Buying Links - Is It Worth It?

Today we’re going to talk about a very sensitive subject - buying links. Google has made it crystal clear that they are NOT into paid links. They’re so much against it that they’ve created an easy-to-use form so that you can report any offenders. You can check it out here. Google dislikes paid links for [...]

Today we’re going to talk about a very sensitive subject - buying links. Google has made it crystal clear that they are NOT into paid links. They’re so much against it that they’ve created an easy-to-use form so that you can report any offenders. You can check it out here. Google dislikes paid links for the following reason (taken from their site):

Google and most other search engines use links to determine reputation. A site’s ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to it. Link-based analysis is an extremely useful way of measuring a site’s value, and has greatly improved the quality of web search. Both the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of links count towards this rating.

However, some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links that pass PageRank, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results.

Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such. This can be done in several ways, such as:

* Adding a rel=”nofollow” attribute to the a tag
* Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file

Google works hard to ensure that it fully discounts links intended to manipulate search engine results, such excessive link exchanges and purchased links that pass PageRank. If you see a site that is buying or selling links that pass PageRank, let us know. We’ll use your information to improve our algorithmic detection of such links.

You can read the full post here

Here are some thoughts.
1) What prevents a competitor from buying links on five different sites and reporting me to Google?
2) Instead of forcing millions of webmasters to do it their way, why don’t they modify their algorithm. Google should penalize bad links. If you are buying advertising on a website and it is providing a GOOD user experience, who really gives a rats a**. Isn’t that what Google’s all about? A good user experience?
3) What if I purchase a link on a PR1 or PR2 website? There is no PR to pass. Well there is but its pretty darn low. Sometimes I will buy advertising because its targeted towards my audience, not because of the PR.

I honestly could care less about my PR. I look at the traffic, demographics and other valuable information to grow and retain the customer base.

Saying that, I WILL be implementing a no-follow where I have posted advertisers links because I don’t want to get my ass banned. I will probably lose the advertisers but what can I do. BIG BROTHER is watching.

Purchasing Links…Good or Bad?

Will purchasing links hurt your reputation? Will it drive down your rankings? Is it considered black-hat marketing?
In reality, there is NOTHING WRONG WITH PURCHASHING LINKS AS LONG AS THEY ARE RELATED TO YOUR SITES CONTENT.
If you’ve purchased a link on a site, and getting traffic from it, whats the harm??? If you’re purchasing links for [...]

Will purchasing links hurt your reputation? Will it drive down your rankings? Is it considered black-hat marketing?
In reality, there is NOTHING WRONG WITH PURCHASHING LINKS AS LONG AS THEY ARE RELATED TO YOUR SITES CONTENT.
If you’ve purchased a link on a site, and getting traffic from it, whats the harm??? If you’re purchasing links for the sole reason of raising your rankings, your rankings may be negatively affected. For example, let’s say you own a car site, but you’re advertising on a vacuum site with a PR of 7. A search engine can look at that and realize that you’re advertising on a site with unrelated content. Common sense would tell you that your rankings will be negatively affected. This shows an attempt to “hack” the engines. This is just a theory of course. On the other hand, we’ve seen sites that show a SHORT TERM ranking increase, but the keyword is SHORT TERM.

It’s a good idea to set a budget of say $100 / month (depending on your budget size) and purchase links from various websites. You can track (through your stats software) which referrers are sending converting customers. If you notice that a referrer is sending bouncing customers, discountinue your advertising from that site and move it somewhere else. It should typically take 3-7 days to find out if a link will convert. The budget is totally up to you.