The Pre-Sell Page: Paid Link Workaround?
With Google taking a hard stance against paid links, some SEOs are getting creative with workarounds. One such "workaround" is the "pre-sell page."
First of all, what is a pre-sell page? Basically, it is a page that you craft with the titles/descriptions/text and most importantly - links to your site with the exact anchor text that you want. You then take this page and pay a site in a similar industry/niche to put it up on their domain and link to it from one of their pages (generally somewhere on their home page) and on their XML sitemap.
Are these paid links? Well... yeah! 
However, proponents of this tactic argue that no one except spiders generally find these pages so it's not as likely to get reported, particularly if you are sure to link out from this pre-sell page to some other similar pages within your niche (such as Wikipedia articles or some .gov’s or.edu’s or other authoritative sites). Often times the pre-sell pages will hide the links to the owner's page in the text, and despite this link-hiding, supposedly the spiders will see the links to the owner's page with the same trust as the others. Apparently these pre-sell page links will continue to give you link love for as long as it is up and linked to. I have heard some folks getting pretty dramatic results using this tactic, particularly when they secure highly trusted domains to host these pages.
Personally though, as a white hat SEO, this tactic scares me. I've never done it and I don't have plans to start. It still runs afoul of Google's Guidelines, and as such, you run the risk of Google smacking you at some later date for the supposedly under-the-radar-tactics you employ today.
4 comments
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Agree, as a white hat seo, I wouldn't touch it, but you have to admit, this is almost impossible to be detected by Google. Unless it sticks out like a sore thumb.
Comment by Roe Tee [Visitor] — 03/14/08 @ 16:07
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This isn't a recent development, pre-sell pages have been around for many years now, probably pushed into the limelight b/c of Google's stance though.
Comment by jim [Visitor]
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03/20/08 @ 07:40
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Hi Stephen,
I second Jim here - the term and tactiv presell pages was coined March 9 2005 (!) so three years ago by Aaron Wall
please see here
http://www.seobook.com/archives/000710.shtml
second - I'm not sure where you got those arguments as follows from
"the pre-sell pages will hide the links to the owner's page in the text"
and
"no one except spiders generally find these pages"
Both would indicate that a human could not find those pages, and as we all know pages and links that don't make sense to a human don't make sense for the search engine... this has been preached by Google for years.
That being said, there's no presell page of I know that has "hidden links" in it, which would indicate a very simple to detect violation of Google's guidelines.
best regards
presell page man
Comment by Presell Page Man [Visitor] · http://www.presellpageman.com — 03/25/08 @ 11:38
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File this under online advertising. If it makes good marketing sense in terms of exposure to the right audience due to the popularity / relevance of the site than I don't see a problem (editorially the site would only list you if you were relevant) but this would be a case for adding nofollow to the link.
The name itself suggests it presells your product or services. This could also be good reputation management if the presell page ranks top 10 for your corporate identity.Comment by Linda Bustos [Visitor] · http://www.getelastic.com — 03/31/08 @ 18:07
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