Since taxes are confusing, it seemed obvious that an article campaign focusing on tax information would meet with success. Boy, did it. Approximately 35 articles were written, published and submitted to article directories. Since articles were timely, they were snapped up and published. The articles produced direct traffic to site as well as numerous inbound links because of link created in article byline.

As for search engines, we focused on everything but Google. We expected nothing from Google because major content and meta tag changes would take six to eight months to show results per usual practices of Google. In reality, it didn’t matter. The Yahoo and MSN search engines produced big time.

In mid-January, site went to number 1 on MSN under “business tax articles.” By end of January, Yahoo was also listing it as number 1. MSN started listing it at number 1 for “tax articles” in February. The combination of these listings produced a significant amount of traffic, conversions and a very happy client.

Can we go on cruise control now? No! With end of tax season, traffic to articles page of site has dropped by 75%. Nobody is looking for tax information after April 15th, so this is hardly surprising. The promotion of article page was simply a short-term solution to a difficult situation. While it should produce traffic during first quarter of each subsequent year, it is not a year-around solution.

Over next six months, we will focus on long-term goal of jumping over tax agency sites for keywords such as “business taxes”, etc. It is going to take a lot of patience, but will eventually produce a significant amount of business for client.

Creativity is often key to conquering seo situations. Blindly slapping up new meta tags and links isn’t always best answer. Sometimes, a little pre-emptive consideration can yield amazing results. It did in this case.

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.