Now we are done talking about thing to avoid in SEO and web promotion. We are moving on to a new topic:
PPC vs. Link buying
Another way to get links is to buy them. It might make sense, but spending your money on Pay-Per-Click advertising like Yahoo® Search Marketing might make more sense. It just depends on your budget and goals. The big advantage of paying for links is that it not only increases your website visitors by getting traffic from visitors of the website you are advertising on, but it also could help your Search Engine Rankings.
The big advantage of Pay Per Click advertising, is that you are only paying for actual visitors to your website. In the case of buying links or banner space on other people’s sites, you don’t know how much traffic you will get from the links. Also, paying for links is harder to quantify in terms of ROI (Return on Investment). My recommendation is that if you choose to buy links, be sure to buy links that are likely to bring traffic to your website, and be sure to shop around for good deals.
If you want to buy links primarily to raise your Search Engine ranking then I recommend you purchase links from directories. Shop around for the best deals, but also be sure to buy links from the more prominent directories. In the case of directories, you aren’t really buying the links per say, you are spending money to get your site reviewed by an editor of the directory. If the editor believes that your site is acceptable they will include it.
I personally have never had a problem getting my sites listed in directories, but if you were to submit an evil web portal or spam site I would NOT expect it to get listed in many directories.
PS. If you want to learn more about Pay Per Click advertising then I highly recommend you download Aaron Wall’s free PPC ebook.