Photobucket
Photobucket Photobucket Photobucket
CLICK ON THE GRAPHIC ABOVE TO HEAD TO ALL OF TODAY'S NEWS STORIES
Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Should I Rent Links of Buy Permanent Links?


Many experienced SEO people already know the difference between "monthly links" and "permanent links", but on occasion there is still some confusion.  Since we offer both types of links here at www.NextNetMedia.com, we thought we would clarify the difference and also let you know which products are the most effective for each link type.

Monthly Links

"Monthly links" refer to links you must pay for each month in order to keep them active.  With monthly links, you are essentially renting the links for a period of time. If you stop paying for the links each month, the links are rented to another advertiser.

This is similar to how billboards or TV advertising works.  If you rent a billboard for 3 months and then decide you do not want to pay for the billboard advertisement anymore, your advertisement is taken down so someone else can advertise there.

So you may be wondering, "Why in the world would I ever want to 'rent' links?"  That's a good question and it can be answered by thinking about why you may also rent or lease other types of things.  Often times, you get the privilege of using something of high quality at a greatly reduced priced by renting it versus owning it.

Think about if you bought a high-end luxury car or bought a flat in downtown London, it would cost significantly more money to buy the car or flat than it would to rent it for a short period of time.

This is the same with monthly links.  By renting links, you are able to get links on premium websites that have high page rank, quality relevant content, and stronger link juice to boost your rankings especially for competitive industries like electronic cigarettes, car insurance, and other nationwide terms.

Monthly links also give you the ability to delete the links.  This comes in handy if you want to sell the site or change your website niche and you no longer need links from an old category. With rented links, you have the ability to switch the links up.

Also, many SEO firms like monthly links because the links can easily be removed for clients they are no longer representing and then reuse the credits for new clients.

When Should You Use "Monthly Links"?
  • Your site is already ranking on Page 1 in Google and you need just a little boost to get into the Top 3 (I had one client tell me the difference between being somewhere on page 1 and in the Top 3 is a 50% increase in his revenue - this will obviously vary by industry and the competitiveness of the keyword).
  • You do SEO for another person and they are mainly concerned with quick increases in revenue, especially in the case of seasonal products or industries.
  • You need just a handful of high quality links for your exact match keyword.

    NOTE:  We typically recommend the following link percentage breakdown:
     - A 10% to 20% distribution of "direct match" or "near direct match" keywords (i.e. "electronic cigarette", "electronic cigarette reviews", "how to smoke an electronic cigarette" - Monthly links are very powerful for "direct match" keywords since you only need a small percentage relative to your overall links)
     - A 30% to 40% distribution of "branding" keywords (i.e. links with the anchor text such as your website URL with and without the "http://", company name, product name, etc.)
     - A 30% to 40% distribution of "natural" keywords (i.e. "click here", "visit this website", "learn more information", etc. - these types of keywords are good for use with permanent links which we will discuss next.)
"Monthly Link" Products:

Permanent Links

"Permanent links" are links which you pay for one-time. You do not need to pay again to keep them active.  People often get confused thinking the term "permanent link" means the link will be on the Internet forever.  This is not the case.  Nothing on the Internet is permanent.  The Internet is constantly changing and evolving each fraction of a second.

The term permanent simply means that you pay for the links one time and the links will remain on the Internet for however long they remain on the Internet. Sometimes this can be a few years and sometimes this may only be a few weeks.

Now, you may be wondering, "Why would I want to pay for a link that may be on the Internet for a few weeks?"  That's another good question.  And again, I ask you to consider things you may buy for short term use. Consider fine china versus paper plates.  There are times when paper plates might be more appropriate than fine china like when you are at an outdoor barbeque or having a graduation party for your teenage son or daughter.

The same thing is true for permanent links.  Permanent links are often a fraction of the cost of monthly links (and sometimes fractions of a penny per link) because they are typically lower page rank and are often on blogs or websites with no page rank.

So why would you want links on sites with no page rank?  One major reason besides the reduced cost is that they look more natural to Google.  If every single backlink linking to your website was a page rank 1 or higher this would look EXTREMELY unnatural.

You need a distribution of high PR links and also low or no PR links.  Also, permanent links work well when you point them to press releases or Web 2.0 sites like YouTube or Wikipedia or when you just need a short term traffic boost.  Also, permanent links are great foundational links for a brand new site.

There are two types of permanent links, "Liquid Permanent Links" and "Hard Permanent Links"  The best way to distinguish the two types is to think of liquid assets and hard assets.

Liquid Permanent Links

Liquid Permanent Links are links that you pay for one-time but you can easily liquidate or remove at a later time (NOTE: Typically, all "monthly links" which we discussed earlier are liquid in the fact they can be removed if you stop paying.  However, only some permanent links are liquid in nature).

When Should You Use "Liquid Permanent Links"?
  • You intend to sell the website in the future.
  • You want relatively inexpensive links to point to micro-sites or mini blogs that lead back to your main money site.
  • Your site is brand new and you need some foundational links to get started.
  • Google does an algorithm change and you need to redistribute your link percentages by deleting links and replacing them with links using different anchor text (NOTE: We typically only recommend this as a last resort.  You should never delete links unless absolutely necessary as it looks very unnatural to Google.  A better strategy is to increase your "natural" and "branding" link distribution as discussed earlier in the link percentage breakdown.)

"Liquid Permanent Link" Products

Permanent Links: Hard Permanent Links

Hard Permanent Links can be extremely powerful at boosting rankings very quickly. I have recently seen what most people would consider "low quality" forum posts and "spammy" blogs do wonders for rankings in some EXTREMELY competitive industries, and they have been ranking this way for over a month now.  Who knows how long the rankings will last but the sites are raking in money while they do rank.

Unlike Liquid Permanent Links, Hard Permanent Links are difficult to remove. So, this strategy can be a risky, short-term strategy and not a recommended strategy for branding sites or core money sites which have been around for years and already have a ton of traffic and rankings for other keywords.

When Should You Use "Hard Permanent Links":
  • You want to quickly build some "natural" links like "click here", visit this website", etc.
  • You have some high risk high reward sites which if they got ranked for a month or even a few days could generate an extremely high volume of traffic and revenue.

"Hard Permanent Links" Products 
Here's a Quick Summary:

"Monthly Links":
Great for high quality links with direct match keyword anchor text.

Check out:

"Liquid Permanent Links":
Perfect for foundation links, boosting micro-sites, and quick links for algorithm changes.

Check out:

"Hard Permanent Links":
A good choice for building "Natural" links like "click here", "visit this website", etc.

Check out:

As always, please contact us if you have questions, and thank you for your business and support.

The NextNetMedia.com Team
1-800-737-5820