anyone afraid to sell links because your SERP may go down and that would really hurt your business? Pros of getting more money, but risk of SERP going down?
I don't buy or sell links, I personally don't believe in it. It really is nothing but a method to cheat the pagerank system and search positions, if you don't think so then imagine this; You buying 30-40 text links with high pagerank and use a certian keyword. Now, your site during the next update has a higher PR and well placement in SERPs. This was not natural, you paid for your SERPs and pagerank. Before you go and say "text links don't effect SERPs" because they do. The only way to pass pagerank onto another page is to NOT use the ref="nofollow" tag. If it was used your site would recieve no pagerank juice or SERPs weight. Now ask yourself, would you still pay the same amount for those text links if they gave no pagerank or serps? A true honest answer would be "Yes, I would for the traffic", in that aspect it wouldn't matter if they used the ref="nofollow" tag because its just for traffic. Text link buying and selling is cheating the system anyway you look at it. This has been state in matt cutts official google blog and was stated if you wish to sell text links you must use the ref="nofollow" tag.
nice post, but a lot of people including myself believe in selling links for SEO purposes. Google is mainly doing this to keep their adwords system dominant. I believe in buying or selling relevant links. If you want to buy links to increase relevant results to your page I see nothing wrong with this. This is a very controversial subject obviously and you will disagree with me.
You fail to miss the point, buying text links for SEO purposes is cheating, you can't sugar coat it. If people can dominate SERPs by buying links then no one with natural and allowed methods will rank. Its ludacris to think Google is at the wrong, it ruins their search index. Adwords does NOT give pagerank or SERPs weight, thats not even comparable. If anything, you should of said they made the rule to protect adsense revenue, since people would sell links instead of use adsense. But again, they don't give SERPs or pagerank. I'm sorry, but in my eyes if you buy text links for pagerank or SEO purposes you are simply cheating the system.
Google should have had enough forethought to not base their rankings so heavily on a system that could be that easily manipulated. It's not the job of every webmaster to make their job easier. Link buying and selling was around legitimately long before Page Rank existed. It was about exposure to niche audiences (in this case often traffic) - pretty classic advertising model. Just because people don't choose to alter their code in a way that Google asks them to, it doesn't mean they're "cheating" anything. Google basically said "we want you to do this to your code b/c we royally f*d up our algorithm, and we're giving you the "no follow" attribute to do it." No one's obligated to listen to them. Do you believe any large, old, static site with a reputation and reader-base built on quality content should have to go through their site and alter their code just because Google says so? That's ridiculous. I believe what they meant was more about how text link sales are an advertising model competing with Adwords. If Google can manipulate webmasters into giving up that potential revenue stream, less people will be buying ads under that model, and very likely more will end up turning to Adwords... in other words, it has nothing to do with whether or not Adsense ads give pagerank, but about the potential of Google's motives being far from pure when they have an income stream of their own at stake. Of course, I could be wrong, but that's how their comment came across to me.
mr. ssandecki, read carefully as I have read your other posts as well. buying links is cheating according to you and google. These are opinions and not facts. A good number of webmasters perhaps the majority believe this is not cheating. Please do not state your opinions as if they were facts. if google does not like it does not make it cheating. I will not debate the ethics of this as it will go nowhere. Just realize, you said in your opinion. what we care about is facts, like the fact that buyers will not be hurt for buying links.
So your saying if you can manipulate something or cheat easily you should do it? So if I can commit a murder and not get caught it is ok? The is just a silly thing to believe in, just because you can do something does give you the right to go and do it. This is not a valid arguement in my eyes As you should know, the text link market would be mostly nothing without pagerank. Prices would be much much lower with many less buyers. Who really knows if and when they decided that text links were a no-no, it wasn't as wide spread until pagerank system was introduced.
If it is a relevant link below lets say an area that says (Friends) then it looks real. If you put Sponsors then have links below it , thats dumb and will hurt SERPS, same if you say your selling links on the site. Since its obvious that your selling links! Lets say the website is about weight loss Example of smart link selling: Friends (Bold Header) -Loose Weight -How To Burn Fat Being relevant is the main thing, it looks natural. If you have a website about weight loss, but have video game links below friends, then it looks suspicious etc. Use TNX for your link selling , i will give you referral link if you PM me. WARNING: DONT USE TEXT LINKS ADS, you can actually see in google who has TLA on there website, i cant remember the exact code you got to type in but.... Tyler
Last I checked Google owns their search engine and the pagerank system lock stock and barrel. I think they can make facts on what is cheating and not cheating on their search engine. Maybe you should read through a few DP threads on this same topic. Again, who are you to dictate what a company can and cannot do with their product\service or make and rules or regulations they want. Did you even read what I wrote above or just rush through it to up your post count and get another signature link in?
Yes, its a waste of money and a horrible investment. Once they site gets penalized for selling links all the pagerank and serp weight from them goes bye-bye forever.
Sometimes google may even BAN your website from google all together! Now that would suck, but i use TNX and never had problems! I have PR 4
google does own their search engine but the internet, therefore their word is not final. If the internet were a company like, internet, inc. and that was in the TOS that is a different story. People can do what they want on their sites and google is free to judge their actions how they see fit by penalizing or promoting them. One can then work within Google's rules to his or her's own advatage only answering to the internet, inc, lol. selling links is a risk, and one has to weight the benefits and consenquences including google and outside of google. Look, it is obvious you disagree with a lot of members here and are acting like the google police. That is ok, but you fail to agree to disagree. I can understand your argument but do not agree with you as many don't here as well. You seem to be disrespectful to those who don't agree with you. Try working on that.
You totally missed the point. If I said it's not "cheating," how can you misconstrue that to say that I think cheating is OK? Like I said, the problem has always been in Google's algorithm. They had no foresight when they planned out the existing system, and now they're scrambling to clean up their mess. It's not cheating just because someone doesn't want to add Google-mandated code to their sites. If the PageRank system happens to be affected by that, then ts for Google... they need to fix their own issues instead of asking every webmaster to alter their code or business model to fix their mistakes. As I also already pointed out, link selling was alive and quite well before PageRank ever existed. It's not going anywhere. Would the motivations of advertisers go more back to their roots? Sure, and there's nothing wrong with that. But if I want to sell links on my site for traffic and exposure to a niche audience, it's none of Google's damn business how I code those links. If it happens to affect their rankings, then there's something wrong with their ranking policies. Is there anything wrong with adding "nofollow"? No. It's the principle of it. No one should be able to try to force you to do something in your business just to serve their own business needs. If Google really gave a rat's ass about it just being for relevant search results, they wouldn't have been penalizing sites left and right for things like their own names - how much more relevant could they get? If you go around accusing legitimate businesses of wrong-doing just because you have a faulty business model that's affected by it, you're bordering on libel... not a good way to win support of the people you're trying to influence. If Google keeps penalizing sites for their own screw-ups that created a new market, their own results are going to eventually be seriously affected. Frankly, as much as I like Google for certain things, I'm somewhat looking forward to that day (even if it's not imminent), b/c maybe then they'll finally get their asses in check and stop trying to play Web police.
I bought some links lately and my traffic increased . I now reached 5000UV. Before those links i had 2500UV. I'll continue buying and selling links! Google will need to find a ranking system to avoid cheating(if buying links is considered to be cheating).
Selling PageRank is wrong in the eyes of many, including Google (obviously). Selling advertising links is NONE OF GOOGLES BUSINESS. Yes, very controversial subject, but...If I sell a text link to a site - JUST because of PR - Google has every right to "penalize" me because I am using their system for my benefit. If, however, I sell advertising space (think of ANY major news or newspaper's website, and their marketing) on my site, it is my right and there is nothing unethical about it.