The value of linkbait

Building as many natural links as possible is the key to getting good rankings in Google. We call it a linkbuilding machine but to others it’s just called publishing.

Let’s say you wanted to rank highly for some of the insurance search terms. Most guesses would say that to have a chance you need 24 months and 100,000 natural links. The value of a naturally ranking site is at least £1 million (perhaps more).

If a linkbaiter charges £1000 per article with 5 such articles per month then it will cost £60,000 a year to build links. If each linkbait gains 1000 links then after 2 years you have spent £120,000 and have 120,000 natural links and a site that’s worth £1 million.

In the UK there are perhaps 5 people that offer high end corporate linkbait services designed to build a lot of links over a long term period. The reason there are only about 5 isn’t just because it’s so hard but because the demand isn’t high enough to support too many more.

The reason for this is simple. For the past 3 years large SEO companies have been taking on very big clients and immediately buying as many links as possible. These companies then go to the top of Google and everybody is happy. It is much easier for the SEO company to buy 50,000 links for £20,000 than to spend time and money trying to learn about creating the links naturally.

Some of these large SEO companies are now struggling to deliver results for clients using paid links, directory submissions and on-site SEO and their clients are leaving, one by one.

In 12 months time the fees that UK linkbait experts charge will be five times higher than at present as demand will far outstrip supply.

BY Patrick Altoft AT 10:24am ON Thursday, 22 May 2008

Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Branded3 and has worked in the SEO industry for over 10 years. With experience across some of the worlds largest brands as well as startup businesses Patrick is well known in the industry and speaks regularly at the major SEO conferences and events. Follow Patrick on Twitter or Google+