2)Relevancy to search engines – if you’re running a homemade toys website and have a popular online pharmacy website linking to yours, this won’t be as relevant as say having Mattel® linking to you. Remember that search engines are becoming more and more sophisticated and they can tell whether two sites have complimentary, competitive, or completely unrelated website content.

3)Limited link length - rarely are you given option of selecting more than three words when purchasing links. You may have difficulty coming up with only three keywords relevant to your website, so this can often prove to be a difficult task.

4)Page is already populated with other text links – online auction sites that have sellers auctioning off website text links are notorious for selling textlinks on websites that already have 50 more on same page. Look for sites that limit number of textlinks sold.

5)Search engine spam – your site linked on every single page of a 3000 page website using same keywords and url can be considered spam to a search engine. If you choose to purchase multiple text links on multiple websites, make sure your linking text varies.

The lesson is to be simply cautious. Using a textlink broker to find relevant and complimentary websites to buy links from can prove to be highly beneficial – just do your research first. Would a $100 monthly textlink investment be better spent on a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign, or will long term benefits of buying a text link outweigh a temporary influx in visitors? Return on investment is key – whichever route will yield you highest ROI should be your ultimate determining factor.