Pre Sell Pages vs Site Wide Links

Its been mentioned a few times in various forums under the phrase content hosting, there was one at SEW but I cant find the thread at the moment.

Great idea as far as I can see, anything that can make links look like a natural endorsement of a site has to be a step forward.

Aha! I knew there was a phrase or name for this I couldn't remember, thanks!

It's been talked about for years, it really is nothing new at all but worthy of discussion again i think.

You can do this same kind of thing just with articles, if the host site will allow you to link to your own pages...

Is this the one? A Positive Step Forward in Link Strategies

I's a good thread, and goes to prove that knowledge is indeed cyclical if nothing else! :-)

Lots of variants of this around - like SEOchat author profiles ;)

Personally, I'm still a fan of good use of sitewides for SEO. So far they still look good when used in a considered manner for mature sites - though once the Google datacenters settle to one useful index, it'll be interesting seeing how they have been affected by Allegra proper.

As for the TW footer link - it's simply a credit, not SEO exercise, and it links to a reference site in case it's useful, rather than to my personal business site I make actual money on. It would have felt cheap and tacky seeking sitewide external links for business purposes. Not sure what the SEO benefits may or may not be, but frankly it's not a concern here.

For SEO, considered use of sitewides is still a tactic I see as having greater potential benefits outside of other factors. But there's no harm in mixing different strategies.

Well, I had a different topic to write on this morning when I sat down with my cup of coffee to write. Then I took a quick glance at my list of sites that keep me in the know on things (now using bloglines which is a fantastic tool), and I see Aaron...

But I can't say I'm doing it proactively. It's in response to my site disappearing for searches on my name and that of my company, and the theory that it may have been due to having run-of-site links on a domain I run for a friend.

The page has been up for about a month now, and while some internal pages from that site still come up on a link: search for my site, I am back to ranking at #1 for my company name.

But I don't think I've had an RFPs come from users who hit my site from the pre-sales page. Not yet, anyway.

Everyone seems to be forgetting that this idea is for a single link back to your own site only, when we know that it is the anchor text boost from multiple links that helps SERPS.

But if an SE views run-of-site links as cheating and responds by not counting them, the one link is better than the 1000. Besides, you can put more than one link on a pre sell page, including deep links.

We have been doing "Hosted Marketing Pages" for about a year, off and on. Some clients like to buy them in attempts to get the actual hosted page ranked highly, which works pretty well. Others like to buy pages like that so they can place several links to pages on their site with different anchor text, or in some cases point them to different sites. Its a good way to build a strongly themed page.

I think HMP pages are a good idea for the long term. They really arent any different then submitting articles or press releases, and everyone loves those.

Jarrod

...and you'll see a ton of these, especially in the more affilite competitive industries.

I've been doing it for a few months and it works well, but it has its disadvantages. If you buy the page on an authority site, then the page will rank within days. The clickthough traffic's not bad, plus it also results in a link from an authority domain.

Disadvantage is that the site owner can take down or hijack the page any time, even with an agreement.

..can really hurt in Google. It's based on 2 different percentages I think. The percentage of inbound links from 1 site vs the percentage of total links from other domains. And the percentage of pages on which the link is placed. Up to 10% seems to be okay. We've had many "grandfathered" sites plummet because of the sitewides. It's a sad loss. We don't do them anymore for Google, and even Yahoo's developed a system against them.

Sitewides can still work in some cases but I personally do not use them for any of my sites. I'm in the business for the long run and would rather spend my energy on long term tactics.

I think they work... ;)

I have also used these successfully on community sites - sell community members a single page ad with various deep links to their site, encourage them link to it in their sig on the forums and watch the ranking of their actual site improve!
Its a cheap way to let cyber-friends get some seo they can't afford without doing it for nothing.
Good to have a name for the technique, though :)

Works great in a variety of ways... articleinsider without the PPC
:-)

Certain vendors may find it a plausible strategy to offer owners of sites which they want these types of content pages hosted on, their product/service for free (and or money) along with "a well written article which will add more relevant content to your site".