I've gotten active on this board late last month and went into this craze about hiring two fellows to do link building for me. They are from India and most of the sites which has my links are Indian Sites. Some are sites which has links somewhere hidden away from the actual sites. Yes, they were at least PR2 and above. Ever since then, I've been monitoring my traffic to my sites and none of the referrals comes from those sites. There was one site which I did some extensive one way link building for and it is still PR 0. There are other sites (adult related) which none of the professional link builders wants to touch and well, they are now either PR 3 or PR 4. Those I just naturally submitted to the search engines and that's pretty much it. They seems to be drawing in natural traffic. There are other sites which are more info and not many money sites which I did not subject them to link building and they are not doing to shabby too. Most of the sites are created or acquired within the 4 weeks timeframe and most bought comes with no traffic. I did have several other sites before I even heard of this thing call Link Building and they are PR 4 to PR 5 sites. Granted that one of them is a 8 year old site. I know that Google looks at the number of linkbacks to determine popularity and thus page ranks and that seems to be the buzzword here. So my question is, are link building just an effort to fuel a new industry of link builders (I've noticed that a majority of them are from India and not that I have anything against Indians) ? Then again, most of the links are hosted on indian-run websites many of which belongs to the link builders themselves. Do people actually visit those websites to look for sites rather than treating them as link dumps ? Is link building more an exercise for google bots and not really for human traffic ? Or is it just a plain waste of time and money ? Because I find even when I use an automated submitter, I am getting pretty good page ranks. I really want people to come to my site more than just a PR number. I am not sure if I am fooled into this excerise and could have spend my money on more fruitful things. Or am I just being foolish with this chain of thoughts and missing something obvious ? Thanks for taking the time to read.
Link building does indeed work - if done properly. I too began with Indian link-builders and although the work was completed on time, it hasn't brought me any traffic. That said, my backlinks are massive - particularly on Yahoo. Having realised that this approach was not going to produce the results I was seeking - a greater backlink count AND additional traffic - I changed strategy and began buying PR5+ links on sites that met two qualifications: high backlinks and a high number of google indexed pages. This appears to have paid off. My traffic has increased considerably - to some 7,000+ uniques daily. I've also seen a steadily increasing backlink count. Google now shows 538 backlinks, MSN almost 8,000 and Yahoo almost 100,000! Once the site has more than 100K backlinks on all three major search engines, I think the time will have come to begin work on site #2
Thanks Jack. Personally, I do not care too much about Pagerank if it is not bringing in any traffic. If you don't mind me asking, how many PR5 links do you need to get before you get an acceptable stream of traffic ? I guess in the end, the best link building effort would be one which you do it yourself. I am sure that getting the Indian Link-builders to do the work, you cannot quite determine exactly where the links would be at.
Link building works if the inbound links are from the proper places-- - sites not all owned or hosted by the same persons - sites hopefully somewhat related to yours - sites actively spidered and visited If you want links that actively bring you traffic and are not for the purpose of link popularity then you must seek out links on related sites. I doubt hired services are going to do that effectively unless that is what they advertise. It sounds as if the links 'built' for you were for the sole purpose of link popularity and not traffic... and it sounds as if they are failing at even generating link pop.
Yes, that's what I feel too. I feel that I should have invested the money I've spent in actually doing link exchanges and link building manually with sites which are relevant. I need human eyes and human clicks and if all I am getting are machines and bots, I doubt it serves my purpose at all. I may be wrong but I think people are putting too much importance on page ranking than general traffic. I see people selling directories just talking about page rank , some with PR4 or PR5 but only bringing in 20 to 30 visitors a day.
I really don't pay attention to the whole page rank thing either. One thing I have learned which has been stressed in this thread that relevance is the most important factor. I rather have 20 targeted visitors to sell my product to than 100 visitors off the street who came to my site not being interested in the product that I am selling.
This is a highly unfortunate incident. First, links should come from sites that share a similar theme. Or else it's useless. Ask yourself before requesting one-way links: Does my site offer anything unique? Is it free? In one question: Does my site offer free information or free tools? Researching one-way links should be easy. First try one-way and if things don't seem to work, go for reciprocal linking. In fact I have helped some in this forum who were looking for links. PM your website info and also about the people who did nothing to your site.
Thanks Dilipsam for your offer. I would rather keep the identity of those who did the work for me private. The links that are not performing are typically from the link builders own sites or those in India. My target audience are not in that sub-continent. I just don't want to try another SEO or Link Builder anymore. I tried two and they just don't work for me. I noticed that you are from India too, don't get me wrong, I do not have any thing against Indians. I worked first-hand with Indians and found that quite a lot of them are really very hardworkship and definitely the best businessmen around. Actually prior to coming to this board, I have been listing my sites on sites and directories which are relevant to my websites contents or at least pretty much those popular top 20 websites where people go to for listings. The thing is that I bought into this link building concept and hired link builders because I thought they knew better than me and could do a much better job than me. I did not study Link Building or SEO in school and what I know is what I get from just commonsense. What I did worked for me and I think I'll probably just continue doing it that way.
Hello Eddy, I just read you all post and feel you are very disappointed related to link building work specially form some Indian link builder. We are also belongs to India and also provides same service we are feeling very bad about your bad experience with some Bad Indian Link building Freelancers. Yes this is true all most all SEO or Link building work outsource in INDIA. Most of the software company’s situated in India and in USA. Most of the companies pay lot of $$ for Link Building as well as for SEO work. Because Link Building is the best way of getting good PR value and Traffic. There are two type of Link Building is popular in Internet Marketing world:- One Way Link Building Reciprocal Link Building Everybody well known the meaning of both types of Link Building. Like in your case you Says:- AND ALSO You want only traffic for your site so my advice is that you want to do reciprocal link building work for your site. DO some Directory submissions and Reciprocal Link Building. One Way Link Building:- 1 Way Link building provides good & Increased PR value not Traffic. Reciprocal Link Building:- Reciprocal Link Building provides more and more Traffic not more PR value. Many of Indian link builder and SEO experts provide much much better work (like in DP) but exceptions are always their. So my opinion is that you had selected the wrong guy for your work. Select best source for your Work Infect I will suggest you yourself do your work in this way you well get the desired results. Thanks For Your Time And Best of Luck for Future Rock
Thanks for being realistic, Rock. Yes, I am definitely looking towards traffic because without people, my websites are useless. I have websites which sell things and make money for me and other websites offering information and both needs human surfers. If I do get loyal members to my community site like my new Dog Site, it be great. PR would not post in my forums nor would they be posting dog pictures on my site or even rating them. Now what I am doing is selectively purchasing links at Pets and Dog Directories and if they provide link exchanges, I will do that. I am also participating in a couple of dog related forums and flying my signature in them. I think the old method that I've employed about being personally active in the promotional campaign works. And yes, I am pretty disappointed about the link building experience especially when the two parties have such high ratings. Maybe I just did not understand what link building is for, you definitely clarified it for me.
Yes this is true that PR does not give you human surfers. But Pr gives you a better spot in big search engines. Search engine is the key to good quality traffic.
I am with you Eddie on the point and JackR hit it well on his strat. I think that untrained SEO people that are poorly paid do not provide good service at all. No traffic for sure and overall link quality is very poor from my stand point. Cheap link builders job is just to get the links the client has prepaid in the fastest possible time and then just move onto the next job and hope the client accepts all the links or at least rejects only a few. I think best to buy or rent quality links that you see in advance b4 for you buy. If you have a few sites up in similar fields - Triangular linking with people works great as well. Directory Submission services are cheap and provide a real low cost way of getting your backlink numbers up. You need some backlinks - now I mainly use my network of sites - but i am not sure you need heaps. Strange thing has been happening for me lately (10 years SEO and I am starting to finally get better???), I have been achieving top 10 Google rankings for sites only live for a week. How many backlinks can a 1 week old site have? But with site $$ success I start link building them more anyway due to the fact that I am scared if I do not. Many, if not all the links involve myself going out and finding them rather than inexperienced juniors. As for The Rock who posted in this thread. I gave him a test job and he provided me with the worst link building I have ever received! Most link pages had 50+ Outbound + heaps of internal links – Crazy! (ok for current MSN I guess) – Heaps where just link exchange sites e.g. indyalink.com, urgentclick.com, link-city.com . The service was completed a week or 2 ago. Already 10% total link loss (permanent links anyone!!!) - No refunds - No other links offered as he believed that he had completed the service – lol – He stated other people @ DP are happy with them!! - I still didn’t bother giving bad i-trader or posting on his thread– Ahh the nubs of the world. Really that’s what makes SEO works – No one really knows what is going on (I guess a small group do) and there are always heaps of noobs to make it easier (or harder) for others
Interesting point. I too bought links from some of the link building people here only to find that some of them were missing 3 months after the link went live. This happened with 2 different people. The links were replaced, but I don't have time to keep verifying links.
Thanks guys. At least I know I am not alone or been doing something wrong. Recently, The Rock wanted to do my Link Building for me after this thread but I wasn't too keen, I've got burnt twice and just not going to get burnt a 3rd. I spent good money there thinking they do a better job, I could have done better with it and cheaper if I did it myself. I just read how great those guys are and signed up but maybe I was just foolish and too gullible in the beginning. I am learning to wise up now. Seems like I am actually not too bad myself just doing what I've been doing. I seems to be getting higher PRs on sites I handled myself than those that those so-called 'experts' link builders have done for me. I've just got the Premium version of Linkexchange for my new sites and hopefully that would help bring in the traffic. Yes, I do have a couple of websites and I am linking them all one way or other. It definitely works great bringing in the backlinks and all. Besides one thing I know, adding your site links to your signature in popular forums does help bring up the backlinks.