Presell Pages & Reputation Management

Presell pages are a link building method that have gradually gained a following. Tto my knowledge, the most visible firm that offers them now is WeBuildPages. A thread at WebmasterWorld, Presell Pages – your experience to date, has some interesting tidbits:

jdancing: I have found pre-sell pages or “content pages” often rank better then the site that is buying the page. Buying a page devoted to your site on a related, well established site is a great way get your website found, especially if you are stuck in the sandbox.

This “fluke” of high ranking presell pages could potentially be a huge advantage for firms in need of reputation management. When a site or service becomes “big enough”, positive and negative comments about that site or service can usually be found in the SERPs when searching for its name. If a positive presell page grabs the #2 spot, rather than a negative review of the service or blog entry of a disgruntled customer, this could have a very positive impact on the conversion rate of potential customers who do brand research before buying.

Pros of Presell Pages (as I see it)

• They provide links from keyword rich pages (and can include deeplinks)
• They provide links in the editorial block, rather than an ad block
• They potentially rank high in the SERPs, thus giving searchers a positive off-site “presell” of your products (and can also push down negative press)

Cons of Presell Pages (as I see it)

• If presell pages are not clearly marked as advertising, this could negatively impact the trust that the publisher conveys to its readers
• They seem to be a bit expensive (of course, it’s all relative–do you sell CD’s or real estate?)

More discussion on presell pages available at Threadwatch and Stuntbubl Internet Marketing Consulting.

Brute Force Link Building

I’m a strong believer in working to get a site permanent, relevant backlinks the old fashioned way (directories, article syndication, etc.). It’s a great way to build a steady stream of targeted traffic and work your way up the SERPs on a dime (albeit slowly).

But that’s not to say you can’t get top rankings in other ways (you can of course). Specifically what seems to have always worked well in Google is brute force link building (i.e., building as many links as possible, and to heck with the quality).

The idea being that quantity matters. So does quality of course, so all things being equal, anyone would want 1 high quality link over 1 low quality link. Someone who employs brute force link building does not want to wait years for their site to attract 10,000 high quality links though (assuming the current #1 site has 9,000 high quality links). Instead, they might get 5 high quality links, and then 100,000 more from… anywhere.

That’s what I mean by the term ‘brute force link building’, and the truth is, it works. The Sandbox has prevented this on a flagrant basis, but I’ve seen many sites do well in Google with tons of spammy links (even in the last six months).

Google & Links (supporters only) at WMW touches on this:

What
surprised me was that for a mix of different searches (all returning
number of results in the millions), all the top ranking results had one
common denominator… sheer weight of links VOLUME. eg… small to
medium size sites with 20,000 links, 26,000 links, 32,000 links and so
on. Dig a little deeper with the linkdomain: search on Yahoo and the
other common denominator becomes evident.

Nearly
all the links are artifically created, either by filling page footers
linking all pages to each other, or creating multi-page, limited
content, feeder sites stuffed with links back to the money site… and
other creative variations all intended to create links. Sure there are
inbounds from other sites… but they are a drop in the ocean.

My personal .02: Enjoy it while you can, boys. Yes there will always be ways to game SE’s but it’s getting harder and harder… I’ll be surprised if this method works really well in 24 months.

Granted, there’s a lot of money to be made in the next 24 months