Link Building: A Lucrative SO Job

With web development becoming more and more available to almost every internet user and with the increasing number of platforms allowing virtually anyone to create his or her own website, it is expected that the competition for online traffic become tougher and tighter by the hour. And with many businesses today basing their operations entirely on the internet, it should also come as no surprise if they do everything to make their page ranks higher to drive more visitors to their sites. This whole business of traffic-driving is called search engine optimization or SO. The best thing about SO is it creates so many online jobs that can be done from the comfort of one’s home.

One of these SO jobs is link building. Basically, it is the creation of links in other websites that lead to the website being optimized. That may be quite a too simplistic definition but it explains in the simplest terms how link building is done.

Searching for link building freelance opportunities, I stumbled upon the following job post, which I found quite funny.

“I want as many as possible links to my site. I only need to be 'famous' for 10 days. After that, it doesn't matter if I'm blacklisted or whatever. I need to be No 1 on Google on the 15th of May. Absolutely, positively. If I am toast by the end of May, doesn't matter. So I want porn links, link farms, blog spam. Everything! I MUST be No. 1 on the 15th of May for at least 24 hours. Bid a low to win. If I am no. 1 on 15/05/10, I WILL pay $600 U.S. dollars as a bonus. Guaranteed. My regular employee rating is 9.985. I'm sorry, but I am undercover for this one as it is flying under the radar.”

This job ad was created on April 20 the same year. I found it funny because the buyer seems to be really desperate to rank number on Google’s search results in such a short time. And the poster even had a specific target date for it! Whose curiosity wouldn’t be piqued by that? What kind of site could it be?

Well, I never found out because I didn’t even think of applying for it. Obviously, the buyer was looking for a link building team. An individual couldn’t possibly deliver the results the buyer wants in a very short period of time. But even with a team of link builders, they would have to have a really, really good strategy to give the buyer’s website the highest possible page rank even for just a day.

Doing link building per se is quite easy. You just need to post links in forums, comment threads, online site directories, blogs, etc. But getting good results, i.e. a boost in page ranking, isn’t as easy. Therefore, the practice of link building should be done with quality in mind. When we say link quality, we are talking of how creative links are.

Link building freelancers should be able to make their forum and blog posts more engaging and more credible-sounding so other people won’t think of them as mere spammers promoting their websites.