a single source, nothing corroborates it

Test a paid link vendor where nothing else runs

If you are going to buy, run the experiment on a site with no other activity so any movement has one possible cause. What the test showed: the premium authority tier bought nothing the cheap tier did not, the cheap booster package actively hurt, placements came padded with links to big publications to disguise the paid one, and the vendor could not evidence any outreach. Point them at the homepage with your brand as anchor and drip them in.

The method

1. 01

   Test a paid link supplier on a site with nothing else going on, so any ranking movement has only one possible cause.

2. 02

   Expect bought guest posts to earn a dormant site its own brand term and little more, so size the spend against how many links the niche actually needs.

3. 03

   Do not pay the premium for a vendor's highest authority tier, because the cheaper placements arrive at the same real quality.

4. 04

   Read a supplier that always over-delivers on the authority metric it sells against as optimising for that metric rather than for quality.

5. 05

   Point bought links at your homepage using your brand name as the anchor, which is the least incriminating shape available.

What it returned

• $800

  After $800 of links and nothing else changed, Glen Allsopp's test site went from ranking for nothing to first for its own name plus a few positions inside the top 100, drawing 57 visits from 720 impressions over 28 days.

• $150

  Glen Allsopp's $150 link landed on a site Moz scored 53 against the 20 promised, his $225 link on a site scored 45 against 30, and his $425 link on a site scored 54; he concluded the top tier was not worth the jump and that one link alone would have moved the same.

• Glen Allsopp used a domain carrying only scraped and nofollow links, five deep niche articles, and no ranking at all for its own invented name, on the reasoning that a site already earning links makes attribution impossible.

• Every one of Glen Allsopp's three placements came in well above its advertised Moz Domain Authority, while none of the three sites had an about page or a contactable owner.

Sources

• The Hoth Review: Spending $1,000 on Guest Posts | Detailed.comGlen Allsopp · detailed.com · The Site I Promoted · 2018-12-19