Part of the guide: Blog Traffic
If you’ve been doing SEO for any length of time; you’ll know just how volatile it can be.
Pandas, penguins, and other animals; there is no end in sight for Google’s updates. This means one of two things. You can either adapt, survive, and destroy your competitors or you can quit now and move onto paid traffic (the latter being not a bad idea).
When it comes down to ranking, all that really matters is link building and the authority of your site. Google doesn’t care how nicely written your content is or how much thought went into your blog posts.
None of that stuff matters, not right now anyway. What matters is high-quality backlinks and domain authority. The higher your domain authority, the more Google-proof your site will be, and the more pages of yours will automatically rank highly for competitive keywords without backlinks.
The way to build domain authority is to build high-quality links.
So what’s a high-quality link? Simple.
High page rank and relevant.
In the past, I’ve talked about building your own network of high PR expired domains and setting them up as relevant sites that link to yours. While that absolutely works, there is a chance in the future that Google will remove Page Rank from expired domains.
This leaves us with one other option. One time-tested and extremely effective option. That is buying links on competitor websites. When you buy links on your main competitors’ websites, you’ll get extremely relevant and high Page Rank backlinks.
To get an in-depth explanation of buying links on competitor sites and why it’s the holy grail of SEO, read this post.
Here’s how to do it.
How To Buy Links On Competitor Websites:
- Go To Google
- Search ‘Niche + Blog’, ‘Niche + Website’
- Make a list of all PR1+ sites and blogs
- Create a Template Message (like the one below)
- Visit Each Site, Go To Their Contact Page And Send Them A Personalized Message
- Wait For Their Response, Negotiate A Price For A Link
- ALWAYS TRY TO PAY ONE-TIME
- Pay Them + Send Them Your Site Details
Message Example:
Hey,
My name is _____ and I run _____.
First, I have to say (site name) is excellent, it’s filled with tons of quality content.
I just wanted to reach out to you and ask if you’d be interested in selling a link in your site’s sidebar or blogroll.
I’d really like to get a link from (site name) to (your site name), please let me know if you’d be interested along with any pricing.
Warm Regards,
Name
That’s all you have to say.
Keep in mind only about 30% of people will actually respond to you, and about 10-20% will be happy to sell a link. This process is very simple. Make a list of all the PR1+ sites and blogs in your niche (your competitors) and contact them asking if you can buy a link on their site.
These links are the best links in the world. They are the most relevant and authoritative. When your competitors link to you, you don’t just get a high PR and relevant backlink. Google looks at more than that. They see that they are your competitors and they are linking to you.
Which means your competition approves of your site, and if you get all the most popular sites in your niche linking to yours; you will dominate for years to come.
As a guideline, I would pay these prices for site-wide blogroll links (that’s what most people will sell):
- $300-$600 one-time or $30-$50/month for PR5
- $200-$400 one-time or $20-$30/month for PR4
- $50-$150 one-time or $10-$15/month for PR3
- $30-$50 one-time for a link on a PR2
- $20-$30 one-time for a link on a PR1
You won’t always find people who will accept those prices; you just have to negotiate.
Your best chance of success is to find site owners who don’t know the true value of their Page Rank (never mention it in the emails) who will accept a low one-time payment.
The more savvy webmasters who know the value of PR links or otherwise have likely been approached already by SEOs & will want to charge a lot more. Start by getting some cheap one-time purchase links.
If you rent a few PR5+ links on competitor sites, it will quickly catapult your site to the top of Google. However, it’s important to build a solid foundation for your site. Do this by purchasing links on PR1-3 competitor sites, on as many as your budget affords.
As you get results, spend more. Use your site name, otherwise known as ‘brand match’ as anchor text on the sites. For example, in the sidebar, I’d ask them to place a link to my site with the text ‘Work With David Wood’.
Another technique: Take the top 5 sites in your niche, put them into Majestic SEO, view their top 10 ‘referring domains’, and look for similarities.
You were never meant to do this alone
Reading this changes nothing. Doing it with people who show up changes everything. That is the whole difference between the people who transform and the people who keep starting over.
Start free →Find similar sites linking to multiple competitors. If you see 5 sites linking to all 5 competitors, it’s likely that those sites are accepting money for links and they are the first people to contact!
One last technique: if you can’t afford to spend money on competitor links, you can link swap! Lots of webmasters will be down to link swap.
Simply buy a high PR domain of the equivalent PR you want to get links from or higher.
For example, if the top sites in your niche are all PR4, buy a PR4 or PR5 domain. Set it up as a professional-looking blog (so they actually think you’re actively using the site).
Then approach your competitors in the same way, but ask them if they’d be interested in a 3-way link swap. They link to your site from their site, and you link to their site from your ‘other niche blog’ which is the equivalent or even higher PR than their site.
If you set up a PR5 niche blog and contact a bunch of PR3’s and 4’s, lots will be interested to swap. As a result, you get lots of high PR links on competitor sites for the cost of 1 high PR expired domain (learn about expired domains here).
If you’re a beginner, don’t jump into all of these strategies at once.
Work on buying expired high PR domains and building a blog network. If you can’t afford that = work on building conventional links until you can afford to start snapping up PR3s.
After you’ve got a network of PR sites that are supporting your rankings, purchase links on competitor sites. This is literally how you can take over an entire niche with SEO alone. Very easy, manual strategy for obtaining super high-quality links that work.
In Prosperity,
David Wood
P.S. Leave me your thoughts, comments, and questions below. Also, opt-in to the email list on the right for more SEO tips, tricks, and secrets.
Comments
Sarah Thompson, July 30 2024, 20:20
Thank you for sharing this comprehensive guide, David. The strategies are practical and easy to follow. I’ve been struggling to build a strong backlink profile, and your detailed breakdown provides a clear roadmap. I especially appreciate the sections on finding high PR links and the advice on competitive niches. Keep up the great work!
Michael Lee, July 30 2024, 20:25
Great tips, David! I appreciate the detailed breakdown of each strategy. It’s refreshing to see actionable steps that can be implemented immediately. The part about buying high PR backlinks is particularly interesting; I hadn’t considered that method before. I’m looking forward to trying these strategies out and seeing how they impact my site’s rankings. Thanks for the valuable insights!
Emily Richards, July 30 2024, 20:30
Could you provide more examples of successful high PR links you’ve used? Your insights are always so practical, and seeing specific examples would be incredibly helpful. I’ve tried a few of these strategies before with mixed results, so I’m curious about what has worked best for you. Thanks for another great post!
John Peterson, July 30 2024, 20:35
This post is very informative, David. However, I’d like to hear more about the potential challenges and how to overcome them. For example, what are some common pitfalls with buying high PR backlinks, and how can they be avoided? Also, how do you ensure the quality of the backlinks you get from these methods? Your advice would be greatly appreciated.
Daniel Kim, July 30 2024, 20:40
Hey David, great insights as always. Let’s catch up soon and discuss these strategies over coffee. I find the idea of buying high PR backlinks particularly intriguing. It seems like a smart way to have more control over SEO efforts. Looking forward to hearing more about your experiences with this approach. Cheers!
Laura Martinez, July 30 2024, 20:45
I’ve had success with some of these strategies in the past, especially using high PR backlinks. Your tips are spot on and very helpful. One thing I’ve found effective is targeting specific niches for these high PR links. They often have highly engaged audiences. Thanks for sharing these insights; I’m excited to implement more of them!
Mark Johnson, July 30 2024, 20:50
I recently started implementing some of these strategies, and I’ve already seen positive results. The method of using high PR backlinks has been particularly effective for me, bringing in a steady stream of new leads. Your advice on finding and buying these links was very helpful. Thank you for the valuable insights, David!
Rebecca Lee, July 30 2024, 20:55
I’m still skeptical about the effectiveness of some of these strategies, especially the use of high PR backlinks. Do you have any case studies or concrete evidence to back up these claims? It would be helpful to see some real-world examples of these methods in action. Your posts are always thought-provoking, and I appreciate the effort you put into them.
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Twenty-two years in corporate life taught me to recognise a kickback scheme dressed up in different language, and ‘find site owners who don’t know the true value of their Page Rank, never mention it in the emails’ is exactly that dressed up as an SEO tactic. In performance reviews we’d have called it an information asymmetry play. Here it’s just Tuesday.
Graham’s kickback framing is fair, and it’s exactly the kind of thing that would stop me cold before I sent a single email. I’d spend two weeks polishing the outreach message instead of sending it, telling myself I was being careful rather than avoidant. Four unlaunched projects in, I recognise the shape.
I spent years on the team side of a fast-growing operation before walking away, and I’ll say plainly this piece is a fair description of a tactic that genuinely used to move rankings. What it leaves out is the part where a platform’s spam team eventually treats a sudden cluster of sitewide links between unrelated competitor sites as exactly the signal it is, not a coincidence. I watched more than one site lose the ranking these links were bought to get, sometimes long after the links went up, which is the part nobody accounts for when they’re weighing $300 against $600 for a single sidebar spot. The three-way swap idea near the end is the cleverer version of this, and also the harder one to unwind cleanly once a relationship like that turns out to have been noticed.
The line that got me was ‘always try to pay one-time.’ Practical, no fuss, exactly the kind of instruction that actually saves someone money down the line.
Pete, from the company side, sitewide links like the ones described here are usually the first thing flagged in a link audit, one-time payment or not. I can’t speak to what any specific business did, but a blogroll link that appeared overnight and never moved again is a recognisable shape to anyone who has reviewed a backlink profile professionally.