Pricing a Link
When trying to understand the value of a link a variety of factors can be considered, including:
- PageRank / link equity
- anchor text (if you can influence it to align with your keywords that increases the value significantly)
- link location (inline links are more likely to be trusted than links in the footer of a page near a bunch of other obvious paid links)
- direct traffic the link sends
- site quality & brand exposure
- endorsement value (if any is given)
- where you are
- where the competition is
- what is needed to bridge that gap
- any potential risks associated with the link buying
Risk Tolerance
Some links (bought links on SEO blogs, paid links near pharmacy/porn/gambling links) are almost certain to get your site noticed in the wrong way.
Large brands can get away with being far more aggressive than thin affiliate sites can.
Many people who heavily rent links still have not exhausted other cheap and easy link building strategies they could be using.
The Bottom Line
In some markets you need to own a billion dollar brand, have an old site, or rent links to compete. In other markets link renting may pose an unnecessary risk.
The most important aspect of link renting is the one people rarely talk about - the actual value to your business. To determine that you need to analyze not only the quality of the link, but also
Along those lines, I thought it would be good to compare a couple sites to each other, to demonstrate how widely the value of links can spread.
Rich, Average, Poor
$17,000 Per Link
BankRate recently bought CreditCardGuide.com for $34M and it had largely because of its Google rankings:
"As an affiliate of Nationwide Card Services, which we acquired this past December, we have worked with CreditCardGuide and have been able to watch their growth and momentum firsthand," stated Thomas R. Evans, President and CEO of Bankrate. "CCG has done a great job of developing its organic traffic and ranks highly in a number of important credit card search terms. Adding more direct, high-quality traffic to our credit card business will grow our revenue and improve the margins in this important category," Mr. Evans added.
Affiliate Rankings: Strong Cashflow or Break Even
Some of my friends have affiliate sites that do anywhere from 0 to 10 leads a day at ~ $30/lead. They rank well enough to get good traffic, then their rankings slip. And they keep bouncing back and forth. Buying just a couple strong links could take a $150/day average earnings and boost it to $300...thus yielding a monthly return of $4,500.
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