How do Domain Authority and the Price of a Paid Listing Relate?

[Zippy-Bungle]

I'm just starting to do some in-house link building for the first time.

Having looked at some of our competitors it seems that they have paid for links on some B2B sites and I was wondering how the Domain authority and the price charged were related. The follow up question is then how do you estimate the ROI of a link?

So for example looking at a site with a DA of 30  and a page authority of 17 how much should one pay for the link?

How do you decide how much you should pay for a link - and whether it is value for money?

btw I'm not interested in buying links I'm curious

Thanks for any thoughts

[DanielMulderNL]

Hi Denis,

The thing is: if a website offers inbound links that pass PageRank then by definition they do not comply with the Google guidelines. Google is quick to call all things not compliant spam and sometimes makes arbitrary choices as to what are considered bought links.

During a conference I once asked an ex Googler who was a webspam specialist that I thought that an advertorial on big websites are de facto paid links if they pass PageRank? I never got a real answer but I guess it all depends on the standing a website has with Google. If a small blog asks a fee for an advertisement with an followed link then it's a slippery slope, large news sites are not a problem.

All being true the link they offer is not an advertorial and is an paid link in a link directory and in the end has a high risk of being classified as such. But if you would need to put a price on it: the DA in combination with the anchor text of the link makes it more or less valuable. A DA of 30 is significantly more then 20 and will pass significantly more PageRank so us more valuable. How much more is up to the person who is in the market for buying I guess.

Hope this helps.

Gr Daniel

[Zippy-Bungle]

Hi Daniel,

I probably used the wrong terminology. I'm not thinking of link farms. Rather if I pay for a listing on a B2B site and that comes as a link I consider that as a paid link. Equally so if I put an advert on a site = paid link.

For example http://www.pecm.co.uk/directory/ charges $200+ for a 12 month listing. If I don't care about page views how much will the DA of 30 help?

or does this come under the general category of link buying as you described?

Cheers

Denis

[DanielMulderNL]

Hi Denis,

The value of all paid links is a negative one as they are forbidden by Google as they violate their user policies or quality guidelines. If you have competitors that buy links that pass PageRank and you feel that this leads to unfair competition you can report the link selling site. The will be corrected if they make it their business ot sell those kind of backlinks.

Info: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.nl/2013/02/a-reminder-about-selling-links.html
report link seller: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/paidlinks?pli=1

So do not buy your links. Earn them! Social media and being helpful to others is a good place to start I like to think.

Gr Daniel