The first thing I noticed about the newly released Link Nerve site is that the page title is “LinkNerve – Safe Link Buying”. That sounds very interesting so let’s investigate further.
Unlike other paid posting services LinkNerve places your links on posts that are already indexed in the search engines. You start by typing a keyword into the search box and LinkNerve will find all mentions of that keyword on blogs in it’s publisher network that are not linked to anywhere.
I tried searching for “seo” and the service will let me buy 1226 links for the bargain price of $24,520. All the links will be added within 72 hours which seems like a quick way to burn through a lot of money to me.
From the sites FAQ’s..
It’s no secret that search engines do not like the practice of purchasing links……….LinkNerve has taken all of this into consideration and has created what we believe to be the most effective and safest way to purchase links today. By far the best way to acquire a link is to find a site relevant to your industry or topic and negotiate with the website owner to link a word within their existing content back to your website.
The Problems
The first problem with this service is that I can’t see where my link is going to be placed. As a linkbuilder I’ve spent years training myself to understand which pages will provide long term value and which are useless. With this service 90% of links might be on sites that don’t pass PR – we just don’t know.
Obviously if the inventory was public Google could see it too so it’s a catch 22 situation.
The next problem is one of scale. If I get 10 links with the anchor text “seo” then that isn’t going to make much difference either way. However if I buy 1000 links with the same anchor text then Google has to make an editorial choice to either rank me number 1 OR to give me a link buying penalty.
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Leeds based digital & SEO agency Branded3. Patrick also runs Blogstorm.You can get our blog posts delivered for free by email every day - simply add your email address to the box below or alternatively grab the RSS feed.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
The third problem is the cost. Holy smokes that’s a lot of money for going in blind!
The Masked Millionaire
I think once you have purchased the links you should then be able to view which sites they are listen on
Good idea, not sure if it will take off though.
I have a few hobby blogs that would benefit from this but I will certainly have to do a little more research. You know what they say when something seems too good to be true.
It’s a bit nerve racking when you want to try something new but half expecting to be caught and smacked.
But my mom told me to try everything at least once. I sure hope she wasn’t on drugs when she told me that.
If these guys are paying the prices for links that I’ve been offered by multiple companies, then their margins are out of site. Twice I’ve been offered less than $100 for text links on blog posts in very competitive areas…for an entire year. I’m not sure a year-long text link on any site in any industry is worth less than $100
That would make it just another vulnerable link service. A successful link service can’t afford to reveal the websites these days.
I think they had to make the choice. Either they make their service safe but you never know where your link is going to be placed or they reveal the websites and their business dies within few months.
That’s pretty crazy, and the prices are ridiculous considering you don’t know which sites it is on.
The biggest problem however is that these links are 100% detectable. It’s the easiest thing in the world for Google and the others to detect page mutation on an indexed page. If that mutation is a new link within the content it can easily trigger an alarm. Even a few links is enough to set this off.
yesterday, I got an email from Link Nerve.. I am very much hesitant in trying their offers..
To: James Mann. No your Mom probably wasn't on drugs but I bet she wasn't on the Internet either.
When it comes to submitting to my websites I do it all myself with a semiautomatic program. It has increased my PR, however it is a slow go. Which is actually good, as Google will disregard your back links if they come to fast anywhoooo.
Good Luck everyone.
Sorry, forgot to say Thank You Patrick for posting about this site. I had come across a reviw of it somewhere else which sounded fairly good. Now, I don't have to waste my time.
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