We have been watching one of our competitors come from page 5 to page 1 position 9 - 10 for 2 key phrases in just 2 weeks, i have checked their backlinks and they only seem to have 12 backlinks most of them from

 

www.dirbull.com

 

would you advice us to use this paid link service? or are our competitors risking everything by buying backlinks?

 

Thanks

You know Google gives little more value to more than one backlink from a single domain. For example if they are getting 500 backlinks from www.dirbull.com this will not be much more valuable than a single backlink from the same domain.

 

The domain authority is a PR7, which might help, but dirbull place the links on pages that have no page rank. eg. http://www.dirbull.com/Internet/web-design/ has no PR.

 

There's no way that Google punish companies of advertising on other peoples site, otherwise large companies wouldn't do it. Look on Youtube, Facebook etc. It's common practice these days!

Thank you for the reply, what do you think of this

 

http://www.catalystsearchmarketing.com/2012/08/clean-up-your-links-before-penguin-2-0-strikes/

 

they are mentioned at towards the bottom of the page.

 

Thanks again.

Just be careful who you buy links from. I would also recommend going with a directory that has targeted a specific industry and not a general directory like the article suggests. In fact if you can find a specific and highly ranked directory you also stand more of a chance of getting quality click throughs as well as better link juice!

You may find the backlinks they have built are yet to be found by the service you are using to check them.

 

And no, don't buy any links, you need to look deeper into those directories like you said little PR on sub categories put one of those sub categories into the backlink checker your using and see what links are going into them and then check there PR - probably little or no link juice coming in to that directory.

 

And thin pages, no content, no relevant content - create your own articles 500 words each and send them out for guest blogging.

 

You must follow some blogs in your industry, contact them 'Got some sweet articles your readers will love, sure they will pick up some good social sharing' get 3 of these out there are your see some movement in the SERP's - Oh and the best part you wont flux then drop like a stone like im guessing that website will do in a months time.

 

My 2 pennys.