Link Building Service: Well Not Exactly

[rustybrick]

I just got off the phone with a search engine marketing company that builds content sites for clients with link from the content pages to the client's e-commerce sites. I won't give up the company name, because I do not feel its relevant. Here is the proposal, your feedback would be appreciated.

Do a search on modern furniture (http://www.google.com/search?q=modern+furniture&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8) in Google. See the the 6th result down from .homefurnitureguide.com/Modern-Furniture.html, click on that. See this page, its a content page with links. Scroll down and find the link that reads "Click Here to Get our Recommended Discount Home and Bedroom Furniture Guide", that goes to the client's site.

An other example: energy saving software (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&c2coff=1&q=energy+saving+software&btnG=Search) in Google. 2nd result down, computers.articleinsider.com/software/112974_energy_saving_software.html - This is a content site with a big link to the client's e-commerce store.

This company creates copy for these new "resource" sites and then builds links to them. The popularity of these sites rise in Google and rank well. People visit these sites and click from the content site to the e-commerce site. They charge a CPC fee, plus (I would guess) copy-write feeds.

Obviously, if you stop paying them, you lose all your links pop.

Benefit is that any clickthroughs from the content side have a higher conversion rate then PPC.

Anyway, please let me know your thoughts on this strategy.

Thanks.

[qwerty]

They're not really building the content site for the client, are they? I doubt very much the AdSense revenue is being shared with the client, after all.

It seems to me that what they're doing is providing the client with a link. And if the client stops paying for the link, they can easily sell it to someone else. As such, I wouldn't say they're SEOs (except insofar as they're optimizing their own site). They're portal builders who sell ad space.

That's not to imply that I don't think it's a legitimate business. If they're actually creating good content and people are voluntarily linking to them, that says a lot.

[rustybrick]

Right, they are not building links directly for the client.

All your statements are true.

Question is, does anyone use such a service? Are there any down sides?

[seobook]

I think it sucks.

I actually have a client that was using a similar strategy. After they talked to me they dumped him, gave me $300 to register their site with a few directories and they are already at #13 in Google for their primary keyword (1.5 months later)...give those links about 1 more month to age and I bet they are top 3.

Right now you need to rank well in search engines and rank well in PPC.

by paying people to build proprietary ad networks you are in the end making your own field more competitive and just raising your own cost of business. in addition if their interest is only in making profits (and not in your products) then you are paying someone to litter the web with a bunch of rubish.

if I want to use an ad network I will, but I will make sure those are either large scale ads or text ads that parse link value.

for people considering these types of ideas: think of other ideas which help you build value without recurring costs first.

internet marketing is a field full of middle men. if you want SEO hire an SEO. do not pay some middleman to create an ad network that will raise your business costs and eventually work against you.

[Nacho]

Do you guys think this is a miniature version/strategy of About.com (but with no surname - you know what I mean)?

:confused: