Author: Vincent S

SEO – Fiverr Link Buying

I’ve been doing guest post for a while and from what I see technically sites who sell links are not that much different from “real” sites that accept guest post.

  • They do have good DA & DR (30-70)
  • They do have good number of visitors (based on Ahfrefs). By “good” I mean below 10K and it seems fluctuate a lot
  • They have a massive backlinks to their sites & I guess using expired domain to attain aged domain name. I believe these 2 factors are the cause of high DA & DR
  • They have spam score 0 – 3 %. Checked in DA PA Checker, not sure if this is accurate.
  • They receive traffic from high buying power English speaking countries such as US, UK, and AU. There are inconsistencies here when I compare data from Similarweb and Ahrefs. One would say most traffic came from US and the other say from India/Pakistan (which most likely where the sites owner lives)
  • The other alarm I see from these data is they tend to have high bounce rate and short visit duration (seconds). This is according to similarweb.

An article with 1 link in these sites cost $50-$70. I used to think this as pricey but now after doing guest post for a while I start to rethink this assessment.

Doing guest post is HARD (I suppose all pure white hat link building are)

  • You send hundreds of outreach emails and only get a fraction of them replying
  • Site owners who allow guest post are usually very peculiar about the kind of content they want/allow in their site. You’d spend hours reading their guidelines and trying to figure out what you have that would interest them. Then you send your offer only to get rejection or never see any reply.
  • The grind is very slow and it feels 90% of your time are wasted on things that going nowhere and does not garner any result.
  • You’re limited by topic they accept and sometimes this cause you to not able to link to the page you want to link because it’s off topic. You’ll get “this doesn’t seem right” email that tells you to modify that link.
  • If they answer, there is high chance they’d ask for money anyway. Site owners do not see DR/DA when appraising their site’s value. Some would shamelessly ask for $500/post in a DR 40 site, which is downright crazy.

Compared to this gruesome work, placing an order and just wait for the articles published with link that I chose seems very appealing.

There is a point of concern though. These link selling sites looked “normal” technically when checked with ahrefs or similarweb or da pa, but further manual look into it will raise some alarm:

  • The site is full of 500-700 words low quality article with links on them (must probably ordered links). The articles are probably spun but I cant say for sure.
  • Some goes further by adding malware to the site (my Nod32 scream when I open the sites)
  • Since they just buy expired domain to gain domain age, the domain sometime doesn’t match the content.

So the SEO software company doesn’t seem to be able to identify these sites true nature, but the question is how about Google? Can they identify this? Or if they can’t today, can they do it tomorrow, or in three months, or a year?

Because when they do, I believe there will be hell to pay. If your site get most of its backlinks from these sites, your site will be gone from SERP overnight.

The reason I say this is because I did use the so called ‘blog network’ on its heyday. And it did get result, got me 1st page of some juicy keywords that kept making affiliate commission. However one day Google release an update and since then my site has never appear again no matter how many links I pumped.

The Fiverr offer usually says “I will do outreach xxx”. The truth is it will not be an outreach. There’s too much work involved and there’s too much variable to say “I will get you this link from this DR sites in this price within this period”. You can’t guarantee any of that unless you OWN the sites. And these are what these sellers have been doing: selling links from their own sites.

The blog network or link farming sites of today are more sophisticated. They actually do look like a functioning sites with decent theme and continual new posts. If you stop to read, the posts ARE readable even if they’re shallow. When compared to gibberish made by article spinner in the past, this is a vast improvement.

So, is it worth it?

Life is not fair

There is no rulebook saying that life is fair, or you are owed an easy ride

You are not the focus of all the world’s attention: if “everything” was truly against YOU, then life for the rest of us would be a breeze as you take the heat. You’re in it with the rest of us, albeit with your own set of challenges. So take some comfort in the fact that, while you’re unique, your not so special that the cosmos is out to get you.

Productivity

1. Have a clean setup for workspace – less items is better

2. Create a massive amount of time for yourself
– If there’s anything you want to do that will hinder your concentration, spare a day off and do it.
– Automate anything you can do, such as regular bill payment
– Shop online instead of doing regular shopping
– Don’t do any ‘recreation’ activities you won’t enjoy eg: going to the beach
– Spare enough time for sleep and exercise to be on peak condition

3. Ruthlessly prioritize what you are doing – focus on the most important thing and don’t get sidetracked on little tasks. Spend the time on what matters.

4. Raise your standard and put yourself on uncomfortable area
– Have more expectation of yourself, preferably above your station
– Weekend doesn’t have to be the time to laze around, evening doesn’t mean you have to do relaxing activities

5. Actually do the work – put the time to do the work: xxx minutes/hours per day start from xx PM

Ego is the enemy

Canvas strategy: help yourself by helping others

  1. dont after short term goal (getting credit, earn respect), focus on the long goal
  2. say little, do much
  3. dispose entitlement & feeling of superiority
  4. Example: introduce people who need each other, come up with idea and hand it over personally, do what no one else want to do

Restrain yourself

  1. Our own path, whatever we aspire to, will in some ways be defined by the amount of nonsense we’re willing to deal with
  2. no need to react to each insult/undermine comments/critics
  3. it doesnt matter if the person who say it is incompetent, or if you know better
  4. It doesnt degrade you when others treat you poorly, it degrades them

Get out of your own head

  1. Our thought can convince us that we’re special and deserve to have more so we prefer to stay in it than participating in the actual world. Stop listening to these
  2. Being self conscious in fear of who others might judge you based on your appearance/action is pointless. Everyone is too busy looking after themselves to care much about others.
  3. Don’t live in the haze of the abstract, live with the tangible and real, even if—especially if—it’s uncomfortable. Be part of what’s going on around you. Feast on it, adjust for it.
  4. There’s no one to perform for. There is just work to be done and lessons to be learned, in all that is around us.

make you happier

Hedonic treadmill: no matter what materialistic material you add to your life (bigger house, nicer car, nicer clothes) it doesnt make you happier because as you earn more expectation increased.

  1. Work to minimalize or eliminate things you dont like. For example if you hate being in a traffic, leave earlier.
  2. Exercise. Move. Do activities you prefer (biking/hiking/rock climbing etc)
  3. spare time to explore / play/ do something you want
  4. take vacation -> give yourself mental reset. Doenst have to be big, just to get you out of your normal routine
  5. dont chase vanity metrics (numbers) on social media. Focus on face to face interaction.

Things to remember

1 TAKE OWNERSHIP – Take responsibility for your life – blame noone but yourself.

2 ACCEPT FAILURE – Making mistakes is a key part of success.

3 WHAT YOU DO AT 8PM MATTERS – Time to plan your future – make sure what you do (till midnight) aligns with the goals that you have.

4 SUCCESS IS A LONELY ROAD, WHILE FAILURE IS A CROWDED HIGHWAY – Some of your greatest accomplishments will be done alone.

5 THE LAST 10% IS THE HARDEST. FINISH IT. – It’s the last 10% that brings a project home, that gets you the impact.

6 KNOW WHY YOU WANT IT. – You need to understand for yourself why you need to do something – that is going to help you do your best work.

7 CONTINUOUS LEARN. – Investing in your own learning is one of the best investments that you can make.