….and how to make sure the links you buy pass value (yes, I mean PageRank).

Beware guys, Matt Cutts has warned people that links sold by V7N network are against their guidelines. Yeah, we know it Matt. But I’m sorry, as long as Google will give that much power to links, I don’t think the big companies out there will give up chasing PageRank. They are realizing that SEO is bringing them the best ROI they ever experienced, and they prefer to take the risk rather that spending millions in traditional marketing, or in AdWords…

So yes, it’s true that Google is good at idenfying paid links and it doesn’t take them long to stop the link juice that the selling page/site used to pass.

Now, it’s not that I’m encouraging people to buy links, but if you have no other choice, or if you’re too lazy, here are a few tips to get links that are undectable and to make sure they’re passing value (PR):

1. Make Private Deals:

Get links directly from the site owner. The best it to get links from niche sites, you often find popular sites that don’t already sell links and that have a nice PageRank, these are golden partners.

2. Buy Presell Pages:

Sitewide links suck. Always try to ask your link partner to host a page dedicated to you. Provide him with a page that you’ve written in which you’ll plug links. Then, tell the site’s owner to link this page “only” from the homepage. Within a few months this page will get a nice PageRank and all the pages you’ve linked to will benefit from that.

3. Prefer links inside paragraphs:

Avoid orphan links. Links inside a paragraph look more natural than sitewide links.

4. Use a test page before buying your link:

Many people are buying links without knowing if they are for sure helping them. How one can be sure that a link is passing value? I will share a little trick with you.

Before spending hundreds of dollars per month to get a link from a site, ask the site owner to link to a random page you’d have created to test its link juice. Let’s say you have a website www.domain.com, create a random page, ie xhssjls.html, in which you put in some random content. DO NOT link to this page from your website. This page should be virgin of any link!!! Ask your potential link partner (and only him!) to link to that page (www.domain.com/xhssjls.html). Then wait a few days and see if Google indexes the page. If it’s indexed, that’s already a good sign.

Then wait another couple of weeks and use a PageRank checker tool or the Google Toolbar to see if the page (www.domain.com/xhssjls.html) has gained PR. If that’s the case, it probably means your partner’s site is passing PageRank and is not “penalized” by Google…

I recently left the firm for which I was doing SEO consulting. As some of you know, I’ve been working for Aposition since April 2006 in order to build and manage SEO campaigns for medium and large websites.

I was proud to work with such a good company, full of talented folks. Aposition is a well reknowed SEO company here in France and Europe. This recognition is mostly due to their very first sucess with Kelkoo (a Yahoo Company), a shopping comparison engine which owns most of its early sucess to the great SEO efforts brought by Aposition.
I’ve been learning a lot during my time at Aposition, both in terms of SEO, but also in terms of management and client relationship. This position was also a chance for me to get to know more about the Internet marketing industry in France and in Europe.

I’m leaving on good terms, and I’ll still be in touch with people from Aposition, and will still meet them on Fridays to have a drink and play pool or video games 🙂

So what’s next? Well, I’ve just started as an inhouse SEO Manager for a large mobile content provider. This won’t be a regular SEO job. In fact, I will take care mainly of mobile search projects. I have no previous experience in mobile search optimization as such, since it’s really new, but I’m progessively learning.

In the next few days, I will try to give you an insight of mobile search and share a few tips.

What I can tell you so far is that traditional search engines are doing all they can to get their part of the growing mobile search pie. But it ain’t that easy. In fact, they’re kind of struggling. Most of searches made on mobile today are “on-deck”, which means that most of mobile users are searching from their operators’s WAP portal.

And most of the operators are afraid of Google and others. They prefer to use white label technologies from new firms, such as JumpTap for Virgin Mobile USA, or Medio Systems for T Mobile USA.

However, Google and others have managed to sign deals with network operators, for example Google recently signed a deal with China Mobile, the largest operator in China.

I have added a new category to this blog: Mobile Search, hopefully I will fill it with useful posts for those interested in mobile search optimization.