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How much is a link worth?

Search Engine Journal is a blog about search engine optimisation. It is a place for professionals to talk about how to improve their site’s rankings and get more visitors from the search engines.

A recent article on the site proffered the question, “How Much Would You Pay For a Permanent Quality Link?”

The largest group, consisting of over a quarter of all respondents, answered that they would gladly pay $500, or approximately €320, for such a link.

What many would pay hundreds for, however, others are obtaining for free. By swapping content for high-quality links, they are able to obtain thousands of dollars worth of promotion for next to nothing by giving their content away for republication.

As such, it is crucial to take a look at the current linking economy and decide if your content is more valuable as material for paid licensing, or as a means to obtain high-quality inbound links.

Problems with paid licensing

Licensing content on the web is difficult at best, impossible at worst. First, there are very few sites and companies that are able to pay a fair licensing fee for use of your work. Most sites, including many larger ones, operate on a minimal budget and can not afford to pay fees for content.

Considering that many paid bloggers usually earn less than $100 per article-length entry, it is unlikely that their supervisors would spend many times that to obtain content already published elsewhere.

Even those who are willing to pay for such content may be turned off by the lack of exclusivity on the web. Since text and images are so easily copied and pasted, most likely any site that licenses your content legitimately will be joined by dozens of others who simply lifted the material without permission.

As such, any licensing push needs to be accompanied by a robust enforcement effort, which can require lawyers and even full-time staff.

The result is that not many news organisations actively license their work. Those who do use services such as the Copyright Clearance Centre and iCopyright to handle much of the process.

Linking as an alternative

Content licensing still in its infancy on the web. Links routinely sell for hundreds of dollars on some sites. Many companies, especially smaller ones that can’t afford to set up a formal licensing system, have taken to allowing their customers to pay for using their content via a return link.

The problem, however, is that not all links are equal. A prominent link on the BBC’s website means much more than one on an unknown blog. The more obscure a link is, the less traffic and the less search engine benefit one gains from it.

While many paid licensing systems are tiered on the number of visitors, the problem is that an online work becomes more diluted each time it is copied. The amount of dilution changes very little based upon the size of the site copying it.

In short, sites that allow others to use their content for just a link pay roughly the same amount for all of the links they get, but receive very mixed results. This is akin to going to a food store and paying a set amount for each apple purchased with no idea of the condition of each apple.

This has caused many companies to shy away from such a licensing strategy - even though nearly all of them are looking for ways to grow their audience and become a major destination for news in their area.

Maximising effectiveness

The obvious answer to the question “How much is a link worth?” is “It Depends”.

While offering your content for free and hoping for good links is an easy strategy, one employed by many bloggers, others want to ensure the trade off between dilution and linking is more favourable.

One simple solution is to limit those who can use the content by requiring such sites to register before they republish. This helps ensure high-quality inbound links by offering some editorial contro. It also aids in enforcement by providing an easy “whitelist” of sites that are allowed to use the content.

However, with this kind of system, you run into many of the same issues one would with the paid licensing system. Enforcement is still critical and costly, it is still very difficult for the republisher to correctly license the work. Few will be willing to go through the required steps.

The end result is that, until license enforcement measures become more practical, content creators are forced to choose between closing their content off completely, licensing it freely for links or instituting a paid licensing system.

Of the three options, locking down your content is the least productive. Doing so requires a great deal of enforcement with no opportunity for a return. It only makes sense for creators who place an extremely high value on exclusivity, especially those who sell their content to end users.

A paid licensing system, on the other hand, recoups at least some of the costs of enforcement and provides the greatest short term gain. Any money obtained from this system, considering it is of the republishing of content already created, is extra revenue.

A linking strategy, however, provides the greatest long-term benefit. While the quality of links varies, the cost of obtaining them is minimal. The result is an overall good deal, especially for sites that do not offer paid licenses and offer works free to the public.

The exception is with works that fall outside the typical news cycle and remain valuable longer than most news stories. Copying of those works can have more harmful consequences. Licensing of those works should be considered separate from other items.

Conclusion

If you absolutely have to know the exact dollar amount a link is worth, they can look up link values on sites such as Text Link Ads and see what others are paying. Even if the specific site desired is not there, look at find similar domains in the genre and make an educated guess.

However the point is not so much the exact amount that they are worth but to note that have real value that can be tapped.

The actual price a link carries will always be the subject of endless debate. But it is clear that they are worth more than many realise and can be a great deal for websites looking to build both a reputation with readers and a presence in the search engines.

Link building is not the perfect solution to licensing issues, but it is a powerful tool that can help maximise the value of one’s content.

In the end, the real question is: How can your company get the most out of what it puts on the web?

To that, there is no easy answer.

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Flickr photos from “shoothead” and “sparktography, respectively.

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