So...one of the most important things a webmaster can do for their site is to provide links to it. While those links will organically drive some traffic they are far more valuable in regard to search engines. Probably about 80% of my traffic on my established sites comes from search engines. So, you want links for two reasons.
Over ten years ago when I first started doing websites, quantity was king. You would try to get your site listed on as many directories as possible. Now, most of those directories are considered garbage and spam and some can even hurt your ranking.
Today, you want links from highly ranked sites. There are a couple of ways you can do this. The cheapest and most organic way to do this is to write articles and submit them to article directories. There are a huge number of quality article sites. I have a list that I may share some time but really you just need to search for article directory and you'll find what you want.
My trouble is that I want a lot of links and I want them quickly. I don't have the time to be creating websites and writing articles for these directories. This means that I have to pay for either someone to do this for me or for software that will speed the process up. I don't like paying for anything that I can do for free but in order for me to get the ranking that I want, I'll need to cough up some money in advance and hope that it pays off in the end.
So, I've made three investments. The first is pretty straightforward. I paid someone to write an article and post it on a bunch of directories. I provide the topic of the article and the keywords that I want used. The rest is not my responsibility. I'm using this service to promote my SEO site using the terms free SEO tips and learn SEO.
The downside to this approach is that the same article is used on multiple websites. Although they certainly don't mention it in their advertising, this means that the sites that they are posting to have lower page ranks. The better article directories require original content. So, basically I'm opting for quantity over quality to start.
My second experiment is to use another service. This one has a monthly subscription whereas the first was a one time deal. I can submit for up to 5 domains for one price and then it is tiered beyond that depending on how many sites you'll be promoting. So, I can create as many links as I want for one monthly fee.
The problem with this service is that it requires original content. The links back to my site are all high quality ones but I have to write a new article for each link. Or I can pay someone to write each article for me. That gets pricey though.
Ideally, I'd like post 100 links in a month. There isn't a science to this and some people speak of creating a lot more than this but I have a feeling that they are lower quality. I'm fine with 100 a month or about 3-4 a day. But this goes back to my original problem that I don't have time to write 3-4 original articles a day and if I did I wouldn't be paying a service for it.
So, enter my third purchase, an article spinner. In short, it takes an original article, randomly adds synonyms, and spits out a new article. Done right, it is a completely different article as far as search engines are concerns. The problem for me is that my submission service doesn't accept spun content. And that's not just the rule, I had my spun articles rejected on account of this.
So, here's my conundrum. I can pay for a high quantity of links with lower quality and basically no work. Or I can get higher quality links with considerably more work for me and a considerably few number. Or I can pay someone to write the articles for me which will run more money than I'm willing to pay at this point. I don't know what the best option is at this point. What I do know is that I've made a total of about $6 off my web experiments so far and I will have about $190 invested in the three things I bought if I carry my subscription past the trial period. Not a good return on my investment but I have to believe that it will eventually pay off.
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