To possibly skip the Google sandbox is priceless

When purchasing text links through a broker:

1. Avoid run-of-site links.

2. Avoid package deals.

3. Keep within your topic area.

4. Buy links from high quality sites only. Review the page and the site where the link will be placed. Look at the pages that link to it, how many links on the page, use the Internet Archive to see previous version of the page etc., etc.

5. Proceed with caution. Here is a quote from Matt Cutts “A natural question is: what is Google’s current approach to link buying? Of course our link-weighting algorithms are the first line of defense, but it’s difficult to catch every problem case in adversarial information retrieval, so we also look for problems and leaks in different semi-automatic ways. Reputable sites that sell links won’t have their search engine rankings or PageRank penalized–a search for [daily cal] would still return dailycal.org. However, link-selling sites can lose their ability to give reputation (e.g. PageRank and anchortext)”.

Sounds Great. What are a couple of good text link brokers?

Firstly although you might submit to 200 free directories in one day the appearance of the links will span several months because that is how long it takes some directories to get round to listing sites. Normally during this period you would be soliciting links from elsewhere so in practise there should be a variety of links anyway.

Having said that you may want to take into account a current theory relating to the Google sandbox. The theory goes that it is possible to avoid the sandbox by acquiring highly trusted links. The jury is still out on this theory (which is probably over simplified) but at the moment it seems to fit most professional SEOs experiences.

If you subscribe to this theory then obtaining highly trusted links early on should be a priority. So there might just be a case for buying some highly trusted links as soon as possible after launching your site. These could be text links purchased through a text link broker or paid for directories like joeant.com, botw.org, goguides.org etc., but as in the original post make sure they are direct text links.