20 Ways to Get Legit Paid Links Without Getting Penalized
Getting links is like getting laid. You can pay for sex or you get it for free. When you are very attractive you have no problems. You have to pay when you are
- ugly
- boring
- shallow
Still there are lots of people who are quite intelligent, interesting but kind of introverted. I know, I was myself. The same applies to websites.
There are very useful websites out there that still won’t get links for reasons I do not want to recount.
Their owners have the money to purchase links, but they don’t want to pay prostitutes especially as Google scares people who enter bad neighborhoods with penalties.
How to Pay for Links Ethically
What can you do when you want to stay ethical and can’t think of any link magnets or other ways to get links?
What to do if you could pay for a link but you do not want to annoy big Google?
Well, consider one of my 20 methods of getting legit paid links without getting penalized by Google. Many of those methods are even cheaper. Moreover nobody can harm you, they are perfectly clean.
Skip direct bribery like paid reviews and other controversial link building tactics.
No dirty tricks involved! The list starts with easy already well known and often practiced techniques. The farther you get, the deeper you enter terra nova of SEO 2.0!
Google-friendly Techniques to Buy Links
Indeed as altruism is the best egoism, the most successful of the methods help you by helping others.
| Donate money | Support webmasters or programmers and many will link to you to show their appreciation | Just one link, often with a high authority, but sometimes spammy if people donate only for SEO reasons (you can tell when you read German anchor texts on English sites) |
| Create a WordPress Theme | Pay a designer to make a WordPress theme for you and then give it away on your site, people will naturally link it | At least the designer will link to you, potentially hundreds or even thousands of links if the theme really rocks. |
| Pay a developer to code a WordPress or Firefox extension | Pay someone to create a useful WordPress or Firefox extension that hasn’t been created by many others yet. | Brings potentially hundreds of links, it depends on how useful the tools are. |
| Stage a contest | Give away plenty of small prizes unlike those who just offer a “free iPhone” for thousands of contestants. | Depending on how stingy you are you get some, many or no links. Contests are common, so be creative. |
| Offer free web hosting for artists or activists | Artists and activists will love it and you can ask them to link to you, but they most often will even without being asked. | Everybody loves art and many people support activism, so those sites get strong so you get a good link for each site you support. |
| Help charities | There are many ways to support charities but giving them money is the most direct one. There are thousands of them, so you surely will find dozens of causes you would like to support. | The charity will probably link to you and if you do a little more, announce it big time, people will love you for it and link to you. |
| Create a charity | Internet Marketers for Single Mothers? Why not? | Why just donating money to someone who probably hasn’t the marketing skills to get real support and do outreach? Will get you lots of links. |
| Offer discounts for students | Students have less money now, but will have more in future. Already they are important influencers online. Offer discounts for them. | Students have homepages, indeed I had one my first three years of my Internet endeavor in college. When you offer something useful to students many will link to you. Ever heard somebody talking about .edu links? |
| Use a product or service of a company that will show you in their portfolio | Many companies will proudly show off their clients in their portfolio, sometimes even write a success story. Why buy a product of a company that does not bother? Choose the one that does. | One link, often high authority. When you let a well known designer redesign your site you may even get dozens of incoming links from website design galleries or design blogs. |
| Send bloggers presents (your product) | There are millions of bloggers. Most of them are below the radar although they are experts in their trade. Sent them a present, your product for instance. They will be delighted and blog about it. | In case it’s a nice present even other bloggers may link to you. When you send presents to a bunch of bloggers, you will get a bunch of links… |
| Mirror a heavy traffic site | Support your favorite open source software, videographer or visual artist with a mirror. | Potentially dozens or hundreds of links to the mirrored site. A powerful link from that site to you. |
| Pay a designer to create a free font | Every webmaster needs fonts, but who wants to pay for them? Or who can afford it? | Many links, depending of the quality of the font. |
| Buy an established blog or website | Many bloggers blog for some months and then stop and sell their blogs. Often with high authority | Keep the blog going and get many links to that blog. |
| Pay a programmer to create a useful tool | A SEO tool or CSS generator of some kind will always get some attention. | Depending on how useful the tool is, you get plenty or at least some links. |
| Pay a writer to write guest articles on established blogs | I write myself and the links are often the best ones. At least before I started SEO 2.0 | At least one link per article, but authority links. |
| Pay a translator to translate your articles and give ’em away | Your article republished all over the world for free? It’s possible. SEO 2.0 posts have been translated in at least a dozen languages. | Dozens, even hundreds of links possible because not everybody speaks English. |
| Offend an evil corporation and pay a lawyer to defend you | What about a lawsuit against Yahoo for handing over Chinese dissidents to the police? Invest in freedom. | Basically if you can convincingly fight against anti-democratic corporations people will love you. No wonder. |
| Pay a cracker to deface your site | Well, you get linked for being defaced. Especially by your readers. This is a win to win situation if there is no real destruction done. The cracker can brag about that and you get linked. | Many links if the defacement is spectacular enough and people care for your site. |
| Pay a star to make a guest appearance on your site | Musicians and writers in most cases lack money, even the famous ones! It can be just a visit with some pictures. | Lots of links, especially if you target the MySpace generation. They’ll love it. |
| Pay an artist to offer a music download for free on your site | Why not paying the artist to offer his new song as a download on your site? Make sure that the people link the page/site not the music directly though. | People love free music downloads, especially by well known rock stars. The more known or the rarer the more links. Many in any case. |
Attract Links Instead of Paying
None of these techniques are about “manipulation”. They’re not even really “paid links”. I just used the term people use.
They are completely legit and you won’t get penalized for them whatsoever. Otherwise Google has to penalize the Web as a whole!
On a side note: I do not use the methods myself as I can garner enough links without paying anything.
I used some of the techniques without payment whatsoever. I usually optimize for organic reach by attracting links.
The Best Things in Life Are Free
The best things in life are free. The same motto applies on the Web. So treat those ways of getting paid links as a first step to organic link heaven.
Also, you pay, but you give away for free, so you’re almost there, at completely organic link earning (not building, as then the links appear by themselves)!
Why would you pay for things every single time when you can get them for free for years?
Very cool!
Many “internet marketers” are so focused on finding the next big “thing” that they rarely look outside of the box. This should help a few I know.
You mean you should not just open your wallet but open you wallet AND use your head?
Sounds like a lot of work !
Thanks Terry. In fact the biggest obstacle for SEOs is the “taking shortcuts” approach. The slightly longer way leads you higher up.
Social SEO: It’s even “the more you use your head the less you have to pay”.
Michael, you have really dangerous ideas! I think the toughest part will be the genuine interest in the cause you support. Do not fake support, but choose a cause that you support anyways.
Some really great ideas, Tad. Especially the ones about charity and activism. Very smart, and, of course, real charity and activism also benefit from that approach. I think the trick is to build up a ton of sympathy around your charity… and THEN hire a cracker to deface your site!
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Tad,
Great list. I am thinking the college student promotion is the one that is money. I haven’t tapped these waters myself but I imagine there are huge numbers of innocent little homepages that will throw you a great link if they only knew about you.
Andrew
Very cool ideas. I really like the idea of becoming involved with a charitable organization – you can help them, they help you, everyone (hopefully) wins.
Hi there,
Just wrote a similar post at SEOmoz, that might be interesting. I’ve got a similar buy links by proxy approach, but also some other points about protection.
http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/how-to-protect-your-site-from-google-if-you-sell-text-links
Now, that’s out of the box! Informative and entertaining post, great job :)
Great overall blog! Not all of these are going to offer a direct SEO benefit and some of the linking styles are showing signs of being discounted (Mainly the wordpress theme).
However, with that said, it’s a still an overall great article for pulling in more exposure to your site.
Basically its just like politics. You can’t buy votes but you are allowed to pay for marketing that persuades people to buy votes.
Great ideas, I especially love the lawsuit against yahoo idea – i wish someone would try that, then write a blog to chronicle it.
confounded penalizations! now google is the “ad police”
it is gonna be difficult and time consuming for them to police online ads. similar to what Mrs. Boxer said about congress policing newspaper and other ads.
anyway, this list you complied is really useful. Thanks
I’ve just created a charity: “Save Karen From Her Horrible Day Job Before Evil Stress Kills Her.” Will you link to it? :-P
Seriously, this article is great and also very entertaining. I’ve stumbled it, and now I’m going to bookmark it on del.icio.us. :)
Hey nice seo blog. I got here through subliminals blog.
I like the list even though some are quite risky! like “Offend an evil corporation and pay a lawyer to defend you” lol. Though I can see how they work. I used to use the review my website link bait. But since john chow has been penalised by google, I have discontinued the campaign.
[…] Play fair […]
[…] Be careful whose links you buy, but, be patient with those who supply them free. […]
Interesting article. You gave me a lot of ideas but I will probably let anyone create a smart plugin for something common.
[…] 20 Ways to Get Legit Links Without Getting Penalized by Google […]
Been back at square one with a brand new site and having to do the link building bit, your list is some welcome comic relief ;-)
A nice list but tough to actually achieve it.
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[…] 40: 20 Ways to Get Legit Paid Links Without Getting Penalized by Google […]
Really good post, enjoyed reading! Not so long ago me and a friend of mine agreed that the work involved in link building was the same as the work involved in dating woman…….we were having troubles in both areas! haha…..thanks again, plenty of unique ideas. :)
Getting links is definitely the hardest part for me. These are some creative suggestions but most are not practlicle for me to do. Free links are the sweetest for sure!
Bruce:
Honestly I just type the link formula in the Google search box to see where my top 3 competitors are getting thier links.
Josh
Very useful. How does google know if you pay for a link. Does this basically mean if you advertise then your natural search will go down?
Isn’t the WP theme sponsorship a bit risky? I remember some guy who did the same and Mister Google said that a few porn sites linking to it was the problem when he lost his rankings!!
Yap, a few WP footer links caused the problems.
Some really great ideas here but is it as easy as it seems
21) Write a ´20 ways…´ article :D
nice find…Well these are total legit link building techniques..! Works great..!
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