.
If your site/content/product delivers and you have a strong social call to action, you'll likely boost your social signals as well. You might even turn a chunk of them into RSS subscribers and add them to your community.
Just by ranking #1 for a handful of solid terms, you can go from almost nothing to a fairly sizeable following/community in a relatively short window.
Some of us do spam for the long term ;)
Ian - When you add to that industries where referral and repeat customers are everything, short term gain can make a world of difference, you're absolutely right. I know plenty of businesses here locally that would love a brief injection of customers, even if they couldn't maintain the flow, they'd leverage the customers they did get to get even more.
Sometimes a short term strategy is a winning strategy.
Think about it this way, the point of SEO is not ranking #1, but helping to increase your business' ROI to "#1". This post shows a brilliant way to increase ROI by using the SEO's tools.
I buy sites and build sites that have communities and I use grey hat. Have not seen much benefit from Google plus outside the SEO and Developer Job Board space. It seems to me that Rand and most of the other speakers at Link Love (who I think ROCK!) are all doing some form of Grey hat. Rand's suggestion above is link manipulation in another form. Its a great idea, yes but its just a work around for buying links. White hat is putting up a site on the web with great content and then emailing, calling and tweeting in hopes of getting links. All the contests, give aways, pay for placements, site buying, "guest posting" and heavily promoted link bait with a 301 redirect after the links are in place are grey. Moreover, Rands math is wrong. There are a few guys out there who can rank you at the top of page one for just about any keyword on the plannet for about 5K a month. Rand's ROI makes no sense. The correct comparision is against the cost of Adwords traffic. I have several customers that spend 250K a month on AdWords -- they are in niches that noboby blogs about - they cannot buy a blog, hold a contest, or make a cute infographic because what they sell is completely boring. What they can do is spend a few K a month and get traffic at about 1/10th the cost of AdWords. The ROI on grey hat is INSANE - its not 130% as Rand suggests, its closer to 500%. Furthermore as Rand well knows ALL tactics have a limited shelf life, this game changes every day. When Google plus is a major force there will be plenty of Google plus spam, bribes, grey markets, contests, etc. Google is a business, they make rules that work for them, they break rules when it suits them (recent Safari hack). I have clients that I would never do anything but white hat for, I also have clients that I tell up front "you cannot compete in this space unless you use tactics that may get you banned from Google" I tell them that because its the truth. And I am paid to tell the truth.
If they are in a niche that no one is blogging about, why not take some of that 250k and hire someone to write content for THEIR blog?
Because the best writers in the world can only do so much with a boring product.
Give me a way to market circuit breakers to an audience that is looking for nothing but a buy it now button and the lowest price. Any fluff you add to that site to make it more appealing from a content perspective is just an annoyance to an engineer that doesn't go in for that social media crap.Thats why I love this whole post and the comments in it, it addresses a real black hat tactic, and brings it to a bit greyer place that is worth more and violates Google less. I love it.
To be honest, I like this post so much, I'm surprised it's not a session at LinkLove.
See this is where I think infographics can come in handy with links/social shares etc.
Take circuit breakers as the example. You're not going to create an infographic on circuit breakers persae but you can create one around an industry it is heavily involved in.
circuit breakers > home electrical > home renovations > building industry
The graphic could be about the rise or decline in new homes and renovations being completed in your country and directly correlate that back to the declining/increasing number of circuit breakers being purchased. Then go onto the brand you sell and show how much of a market share they have.
This in turn gives you the ability to promote your info to an industry with tons of verticals.
I agree, it is verrrrrry hard to do for boring industries, but it has been done before. Here's an infographic on an appliance parts website: https://www.partselect.com/JustForFun/How-Big-Is-GE-Infographic.aspx
Quite ok with your views.
Even i have seen that having 3-4 links from a high PR does a lot of work many a times.
I have seen some SEO companies who own many web properties and their optimization starts with creating links for a site and they are performing fine.
Through pure white hat tactics it takes months to build quality links and till that time your client has a feeling that you do not know the SEO bit. Really a pain area for white hat marketeers.
If you let the creative juices flow, your "boring" clients websites can churn out incredibly viral content. Look at OraBrush, BlendIt and similar boring products with very effective and engaging viral video and other campaigns.
Could the root of debate/ misunderstanding be 'TL;DR?'You guys are both right but you are talking about different strategies here.
I am not sure I agree with the pricing you have done up around purchasing links. The example you have given seems to be part of a low cost blog network (maybe I am wrong on that), but those kind of networks can be used for less than $100 per month giving you access to a lot of links.
I think in the long term there can be little argument against moving towards an inbound strategy that is rich on content. But a lot of sites/businesses can't afford to look at the long term and while these kind of link tactics still get rewarded by Google, making the transition to content/inbound is going to be a lot harder to make. Purchasing an add on blog as per above isn't as simplistic as just redirecting it over. In fact, if you can afford to buy a high value blog and maintain the writers, you may be best allocating those resources to building your own content strategy. Piggy backing of another site may bring a world of pain in terms of their adherence to your brand guidelines and not alienating their core audience, who may not be overly happy with the transition. Also, as Richard points out, the cost of a site is always inflated if you make an approach directly.
I also tend to agree with Kris. I don't think it's a case of either grey hat links from networks or a great inbound strategy, the fact is many sites still need both. Inbound is great for creating all the signals you have mentioned, but unfortantely this doesn't always translate into rankings on target key phrases that are usually transactional and mapped against product pages.
As others are saying the theory is great, but where this often falls down is the practice.
Once you approach the counter party you often find that $ signs suddenly light up their eyes, and the blog that makes pennies from Adsense suddenly has a huge value based on nothing but the approach you've just made.
It seems to simply be human nature, but self-valuation of your own work never seems to be based on economic value. This is especially so when the content creator has put passion into their work. I can understand that, but it doesn't make it any easier to justify silly multiples of earnings or even future earnings. The sad truth is that most content online will never earn its creator a decent economic rent.
That line you drew could just as easily be labelled "[...] that greed prevents the parties crossing".
Agree - particularly in the finance/insurance niches this is even more apprant. It is also difficult to get a good deal when you, the SEO, initiate the conversation. The webmaster commands the negioation.
"A marketing guy working in-house at a brand"
...Has the same problem link buying as he does contacting independant blogs/websites to buy. As a webmaster making a steady few $ on ads each month, why would he want to sell for a one off lump sum? This also puts the price up, and depending on the size, you can quickly jump into 5 figures if they are contacted by a major brand.
It would be interesting to do a case study of this, to address some of the concerns about
Great idea. I love Rand's idea in theory, but there are a few potential pitfalls I see. One is if the existing subscribers don't follow the blogger over to the new company's domain. You'd lose a lot of the added value this idea provides over simply buying links. Two is the community's reaction as you said.
Anyone know of a company that has done this, either successfully or not?
Wow, brilliant post Rand! It's so good I don't want to share it!
Theoretically, I really like the idea, Rand. It definitely seems like there are some niches out there that can allow for good synergy between a blog and brand site.
However, I think a lot of practical impediments could arise. Remember what happened when Wayne and Garth aligned with Noah's arcade? Total infringement on their creativity and Rob Lowe was all over Wayne's girl - no bueno. Also, what about the blogger's fanbase? Could a change or integration influence the moods of fans? I remember reading how Bob Dylan caught some flack from his folk fans after 'plugging in' at the Newport Festival in 65.
But in all seriousness, it could work well in the right situation. There's no reason a brand could not contact a popular blog to come to some sort of agreement; and, in reading your points, it does seem more beneficial than (apples to apples) link purchasing. Thanks
While I appreciate the sentiment of the post (particularly from a short vs long term stance), I think tactics like this are always going to be more trouble than they're worth until Google starts penalising the alternative.
An alternative which, as you say, is working in the here and now, and will likely continue to provide value (ROI) for at least another 1-3 years.
And for every perfect world scenario like the one illustrated, there's probably 999 with brand or market barriers preventing this from getting off the ground.
Good idea for the merchant but perhaps not so good for the blogger. Why do we blog (I have a food blog myself)? Because it is our passion and its ours. Lots of bloggers do it because it is their way of owning something they love.
By selling it (or a rent-to-own model like you suggest), the blog is no longer mine. In fact, I am now an employee with less and less ownership of the blog.
This model does not align incentives. If you're a blogger who just cares about the $$, fine - maybe it does. But I'd argue that many bloggers see the money as a nice bonus, but do it for the joy of having their own little business.
I think this depends on who the buyer is. If the buyer has a strong and sexy brand, then that might be incentive enough?
Ie: What if Gordon Ramsey or Iron Chef America approached you to buy your blog, and you would continue blog under their brand, get to participate in their ecosystem, etc...? A lot of food bloggers could see that as a huge personal opportunity if the proposed relationship was right.
Surely the problem then is that if the blogger recognises the brand, or even just does a little research online, their price idea ends up with a few more zeroes on the end of it, and then it's not worthwhile for the company to pursue (purely from an SEO perspective). From a marketing/branding perspective it might be fine depending on the brand.
But from the ideas suggested in the post, it's a very fine line between genuine partnership and actual sponsorship, which does boil down to buying links.
There are huge international design sites I see with direct, dofollow advertising links on every page that don't get penalised. You have to pay to be listed in the Yahoo directory. It's confusing that some types of paid links are 'ok', or perhaps turned a blind eye to.
Good timing with this question! Video here: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/matt-cutts-explains-how-google-handles-paid-directories-video/40511/
Rand,
I think a lot of folks here make the same point I would--that when you buy a blog, in the buyer's mind you are buying the author, their influence, their audience, their persona. And that is how it will be priced. But in fact - what you are buying a year out -- is the content and links- - because as soon as your brand takes over the site, a lot of those things you thought you were buying will disappear.
A Better Alternative
I think you are on the right track, but consider this alternative. Agree we can forget buying links... we think that what should happen is that the steampunk blogger (and say 10 others--corset blogger, vintage blogger, etc) should start creating custom content for a dedicated content site at the corset company (steampunk post of the week). The bloggers get paid for their content, but primarily for the audience they bring, which is tracked and shared with the blogger. The blogger gets tools to promote on facebook, twitter, blogs, etc, and the whole group of bloggers interpromotes among each other. This approach also gives the corset company:
I wrote on this post in more detail at MovableMedia but I am removing the link because apparently this raises a red flag. So go there if you want.
Most people to whom I've suggested this idea have seemed to respond territorially, asking questions like "why would I buy someone else's blog instead of hire someone to write my own?"
I believe most objections to the brilliant strategy of buying blogs stem from two camps:
I think it has all to do with Control...we see a lot of brands that are perfectly willing to give up the ego part to a featured author, but don't want to give up the ability to cut that person loose if they suddenly go rogue.
Rand! More of this! This is the kind of stuff we crave from SEOmoz.
There's a lot of posts about theory and mindset and processes, whatever, this is like, hey, do X, it'll cause Y, and you'll gain Z. I love it.
More of this!
I can't agree more. I would simply add that there are plenty of so called high profile SEO agencies that also try to buy links on behalf of their clients and that is not only bad for the SEO industry but also for the clients they represent.
Playing nice in the sand box is plain and simple hard and take much longer. At SEOmoz you have been able to accomplish high DA and PR because you have been at it for a very long time and you build great content but in the current environment when you start from zero it takes even longer to reach high keywords rankings by doing traditional SEO. I have started a new company 16 months ago and we have published over 1600 original articles in past 16 months so i have a bit of knowledge and background in what you are describing. Oh and I was going to forget to mention that we also partnered and purchased an established blog too. Like what great minds thinks alike.
SEO is hard period.
Damn great idea Rand!Instaed of having stuff like YouMoz where you can have one or two quality posts a day, I guess you also should now buy the ready-made and established SEO blogs which could generate hundreds of posts(to hell with quality) per day linking back to you(that's the yummy part)... Inshort, create your own 'small version' content farms and aggregators...!
Rand :)
Just wanna ask something here. Many SEOs, you included, claim that linking keywords anchor texts in articles is dark-hatted. Let's see the article 3 nights in London -> anchors The City, London Hotel.
The question is how Google figures out whether it is dark hat or natural? My goal is not to fool Google, neither I am trying to offense SEOmoz, but I don't see any difference in link building between the 3 nights in London article and this paragraph from Craig Bradford blog post is SEOmoz Blog:
The fact that you couldn’t mix Schema.org and microformats or RDFa annoyed a lot of people and as @TomAnthonySEO pointed out in his HTML5 blog post, Kavi Goel from Google later said this was a mistake and they are fixing it. You can read the discussion here
The term HTML5 in anchor text pointing to a blog post. Wouldn't it be more natural to have "HTML5 blog post" from a human point of view?
On the other hand, there is an anchor text "here" in the next sentece :). Well, there is quite a difference between those two links from SEO point of view.
My question is would that be considered as a dark-hat/white-hat and why?
I think that linking in articles (if it makes sense) should not be considered as dark hat. It's just what it is and neither Google or anybody else can be 100% sure if the article writter does it for SEO or not.
What do you think?
Great idea rand, thanks for the post.
Love this post, Rand. As a sucessful blogger myself with followers and a solid commuity it baffles me that we're not approached by companies more often. They spend tons of dough on trying to get their own followers, creating content and raising awareness when we're pumping their stuff for free on the blogs already! A buyout is a perfect option, a partnership is a second option and some blogs are such big fans and would be so flattered to be approached by one of the big boys that they'd pump stuff pro bono.
Great post.
You could get the same amount of links that was mentioned for $50 easily, and you don't need special connections. Jus the ability to do Google searches...
Don't know why such a 'pro' would think it would cost $21k for a few hundred high quality links
Spot on! ^^
IdcX
Great post! I honestly never thought of buying a blog but it makes a lot of sense. That's why they pay you the big bucks. ;)
By somewhat incredible coincidence I'm selling two blogs at the moment by live auction via flippa. It's a first time for me. They would fit Rand's strategy approach well since they both are directed to specific communities. I think this all makes a lot of sense.
But for pressure of other activities, I wouldn't sell either since they by now have each developed a great deal of rich content. If you're into the mobile web/iPhone/Android smartphones scene or interested in personal finance for seniors then one or the other might be just what you're looking for. :)
ieee.org did this a few years ago when they bought https://botjunkie.com and turned it into https://spectrum.ieee.org/blog/automaton
What a great idea! Paying for a blog rather than just adwords or other forms of links will not only build you the links you wanted in the first place, but if that blog is moved to your site, you are in essence building more content which will help your natural ranking. Brilliant!
@cnoble these were my thoughts exactly, been down this road before as well. losing the community after becoming a "corporate sellout" would be my biggest fear as a niche blogger as well
We tried this tactic but a word to the wise - If you think you will buy the blog throw up some links and get ranked you are missing the value - the value is to keep the blog going with great content and use the site to slowly push the sites you are marketing. (think of it like this if somone gave you seomoz for a week to run what would you do? Just push your seo company or work it in between great content?)
The question is: Is it really worth it for the bloggers to sell? And is there enough trust for the lump sum payment at the end of 3 years? Me as a blogger would not agree to that only if there is a very high amount of Dollars involved that I can see in the beginning of the 3 years period.
Funny you ask, because I just sold one of my blogs (with a big community attached) for a nice lump sum under the agreement that I would be kept on as a paid contributor.It's been happy days for me, as I've been able to keep writing and earning the same amount as I was from my affiliate links and adsense clicks at a more steady rate while being handed a nice lump sum for handing over administrative control.Call me cold and mercenary, but it's worked fine for the past 4 weeks and the community hasn't batted an eyelid.
Don't forget that in this scenario there would be a monthly stippend that would be more than what the site makes with adsense. Thats a pretty good incentive to stay on.
An interesting post Rand but as others have mentioned, what if they don't want to move to your domain?
I know this will still have value but what are the chances really of moving a blog or site over (I can't think of anyone in my market that would really want to do this).
What do you consider short term - the five years you've been saying link buying only works short term?
I think it's a really sound strategy Rand - and it's thinking a little outside the box. There's perhaps a good amount of incentive there for SEO's to actually work towards brokering a deal like this and getting paid a fee for doing so.
There are definite long term benefits, and perhaps there doesn't have to be any deal about ownership - it could just be mutually beneficial for both owners, especially in the case of affiliate sites that add a successful bloggers site to theirs, the partnership could easily monetize the bloggers site just with the affiliate commissions alone.
This makes a lot of sense. I have done a domewhat similar deal for a liposuction doctor. We brought an existing site that ranked high in the search engines for some desired keyterms. The doctor wanted to just point the domain name over, instead I convinced him to keep the site with minor modifications and a plan to increase its worth to its visitors. Of course we used it for links but the content and vistors are also very important. Analytic data suggest it was a very good buy.
Very useful article. I'm currently having a heck of a time getting incoming links to my website https://www.eugenecomputergeeks.com . Never occured to me to buy blogs, will definetely look into it. Thanks,
-Eugene Computer Geeks - Computer Repair and Web Design in Eugene, Oregon
i think the strategy of buying a blog is a new concept to me and if it can help me in speeding up my seo work at affordable price i would definitely consider this option.
C mon guys lets cut Rand some slack. There are a thousand ways to look at and solve a problem. From what I have read most of his experience has been pure white hat. Not all of us have taken that path and have focused our attention on some methods that are considered grey hat or black hat. Seomoz has some great free tools and writers that are only trying to benefit the readers with their knowledge. All in all they do a great job.
How do we make an argument to support the price we offer the blogs?
Already good to read your posts Rand and the testing you do
Interesting post and you are a pro. I have to disagree that buying links is expensive, There are many places to find links that aren't that expensive. Also in a lot of really competitve markets, it's almost impossible to get natural backlinks. In fact in most of the insurance and financial markets, the majority of the major players are buying links very effectively, and hiding them very well.
Your idea of buying established blogs is a great idea, it takes a larger budget and much more time. Also a point that I think is important. Relevance is up to the end user. If you've made enough money to afford a certain amount of your budget, to put towards buying links, than in most cases, it's due to the fact that people find you relevant and are buying your products or services.
Great post! Would you suggest to buy links if a marketer builds his own blog? To speed it up...
thanks
Do you have any tests in small countries like Denmark?
Great post but not work able for small business.... From where they are supposed to pull bucks for pushing into community purchase??
Wisely stated.
Bloody heck rand - you got more money than sense... buying the blog - but you say the links are over priced - heck how much you think they want for the blog then? If its a decent and profitable blog - would you sell it to an seo so he could pimp it around the web and reap the remaining juice that it had - killing the blog originally... also - the cost of content - omg
Your working like a dumb ass - work smarter not harder... You heard the word haggle?
If a link builder doesnt know what the link is worth and you have the budget in your bank to buy it? Why not buy it and keep the circle of SEO life in motion... Id love to see you aquire a blog for less than that 21K you seem to think is need for travel links.
Nice post but way off the point if you ask me. Just buy you links - forget about hosting it, adding content to it and maintaining it - then client leaves you - and you a load of blogs that are just... useless. lolzzz
IdcX
If you have the time, I recommend buying a blog/network. Flippa.com has so many to choose from. Owning a large network is a killer way of doing seo. Although it's frowned upon by the self-proclaimed "white hats", one way or another they do the same.
What bothers me about buying links is the fact that you won't be able to get a good night sleep.
And when you wake up in the moring, the first thing you do is check the site's ranking to see if you've been slapped by any kind of animals.
I'm reeeaaaallllyyy starting to think that buying links can cause serious health problems.
Great Post.
Great post, really liked the idea of strategies, wonderful way to differentiate. I would like to pay for those blog websites carrying high quality, because of it I will get good stuffs last year through this kind of stuff I found Cairns what a wonderful place where you can enjoy beaches, coral lagoon, fish feeding, scuba diving so many things . I got the best accommodation facility, tour package. I would suggest you must try Cairns Rainbow Resort https://www.cairnsrainbowresort.com.au/restaurant_and_bar.php beautiful rooms of resort style with private balcony at reasonable price. So don’t wait just go and see.
This highly relates to the newest mos post, regarding offering the blogger a co-operation (free SEO etc.) for having a free hand with his content. Which method would you prefer, Rand?
Basic question Rand,
I can't seem to get the subscriber amount to show up in Google reader.. What am i missing?
God bless you for sharing this.
Great new thought. Thanks for sharing it with us.
Love the concept. This would be a good opportunity for someone that could broker blog sites (and perhaps the blogger too) to companies/organizations.
Great article, now to try to put it into practice.
To me it looks like by doing this you kill the essence of a blog which is to post on free topics that people find interesting, mainly because they don't belong to any company with commercial scope, and I think that's why some blogs works very well in terms of followers and ranking, just because they're real. In addition to that I think what it is explained here is the same as buy links or pay a blogger to do something for your company. I'm actually missing the difference...
Great post - got me thinking more than any other moz post recently! And like the fact you dabble with the dark side Rand, for testing purposes.. (never for profit :) ). I've started buying up old sites recently that have become a bit neglected... pick them up for a song usually, cheaper than using Flippa and the like.
has anyone seen this: https://techcrunch.com/2012/02/22/bloomreach/ apparently this will put us SEO's out of business
I think that the company will help the search engines find Seo suck as data mining inside of our articles this wouldn't put Seo out of business but propel it because more people would want to know Seo and have seo done for them to better adapt to this new emerging data mining enterprise.
Thanks for the post on this "different" strategy.
Now I am wondering why some of the bloggers in my niche have been moved off of blogspot to folders on high-profile websites, then to folders on even higher profile sites.
I wonder how much I would have to pay to get them on my domain?
Wow what a great post. I don't think I would buy a whole blog but I would def pay for a page on a high quality blog website. This is exactly the idea behind BLOGGUESTS.COM. How many times I paid for links indirectly (directory listings, .org memberships) why not pay for placing articles in high quality blogs? Basically you pay for "renting a page in a high authority blog". Blog owners need income and they do work hard on their website. They should be able to earn money, not just YAHOO directory or .org websites that has money anyways. I paid for guest posting $5 on FIVERR before.
Thanks for the sites!
whoa! first Mike King and now Rand, the SEOmoz Blog is going HNL! (Hole nutha nevel)
Perhaps I can shed some light on why that illogical line exists between bloggers who need money and brands who need content. I was In-House at a very large company in the TV entertainment industry. I contacted a few high profile bloggers in the community and was turned away. We were trying to do just that, bring on board a professional full time blogger that had a community of followers. The problem was that the blogger feared he/she would lose credibiilty in their community by "joining" or "selling out" to a brand. While I disagreed with the risk assessment and tried to find ways to convince the blogger that it was possible to retain loyalty despite being sponsored by a brand and even moving the blog to our domain...the fear was real and deep seeded. Bloggers and community advocates have a sense of purity about them and their trust is built up over time as they prove to be not "bought and paid for" by big brands. Perhaps small brands could pull it off, like the one you mention. But do you think the Everywhereist could/would be able to do the same thing for someone like say....Expedia? Would she likely go into an arrangement like that with a big brand? How about Priceline.com....they'd have the Negotiator and the Everywhereist, a branding match made in heaven if you ask me. Anyway, I think that's a good explanation as to why that line is not so illogical.
fav part of this post though was to hear you say that you're dabbling...er....testing the dark side. I think you have to, to some degree in order to debunk myths and build credibility. It's handy to know what blackhatters do and be able to speak clearly about the differences.
Great post once again :)
If I'm to create my own blog for my industry (point of sale) ...
I started off creating a few articles here and there ...
... however nothing generated traffic
My boss insists of developing articles weekly but I feel they are just a waste of time since they'll never generate any traffic ...
... Should I focus on keywords before creating an article?
How important are the:
I believe many marketers fresh to inbound marketing and social activity struggle with the issue of ensuring their content will generate traffic.
Any tips would be greatly appreciated.
It may be helpful to take this question to the SEOmoz Q&A section.
Great post Rand. I definitely think that this can be a viable option for bloggers needing income and companies needing content.
Where I see this not working though is when the blog has built such a valuable brand for itself that moving to another domain / brand could possibly hurt it.
I have been managing 2-3 separate blogs for the past 5 years with the sole purpose / goal of consolidating them into my company site. I could have very easily pulled the trigger at any time, but I have been reluctant to do so as my blogs have built strong followings that I feel could be lost due to moving their content to a company focused website. This dilemma is for all properties I own. I can't imagine the drawn out process and headaches involved with trying to do this with separate companies / bloggers as some of the commenters above have mentioned.
I'm really curious to see how this space / option develops though. I think it could very easily become a mini startup eco-system where blogs become the new startups and companies become the new VCs.
It's really awesome that you used steampunk for an example. Huge fan and supporter!!!
If anyone here is interested in this art style, check this out: https://newevolutiondesigns.com/the-amazing-steampunk-art-of-almacan
Rand,
interesting idea of acquiring an established blog and moving it to the brand website. There is just one main problem that I see though is that a lot of those subscribers, especially the loyal ones, would be turned off by the sudden merger. This is not a company-to-company merger but rather a small mommy-papa-kinda-blog merger to a corporate type website merger. Its a nice strategy but it really depends on the kind of the website you own and the audience profile of the blog - and their willingness to stick on, after the merger.
Hey Rand, I like where you are going here. Just an FYI for you ... I'll entertain a reasonable offer. ;-)
Buying content is a need that isn't going to go away any time soon. Bloggers have influence, but its the quality of their writing that is ultimately important. Usually influence and quality within the blogosphere goes hand in hand. (Not to mention relationship building)
Thanks for publshing the article, these are a lot of the same thoughts I had when I was thinking of creating Blogger Effect. Now that Blogger Effect about to go into beta, there has been such a huge interest that we just can't wait to help bloggers and businesses get their needs met.
This a great read Rand and espcially as i this was something i had been thinking about for a while.
This is a awesome idea but folding a blogger into your brand and website could be a more difficult than just changing file folders. Couldn't they lose their following if they became to commercial. I guess it would depend on the industry.
As some others have mentioned, there are times when being short-sighted is actually smart for business. You need to look at the immediate end goal and weigh what it will take to reach that point. For example, if you're selling a poduct with a very finite time in the spotlight (political, gaming, celebrity), you need to take steps that will have fast results without long term overhead an commitment. In those cases, the last thing I want is a partner or to own another site.
Rand, I like the aquisition route but have found that most site owners want an to cash out instead of a long term partnership. I find that most people overvalue their property and are not interested in trading some control for what is essentially and allowance and a dream down the road....maybe.
If you can buy a site under the right circumstances, it can make a lot of sense. You can spend a lot of time chasing that perfect storm which is why. people buy links, comment spam, guest blog, crank out articles, etc.
Controversial tactics? On MY SEOMoz?! Fantastic!
Extreme Kudos to Rand for even putting this on the table. Kudos also to Kris for the gray hat perspective. One of the best back/forths on this site I've seen in a long time.
I agree with the sentiments of others - getting a blogger to cough up their baby is probably much easier said than done. And should this come onto your own domain? Should the acquisition be obvious? Good questions.
These are exactly the kind of conversations this industry needs.
Love it!
Well, I guess soem blogs have already done this, but they didn't moved over to the parent's comepany site. Having the blog in one place and the main site at another domain I guess it woudl cloak somehow the fact that the blog is owned by a company.
You idea is good because Google says qdf and brands need a human voice, not just a technal voice which simply throughs manufacturer details all over the place. My thoughts, blog+company will always be a good idea.
Excellent way of thinking Rand!
Fantastic post! Thanks for a whole new way of thinking :)
Hi Rand,
We run a small SEO company at India and have noticed that from 1st of Feb our many clients google ranking has been dropped. Is there any change in Google Algorithm recently..? These clients were doing good from long time and were from different industries. Also have read your below post on Google updates and don't thing so it might have impacted. Can you correct me if am not wrong or let us know what might cause it down.
https://www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-change
Nevil - I'd post that in www.seomoz.org/q (a more appropriate spot).
Excellent outside of the box thinking as always. As others have mentioned (including Rand), there are some technical challenges to overcome.
A few other ideas to brainstorm along the same lines of this idea: - Extend this to communities/forums - Could apply to social media accounts/groups/communities? - Extend this to businesses that have an overlap with your demographic/vertical but are not monitizing their customers as well as you are.
Three words. Buy. Old. Sites. (ref Greg Boser)
This is so obvious I'm surprised it took this long for you to write an article on it. At least if you buy the blog, you now have an asset, and total control of how many OBL's you have. You can then go ahead and SEO it, and of course it can provide nice linkjuice to other sites of your choice.
Great article, got everyone looking at it a different way at last :-)
Incredible post as always !! Thumbs up
I like Wil Reynolds tip based on this of buying up previous, (quality, although one could waiver on this) linked-to but expired domain, or just covering their hosting fees.
All in exchange for a lil' link.
Agree, you can get extra benefits from the blogs audience. But you aren't buying an audience. It's a permission asset that has to be earnt; a blogger could easily lose their audience if they changed or become mahoosively commercial, no?
Imagine though pairing the two ideas, buying a domain for a blogger that went out of the business, and you can use Google's index to find existing URL's, and then now that you own the domain, 301 these old URL's to your pages or your own blog posts, whatever, and any links of value that were pointing to these old blog posts, we're talking old links, valuable links, all now pass to your content.
I spend quite a bit of time in GoDaddy's Auction section and run the available auctions through OpenSiteExplorer so you can see if the domains that are available, often for like, twenty bucks, it's crazy, you can see if they have any existing authority to buy up.
It's worth a lot more to redirect the site back to you, and gain ALL of their links, than just host the site as a clone of what it was, in order to just get the single link back from them.
Although it doesn't go into the social aspect of things as you do Rand, I still feel I'd be remiss not to point out QuadsZilla's similar post from over 4 years ago: Don't Buy Links - Buy the Whole Site.
I remember when I first read that post, it completely made me rethink the whole deal... yet it seemed so obvious once you read it.
My biggest takeaway is that it is VERY important to find industry partners and create opportunities and relationships with a goal of a win-win outcome.
I would hope everyone could agree that Relevance and Influence (key aspects of this post) is more influential especially in the long-term vs spam.
Rand, I think as a part 2 to this post it might help us to see a conservative ROI calculation for engaging with these blogs as you suggest. Acquiring links has been around long enough and works. Creating a "valuation" for a link is easier for a CFO to understand.
However, a 3 year evaluation period is rough to allocate a meaningful % of our resources towards these very long-term efforts. Those of us in that situation you highlight, "with budget but no content" are likely expected to deliver in the same fiscal year.
It is useful for all of us to take a step back like you have done here to look at the problem in a different way. I know this post got my brain churning with variations of your method that could assist with delivering value in a shorter time frame.
As always, thanks again!
The biggest mistake you make here is calculating the cost of an SEO campaign. Based on $100 per a link and needing that many? Those who manipulate link graphs are doing it for one of two reasons. Either to save money or because they are lazy. Sure if you have a fat budget to spend on link buying (thousands a month) then buying links at that cost per a pop may be an easy strategy. Those of us who manipulate the graph for cost reasons see it differently. If Cblock diversity is the game, then you don't have to pay for each link, if your site needs higher authority, a few links from trusted sites can allow "acquired" links to factor in perfectly fine.
And how about people who purchase abandoned blogs to build up networks of sites across multiple Cblocks? I don't see that as very different from your proposed idea, but many would argue is a greyhat technique. Bottom line is, in the current world of SEO, the most cost effective campaigns often times have some element of autimation and link acquisition. This is not spam, and it is scailable.
Buying links for Seo is a old trick that still works today but the idea of bying a blog is a new to me and sound like a good option just depends on how much buying a blog will costs against paying for some backlinks if I had the option of choosing one of the other I would choose buying the blog hands down. If I may slip a link to my seo blog seoblogmaster.com keep up with the good posts about the evolving world of Seo
Great article Rand! This is a great long term strategy and I will be sure to keep it in mind. I design and sell t-shirts and have been thinking about partnering with someone that has a popular blog. After reading this I am going to get more aggressive with pursuing that.
(edit from Rand - removed link)