The quality of each link and the number of outbound links on a page are crucial. If a page has 200 outbound links, the equity is split among 200 recipients. If there is only 1 outbound link, you get all the link juice directed to that page.
Dmitry Bondar at one of NaZapad conferences advised sorting in Ahrefs by the number of outbound links from a page and analyzing those specific links. They deliver real SEO impact.
In the image, we see a typical network setup for placing links. $50 a year for a homepage link, $50 for an in-content article link. But how much link equity will they pass? Let’s do the math.
If you place an in-content article link, that page will have 0 referring backlinks, which means its link equity will be minimal.
Charles Floate often writes about this, for example. People buy links from the New York Times thinking their site will instantly rocket to the top of search results. Yeah, right. They get decent trust, but the link is buried deep in the site’s structure, so there’s zero link equity passed.
If you get placed on the homepage, there will likely be 5–10 other links, so equity gets divided among all those recipients as well.
If you add up all referring domains across these 25 sites in the picture, you get 1,058 domains. Keep in mind that not all links point to the homepages; they are likely heavily diluted across inner pages. As a result, you get crumbs instead of meaningful link weight.
Here is a strategy that actually works: instead of buying 25 weak PBNs, you can buy ONE powerful dropped domain on GoDaddy with 1,000 existing backlinks. If the backlinks point to inner pages, 301-redirect them to the homepage. Then place a single link from the homepage.
In terms of power, this single link will match all 25 referring sites combined. I’m speaking hypothetically, but you get the point. 25 referring domains x $50/year = $1,250 a year spent on those links.
Alternatively, you could buy 1 solid PBN domain for that amount. By year two, you break even 🙂
So when you place links deep inside a site structure with zero backlinks pointing to that specific page, or on weak PBNs with only 20–30 referring domains, you simply shouldn’t expect rapid ranking growth.
Crowd links (forum/blog comments) are also useless for passing link equity. They usually have 30 outbound links on inner pages that nobody links to.
For trust signals—maybe, sure, but not for link equity.
Question: Hey, what do you think—if I place a link on the homepage of a foreign-language site, but use a Russian anchor text and Russian surrounding text, will it work well, or is it better to use the URL as anchor text when the site is in a foreign language?
Take the example in the photo above. Leon ranks using English-language PBNs with Russian anchor texts in the link content. No matter what people say about not doing this, it ranks #2 in the top results for «sports betting» (sports betting).
It has over 300 English-language PBNs. And specifically homepage links that have hundreds or even thousands of backlinks pointing to them. Fonbet, which holds #1 position, uses the exact same strategy, except it uses high-trust Russian sites:
All the answers are right there in the top positions. You just need to spend the time to analyze them.
And pay attention to the number of outbound links on those pages—it’s minimal.
Yeah, go ahead and tell these sites about crowd links. Maybe they haven’t heard of this «killer top strategy» and are just wasting their budgets.