June 19, 2023
The google spam updateThe link spam update aims to neutralize links that go against the Google guidelines and Google deem to be ‘spammy’. neutralize Google announced the new updates were aimed at neutralizing spammy links meaning any credit or link value gained from these spammy links will be lost.. This update reinforced the importance of high-quality links. Buying backlinks on
The google spam update
The link spam update aims to neutralize links that go against the Google guidelines and Google deem to be ‘spammy’. neutralize Google announced the new updates were aimed at neutralizing spammy links meaning any credit or link value gained from these spammy links will be lost.. This update reinforced the importance of high-quality links. Buying backlinks on platforms like Fiverhas posed some risk for a while already but now they pose an even greater risk to your website. In this blog, We are going to guide you through how to approach link building and obtaining links that benefit your website. We cover all the areas which you should know before you start buying backlinks. Let’s get into it!
Table of contents
- The Google spam update
- What are backlinks and what is link building?
- Why Should You Consider Buying Backlinks?
- Things you need to check before you start buying backlinks
- Quality backlinks vs low-quality backlinks
- A natural backlink profile
- International vs local backlinks
- How can you tell a good agency from a bad one?
- Warning signs when buying backlinks
- Broken links
- Do’s and don’ts of buying backlinks
What are backlinks and what is link building?
A backlink is when one website links to another using an anchor text or phrase. It’s important to have a rich backlink profile to keep your website. The process of obtaining these links is known as link building. Link building is a great method to optimize your website’s backlink profile. A good backlink profile is an important way to improve the organic rankings of your website.
Backlinks are also known as inbound links or incoming links. If good quality websites pages are linking to your website, Google will count these links as “popularity votes”. The better the quality and quantity of votes, the higher Google will rate your website in the organic search results.
With that in mind, you might be thinking, where can I get my hands on a lot of backlinks? Can I buy them backlinks in bulk? Well, this isn’t a good strategy for long term sustainable growth and here’s why. In the short term, buying links in bulk might lead to an improvement in your ranking, but in the long term, there is no guarantee that these links will remain and will continue to benefit your website. In addition, the Google algorithm can penalize your site for its use of spammy backlinks. So although in the short term, this seems like a great option, we are here to tell you the easiest way isn’t always the best way.
Buying the right backlinks and building a network needs effort and expertise. It took us years to build a high-quality linking network. Because of our experience, we have developed a well-rounded perspective of the difference between high quality links and crappy links. Remember, high-quality links are not the only thing needed for a powerful and effective link building strategy. Link building is like a good meal, it depends on a bunch of ingredients working together. . For link building, it is a combination of optimized on page technical SEO, relevant content, and link building All 3 ingredients come together to make the perfect SEO strategy.
Why should you consider buying backlinks?
The first thing you need to do is analyze if buying backlinks is the right investment for your company. If you’re doing business on the internet, creating backlinks is a crucial part of making sure your audience will see your products/services. If your webpage doesn’t have high rankings within Google, boosting your authority through high-quality backlink profile can be a key factor.
While investing in high-quality backlinks, the power of backlinks can be underestimated, but the same time, many people also have high expectations in a short amount of time which is not always possible to realize. The results you see in a time frame are dependent on a number of factors. But if you are willing to make investments and have patience, you will definitely be rewarded!
One of the main reasons for buying backlinks is to make sure your web page ranks higher than your competitors on search engines. The first page on any search term is the goal, the second page is not an option! More than 75% of people will only look at the results of the first page, therefore, the search results that appear on page two and three are irrelevant. If you want to be successful, page two or three is not an option. More than 75% of the people will only see the first page three positions on Google. Therefore, it’s very important to have a great position on the first page.
Another thing you should keep in mind about buying backlinks, or hiring an agency, is your budget. Placing quality backlinks and seeing their results need time, patience, and financial investments.
Things you need to check before you start buying backlinks
Before you start buying backlinks, it is important to make an assessment of the other pillars of SEO. Evaluate any issues on the technical side of your website and the content on your site. These are the foundations you need to build that will work in tangent with a healthy backlink profile to secure you the top-ranking spots.
We have created a checklist of some of the most important technical issues you need to have considered for your website.
Building authority (with link building)
Before going into link building, you’ll need to evaluate the backlink profile of your website. This also means looking into the profiles of your competitors, to know what you are up against. After analyzing your own backlink profile and those of competitors, you can decide on which strategy to use. The anchor texts are actually part of this. In the strategy, you determine, among other things and keep in mind to include the following things in your strategy:
The checklist
- Site speed: The sweet spot is two to three seconds. If your site speed is slow, your website takes longer to load up. This can result in you losing customers and visitors to your webpages. Evaluate the site speed on both desktop and mobile phone. If your site speed is slower than two to three seconds, investigate why and find a way to fix it as quickly as possible.
- HTML: Learn how to use HTML to describe the structure of your website or page. If you cannot read HTML codes, then it is important to at least learn the basics of HTML. There are plenty of free resources online that can teach you the basics of HTML!
- Crawl budget: Improve the crawl budget of your website by minimizing crawl errors. Scan your website frequently by 3xx and 4xx error codes. The size of your website or the number of links could possibly influence your crawl budget.
- Sitemap: Create a good link structure and adding an XML- sitemap in Google Search Console plus excluding not important pages with robot.txt, may help you on your way.
- Navigation: Create an SEO-friendly website navigation by, for instance, improving your menu structure.
- Web vitals: Watch your Webvitals and see how your pages perform at the moment.
- Fix as many HTTPS 404 errors that will appear on your website. Have you moved a page and not placed a redirect to a new URL?
Have you worked your way through our checklist? Great! Now you are ready to get into link building.
Building authority (with link building)
Before going into link building, you’ll need to evaluate the backlink profile of your website. This also means looking into the profiles of your competitors, to know what you are up against. After analyzing your own backlink profile and those of competitors, you can decide on which strategy to use. The anchor texts are actually part of this. In the strategy, you determine, among other things and keep in mind to include the following things in your strategy:
- The number of backlinks that’s needed;
- The type of backlinks needed (quality and quantity, e.g.);
- Anchor strategy (in most cases, we recommend also using brand anchors, anchors with the domain name in them);
- Start with backlink analysis, and check the quality of the links in your backlink profile. Here you can identify bad links and start cleaning up your website;
- Analyze your competitors.
- Using SEO tools, find the opportunities for improvements in your backlink profile; .
- Are the inbound links coming from a website relevant to your niche or your industry?
- Test the website and inbound links on the relevant metrics like traffic, domain authority;
- Ensure these websites are not on any blacklists;
- Do these sites allow guest blogging?
- For the well established domains, with a high DA, you can consider taking on digital PR alongside your link building strategy.
Quality backlinks vs low-quality backlinks
Check your website and find out what links types of backlinks you need to boost your pages. You should keep in mind the current backlink history of your website along with the current budget of your link building budget. . Let’s start by showing you the differences between links:
PR links
PR links are high-quality links obtained from content generated during a press release campaign or PR strategy. These links can be worth a lot in terms of their link value. During a PR campaign, you can earn links from high quality blogs and websites and domains linking to your website. In addition, this is a strategy that can be used to reach a wider audience and can spread brand awareness for your business. It’s a strategy that needs data, research, the right connections, and a creative team that develops high-quality content. Luckily, digital PR is one of the services we provide here at Seeders and with our track record of success, you will soon find digital PR as a worthwhile investment.. Digital PR is a very popular strategy with our clients. Here’s an example:
A client gave us an investment of 3500 euros for a press release. Here are the results of this investment.
97.000 euros media value.
40.000 euros link value
84 online placements
10 offline placements
Releases on highly well-known press platforms like Radio 538 and SP the daily paper.
Blog posts
High-quality blog posts with a DAA score of 40+ are beneficial backlinks for your website. They have an impact on the authority of your website by improving the traffic earned as well as the relevance and trustworthiness of your website. The lower the DA score and the traffic number are, the less valuable the link becomes. High-quality links are therefore a lot more expensive because of the value they add to your website, which is why it is important to consider your budget before deciding on the backlinks you are going to target in your strategy to create a “natural” but impactful backlink profile.
Structure your website
Great! You’ve found the right country for your business to add to your target market set. Your business and your product/service are ready to go international, now it’s time to take a look at the state of your SEO. Let’s start with site structure! When you’re working with different languages and countries, the first step is to make a decision in your international site structure. How are you going to supply people from different countries with content in their native language?. In developing a good website structure, there are important technical decisions you need to make. All of these will impact your SEO performance greatly… let’s take a look at the options!
A natural backlink profile
Remember that link building links need to look natural so try not to overdo it. When starting from zero, it is not natural to have acquired a backlink profile of only high-quality domains. The algorithm is smart, remember that! You will need to grow your backlinks profile in a natural looking and organic manner. Rome wasn’t built in a day so be patient and you will find your patience rewarded! It’s also essential to make sure that the links match your niche in some way. It doesn’t look natural if an interior designer’s website gets links from a blog that only talks about delicious food.
International vs local backlinks
For a local and international link building strategy, the same basics apply. You need to ensure that the content, authority and technical sides of your website are all in order. For an international strategy, these fundamentals are essential to guide the investments you make in acquiring links from high quality domains. We recommend focusing on a strategy that involves digital PR and high-quality blogs that provide high quality backlinks to your website. For international backlinks, your budget should be adjusted to account for the higher quality domains that will be targeted.
For a local strategy, the opportunities are greater for a smaller budget, the market is more focused and easier to reach.
How can you tell a good agency from a bad one?
Working together with, or hiring, an agency can be a good way to achieve your link building goals. A professional SEO expert can assess your website and advise you accordingly and connect you to a great network for buying backlinks. We believe that a trusted agency delivers quality and will help you boost your authority and brand awareness. The difference between a good agency and a bad one depends on a few factors. Most of the time, people choose the agency that sounds the most appealing to their wishes: an agency that promises fast results with little investment. Well, we’re sorry to disappoint you, but quick and fast results are a bad recipe when it comes to link building.
A good agency
- Will tell you that building high-quality links is a long-term process that needs budget and patience to give results.
- Will be realistic and upfront with you on the time needed to see results.
- Is transparent about what they do and communicates clearly and honestly about the process and what is needed to fulfill your expectations.
- Has a team of experienced specialists
- Has a great network
- Has a good relationship with publishers.
Bad marketing agencies
- Guarantees top results in a short period of time.
- Testimonials are out-of-date.
- Keeps results private.
- Are focused on a transactional relationship rather than sustaining a long-term relationship.
- Shows you unrealistic results based on just an unrealistic budget .
- Manipulates data to give a false impression of the results.
Warning signs when buying backlinks
Well, you have made it this far. Well done! We will now take you through some of the most important things to look out for when buying backlinks. This is regardless of whether you are looking to take on the link building efforts yourself or outsource it to a marketing agency. The DA score of a website is an important metric to consider. The higher the better but remember that it can also be manipulated. So it is key to also check the traffic of these domains ,while considering domains with backlinks a minimum of ± a thousand visitors per month to be sure you are doing a quality deal.
Backlinks to avoid
- Backlinks from dubious or spammy looking websites.
- A blog network that is only set up for selling backlinks.
- Low-quality profiles.
- Press releases that don’t add value to visitors.
- Discussion forum links.
- Backlinks from websites without valuable content.
- Backlinks which are not relevant to your website/niche
- Websites with dangerous/forbidden content or negative impact on
- people’s health, safety, happiness, or financial stability.
- Spam links in other languages.
Yes, it can be difficult It still can be difficult to control everything and find domains that tick every box however, by keeping these things in mind you can avoid being penalized by the search engines to do the quality when buying backlinks, but there are a few things to keep in mind to avoid getting penalized by Google. It can be difficult, especially when starting out to stay away from the lowest rated domains but ensure that your backlink profile is not full of them. ’s sometimes challenging to stay away from those links, and at some point, you cannot always avoid them all, when growing your business. But you can be aware of links that you’ll need to avoid as much as possible.
How to stop bad links
In your backlink analysis, you may have come across some bad links which may have a negative impact on your SEO and link building progress. You can contact the website owners to remove these links but you can also disavow the links or the domain. You can do this with the Google disavow tool. Spammy backlinks
In the simplest terms, spammy links are a no-go! These are inbound links from low-quality spammy websites, generally with a poor DA. These domains will generally not add any value to your website, and it is highly unlikely that they are relevant to your business and There are three types of spammy backlinks you can detect:
Adult links for example, links that contain pornographic content or poker
Links from other languages are not relevant to your business or the countries you operate in.
Link from directories which you have no connection with.
For more information, you can check out our blog about Spammy backlinks to get more detailed information about how you can deal with them.
Broken links
Broken links are links that do not work, you can recognize them by seeing a 404 error. These aren’t necessarily bad links, however, they do not work in your favor because they can negatively impact your domain and traffic. You want to make sure you can fix these URLs, to prevent visitors from leaving your website. The crawler will associate 404 errors with a bad signal, this will influence your crawl budget and the quality of your page. You should remove, redirect or update any broken link you come across on your website.
The main reasons for 404 error pages are:
The owner of the website misspelled/miss-typed the wrong URL
Fix: update the spelling
The page is not available because it’s permanently deleted or moved
Fix: remove or redirect
Links to your content have been moved
Fix: update your links
Elements of the page are broken ( HTML, CSS< Javascript, or other plugins)
Fix: remove or update
A page has been renamed
Fix: update
The website structure has changed
Fix: update
Do’s and don’ts of buying backlinks
Do’s
- Consider quality over quantity as much as possible.
- Start with a blog or valuable content on your website
- Stay patient, remember: it’s a long-term process
- Seek attention from news and press outlets.
- Get local links
- Build up a great network of quality backlinks
- Use acknowledged and professional tools when doing link building
- Look for broken links and fix them
- Remove spammylinks
- Outsource your link building to a trusted agency. Analyze your competition
- Conduct detailed research before you start buying backlinks
- Use a natural anchor text
- Check your content with natives if you want to reach other countries
Don'ts
- Engage in black hat link building
(like hidden links or hacking a website) - Engage in a reciprocal relationship, ie. if you link to my website, ill link to yours.
- Forget to do a performance check
- Forget to detox your website before buying backlinks
- Create an unnatural growth history
- Stop with link building, when you don’t see fast results
- Start with link building considering a realistic budget
- Only link to your homepage
- Using the same anchor text over and over again
- Writing a guest blog without a catchy topic
SEO Specialist
Tiemen de Jonge is an experienced SEO Specialist at Seeders Zwolle. With a sharp attention to detail and a love for enhancing online visibility, Tiemen assists clients in elevating their search engine rankings and increasing organic traffic to their websites. With extensive experience in the digital marketing field, Tiemen is committed to keeping abreast of the latest SEO trends and strategies in order to provide excellent results for Seeders' clients.
