Whatever Happened to Text Link Ads?
-
I've searched the web for any objective articles, good or bad, written about Text Link Ads or Text Link Brokers written in the past two years. Other than the occasional discussion board question, SEOs are silent about these services.
I know back in 2006, Rand looked upon them almost favorably. But what has happened since then? Is there any legitimate use for these services anymore (as a link builder)?
-
Thanks, Rand!
Like I said, it's difficult to find any recent information about TLA or TLB at all. I hadn't even heard about the link penalty or the sale.
I've skimmed over Scott's experiment and will watch your video in a bit. Honestly, I'm not surprised that the experiment worked.
One of my clients was recently surpassed by a competitor in the SERPs for one of their "bread-and-butter" keywords. The competitor very obviously bought links...and lots of them, too. Especially in a post-Penguin (even post-Panda) environment, I found that a bit disheartening. Though I don't wish bad things on anyone, I'm hoping (and betting) that Google will quickly pick up their "unnatural" links.
-
The brand of "text links" generally has not been good over the last few years. TLA was penalized by Google for a while, but is now back ranking for their own name. I don't know if TLB was ever hit in the same way, but I know both of them have occasionally sent emails to those who purchased their products noting that Google may have removed link value or even be penalizing them.
When I gave a favorable review to TLA, I specifically called out some of the white hat services, and I also did so prior to Patrick Gavin's sale of the network. Today, I'd be mostly skeptical of the value the "classic" link purchases could provide, though they may indeed have other, less guideline-violating products that are worthwhile.
Oh - and we did do an experiment with TLA in 2010 that I covered here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-we-bought-links-and-it-worked
-
All, TLA is alive and well! We have added 10 different link products within the last year and a half to help diversify ones efforts. TLA provides many link building solutions beyond what we've offered for the past 11 years. Remember we are not a link network. All of our 150,000+ publishers are independently owned. We just don't like to be as vocal about all of this like some of the other companies out there.
-
I would not suggest using paid link networks for any reason. Even if you want to purchase links, there are safer ways to do it.
-
Hi Benjamin,
I'd stay clear of the IMO. Quite a few paid networks have been devalued recently and I bet it's causing trouble for companies that have used them.
I believe the issue is that paid link patterns are becoming easier to detect and therefore potentially dangerous for sites that have them in their backlink profile. I'm sure there's still people out there getting good results from them, but I don't think I could handle knowing that rankings could be wiped out every algorithm update!
Ben
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
The most efficient anchor text distribution technique
I have many client websites and of course my goal is to do my best in the results I show. Share how you distribute anchor text which work the best. Such a scheme works the best for me naked/ branded/ generic Would you add any other strategy?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Lynn120 -
What is really a bad link in 2017?
Hi, Routine answer is: A link which doesn't provides any value. Tired of listening to this statement where we can see number of back-links been generated with different scenarios. There are still many low DA websites which speaks exactly about a brand and link a brand naturally. So, is this a bad link or good link? Let's be honest here. No one gonna visit such pages and browse through our website; it's all about what it's been doing in-terms of SEO. Do these websites to be in disavow list? Beside the context how a brand been mentioned, what are the other metrics to disavow a domain? Expecting some real answers for this straight question. If it's a low DA site and speaking about exactly our website- Good or bad? Vice-versa...high DA website mentioned website with less matching content. What is the proportion of website authority and content context? Can we keep a medium DA backlinks with some Moz spam score?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz0 -
8th October - anything drastic happen?
Hi all, So, I have done nothing SEO heavy on my site for a couple of months, I deleted a page and moved the content to the homepage, but thats about it. Anyway, for our main keyword we have dropped from a pretty regular 20-30th position we have enjoyed for the past 4-5 months right down to 95th. Other keywords have also dropped by a few pages but not as drastic. I got hit by some spammy 'forex' links on the UK Business Forums clones appearing (as per my other post), but they started AFTER the 8th October. Something happened on that day which very rapidly ruined my rankings. Has anyone else seen this happen? Or could it be Penguin 4 checked out my site on that date? I have not dropped at all for my Brand Name or other keywords, it seems to be the higher searched keywords I have taken a plummet on. Thanks,
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | phero0 -
Hidden text for Mobile
How do search engines respond to text that is hidden on mobile settings online. I have a
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Mike.NW0 -
Link building - BBB, high quality associations and also botw.org
Hello, We would like to gain some quality links to compete with the competition. We already have about 70 backlinks. We are an eCommerce site. We are thinking of adding the following links: BBB online 2 high quality PR5 associations in our niche (one is $500 and the other is $200) A couple of less expensive but still quality partner listings, probably in the $40-100 range botw.org For current and future Google standards, do you think these will improve things? Do you see anything wrong with adding these? We want a clean link profile for as far into the future as possible. Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
IS there such a thing as a Link Juice Viewer?
Hi, I am managing the tech and SEO for an ecommerce site with a big mega menu with over 140 cats/subcats and well, I know that my link juice is diluted and am thinking of cutting back on the categories but in the meantime. Is there a link juice visualizer? How can I see in a visual format how linkjuice is flowing through the site? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | bjs20100 -
Which links should I remove?
What is your general approach when removing links for a new client? Just taken on some new work and found links that I wouldn't dream of building now (unrelated domain name, blogroll, single word, exact match anchor, dead sites). However some of these are brand anchor links, and some of the pages have decent Page Rank (2/3/4). Obviously I don't want to remove links that might actually be helping the site in a weird way. It would be good to get an idea of other peoples approach to link removal - what goes, what stays etc?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Coolpink0