i always thought the major search engines would have access to info on when domains are bought and sold, and so would take that into consideration and generally discount links from an ‘old domain’ which has recently been bought - e.g. if an ‘older domain’ is bought and then suddenly gets 10,000 new links or whatever, I have the feeling the search engine would somehow flag that as unusual growth of links in a short period of time and look at it more closely

@Paintworkz - There isn’t anything bad about selling domains for good money but the point is that for those who do buy those domain names because of the age they should keep in mind that MSN (maybe other search engines too?) will also be looking at the age of external sites linking to that domain. So if they want to make the most of it they’d better be looking for ways to get inbound links from established sites.

@Matan - Good point. The reply might turn out a bit long so I’ll be doing a post instead. Quick answer though…I agree that you have to do something to make sure you get relevant keywords in the anchor text.

Nice post. You say “that organic link building is making more and more sense” and you are right, but only as part of a bigger link building campaign. Yes direct link building has become harder, as weak links from new sites are worth a lot less, but it is still vital to get some quality links from quality sites in - with correct anchor text and pointing to a relevant page on your site.

Organic link building is great, but does not always help you build links for specific keyword terms as more often than not you do not control the page in which the link is placed, you do not control the anchor text and you do not control where that link is pointing! You need these things to effectively rank for chosen keywords.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this.