I've considered buying links to my affiliate page but have read about all the problems it can cause. I can live with a penalty against one page(PR can't get much worse) but not with a penalty against my entire domain. Will every page in the domain be effected or just the sub-domain? Does submitting to free directories have the same penalty?
1. penalty, if any may affect the entire site. 2. You wont get penalized for free links, go ahead and submit to directories. 3. paid links if purchased carefully (from relevant sites that doesnt sell too many links, placed within content or areas where normally you wont have sponsors) can still be very helpful. Just be careful and dont over do it.
IMHO, you won't get penalized at all. Because you and even google doesn't have any control on how any link placed at any site. I think it makes sense. The worse thing would happen is that the bought links would not be counted as an added value to your site's PR. Any comment? Anyone?
Another one that agrees If google penalized people that had backlinks then competitors would buy each other links to penalize one another ... Only the site that sells links can safely be penalized by big G
If paid incoming links were penalized, then..... Microsoft could just buy tons of links and point them at Yahoo. The Yahoo domain would be banned from Google, and then Microsoft could buy Yahoo for $31 a share.
I have seen competitors in the paid "feature" site in hundreds of directories and still maintain high serps and ranking.
There are plenty of other ways other than buying links that are completely free. Just read around on these forums.
It's does not mean that competitor websites always buy links, They put more and more ethical seo efforts to get organic search engine listing.
Personally, I don't see any harm in buying links unless you purchase alot of em in a short span of time. Just make sure that you get links from relevant sites and not from link farms.
I think providing it's a relavent link and you don't just buy a bulk load off none-relevant links you shoudl eb OK. Make sure you try to keep them on-topic links and really not from site sthat are easy to spot as just paid for link sites.
How does Google detect a link is paid link or free link? If Google penalizes all paid links, and why are www.textlinkbrokers.com and www.Text-Link-Ads.com longer in their service??
So far, if google has found sites involved in link purchasing, they have reduced there page ranks but I haven't seen any big serp loss. But still, don't buy very obvious links. Look for incontent links.