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For those of you out there who purchase text links for SEO ... Which works better for you? Sitewides or homepage / section specific links?

For me, I've always had much better experience with sitewide links on relevant sites that generate a lot of traffic and have lots of pages indexed (a couple hundred thousand, minimum). In my niche, this isn't too hard to find, since most webmaster-related sites are fairly familiar with basic SEO techniques.

What's actually worked best for me is to buy (or get your link on, in some type of hat seo) just two or three really powerful sitewides. It's been my experience that's all I've ever needed to get well crawled and well indexed by Google.

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A short, practical update tied to the points and raised, with modern context and a low-risk way to decide which link type helps a given site.

Sitewide vs section/homepage: they serve different goals. Sitewide placements tend to produce broader referral traffic and a persistent domain-level signal; in-content or section-specific links concentrate topical relevance and pass stronger contextual signals to a particular landing page. Anchor-text variety and the link’s editorial context matter more than whether it appears on every page or only the home/section page.

Policy and technical cautions: buying links that pass value can trigger penalties under Google’s link-schemes guidance. If a link is paid, have the publisher use an appropriate disavow/attribute (for example, rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow"/rel="ugc" as appropriate) rather than trying to hide the transaction. See Google’s guidance on link schemes and the rel attribute change for details:

A short, repeatable test plan

  • Decide the primary metric (rank for target query, organic traffic, referral visits, or conversions).
  • Pick similar publishing sites (traffic, topical relevance) and buy one link type per site so the test isolates the variable.
  • Monitor Search Console and Analytics for new referring pages, anchor-text mix, referral traffic, and rank changes.
  • Allow time (several weeks to a few months) for crawling and ranking effects, then compare results and spread risk by diversifying link types and sources.

Bottom line: prioritize editorial, relevant placements and anchor diversity. Sitewides can be useful for sustained referrals or brand signals, but in-content, topical links typically give clearer on-page ranking benefit and lower long-term risk.

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Member Avatar for shimon

Google has changed the algorithm to only count a sitewide as "1 citation", or credit it as 1 link. An example is blogs. Look how many bloggers put a sitewide link on their blog. However, google counts it as 1. Yahoo and MSN are different. That's where the power of sitewides still work today. A feww good sitewides could easily boost you to the top rankings in those engines.

Member Avatar for Dani

Do you have any proof in this? To this day, sitewides perform better for me in Google than a homepage-only link by far. I still think it has to do with the niche, vertical, type of site, and lots of other factors that influence how Google counts a backlink. :)

Member Avatar for shimon

How do you know a sitewide in Google performs better for you than a homepage-only link?

Member Avatar for Dani

Because when I buy text links, I do so one at a time, and wait a couple of months before purchasing a different one. So, in other words, I'll buy a homepage-only link, and notice just a small benefit. A couple of months later, I'll buy a sitewide, and notice a big improvement within a month or two. Then I'll wait a little bit longer, and cancel the homepage-only, and not notice a decrease in seo benefit over time. Ya like my systematic approach? :)

Member Avatar for shimon

Yeah, I do.

Member Avatar for Dani

That's why I can say with no problem exactly what works *for me*. :)

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