Matt Cutts and the paid links

guys read the carefully about disclaimer on matts blog these are his wordings
"This is my personal blog. The views expressed on these pages are mine alone and not those of my employer." please calm down its his alone views not google or anybdy

 

That's simply a standard disclaimer - if he says or does something dumb, Google gets to say, "That's Cutts, not us".

It doesn't mean the statements don't reflect Google policy. Of course, they do.

 

Yeah, especially considering he blogs to complement his job duties. He isn't just spouting off.

 

Well Whenever you or someone Put a backlink to anysite, s/he manipulates the SERP... SEO is all about manipulating SERP..

 

From Google's (Official) webmaster guidelines:

And they warn:

I know I wouldn't take a risk, especially if the majority of my income was coming from Google traffic.

Very true but we cant forget that PageRank is their way of counting votes. Linking to a site that is useful for your visitors is a vote with creditability, linking to one that simply paid isn't.

 

Most wont post as raw link, But most wont Surely! use a SE friendly Anchor text., It will only be like:
Click here to read the full article,
Source:
Courtesy:
etc.,

 

I really do not know what your conclusion is based on and it definitely does not correspond to my experience.

I don't find that to be true (1) for myself; (2) for my forum members; (3) for members of other forums I frequent; or (4) for sites I find have linked for me (organic, not paid links or pre-arranged).

 

Amen to that. I'm mean how many more directories does the world really need? Especially ones that aren't made up of the best sites, just the sites that will pay the fee.

I agree with 90 or so percent of what you have been saying. I'm glad you are typing it too, because it saves me from typing my own opinions (which are similiar).

 

You must be one of a kind..

I am have a site for that I am targeting the keyword 'Webmaster tools'.. People often visit and link to that site naturally. I have around 400 such natural links but I am yet to find a single natural link where the webmaster used my Targeted keyword even if it the first letters of site Title.. Most of the time they use domain names to link. And I know that I am not one of kind...

 

No. I'm hardly one of a kind. Note that I didn't say they would use YOUR preferred anchor text - but that they would use some descriptive anchor text more often than not.

And that isn't a bad thing. It's actually a good thing, for several reasons. To start with, it increases the number of search terms by which people will find your site. It's also less likely to trigger a flag for your incoming links as "artifical", since the likelihood of organic linking always using the same anchor text is low.

 

What if I report that one of my competitor websites buys and sells links? Would they be banned or something like that?

 

No.

First, Google isn't simply going to take your word for it. If it's not true or not verifiable, no action will be taken.

Second, even if it is true and verifiable/confirmed to be true, your competitor won't be banned. All that will happen is that the PR transfered via those links will be discounted.

 

Even when verifiable, I don't think action is being taken - yet, at least. I think they are still in the cataloging mode.

This is my question. Google is transfixed on PR. People aren't buying links for PR - at least not smart people. They are buying links with good anchor text to improve their rankings. Stopping the transfer of PR is one thing, but is the resulting anchor text being diminished as well? That's my question.

 

I am very surprised that on an internet marketing forum like this one everyone is so fixated on PR. What matters is traffic, and I see a lot of PR3 sites and pages rank for some very high traffic keyterms.

 

But action has been taken in the past and I'm sure is ongoing. This is not a new initiative by Google - it's simply an attempt at enhancing the process to increase efficiency. This, after all, is a good part of what Matt Cutts department was designed to address,

Good question. I suppose it depends on how the discounting of these links is accomplished. If the algorithm results in the link being effectively ignored, then yes - anchor text would presumably be lost as well. If the sole focus is on discounting PR transfer, perhaps not. I don't imagine Google is going to give anyone that information though.

Wow! Now THAT is a brilliant bit of insight. I'm sure no one here realized THAT before, Blobmaster. Thanks for that very useful post.

 

You don't get it, do you? You're one of those people who has been lucky to start early and doesn't even understand why he ranks. If you were to run an seo company and had to get new sites some business, you wouldn't know what to do. Funny to see you trying to tell people how the search engines work.

Talking about a useless post:

What exactly are you saying here? Of course it's a good question, but your "answer" is all about "perhaps". Are we making guesses here or are we sharing experiences to help each others? Your imaginations and guesses should remain in the back of your mind until you have a little bit more information, hopefully enough to make a good post for once.

 

Uh-huh... of course, that doesn't take into account the sites I've worked on for other people, including within the past few months, that also rank, does it?

Face it, Mike - you're a snake oil salesman running out of people to buy your particular line of crap. That's why you jump into the middle of a thread like this, not even bothering to read the rest of thread, and post another of your trademarked posts from the University of the Bleeding Obvious.

 

They probably rank because they have incoming links from your own authority sites and get a head start that way. This thread is not about authority sites linking to a few selected sites. It's about people buying mass amounts of links wherever they can get them in order to accomplish what is not too much of a challenge for somebody who has earned credibility with Google a long time ago.

 

Mr. Cutts' opinion is provocative in a good way. It makes me/us to think about new S.E.O. practices and strategies. Definitely, there are many other link building techniques outside of buying link building. Here are some of them:

http://www.brandon-hopkins.com/66-ways-to-build-links-in-2007

What is concerning me is that what I understand from Mr. Cutts' posts is that Google don't want us to do S.E.O. work. It sounds edgy, so let me clarify: our ultimate S.E.O. objective is to have high quality and relevant links to a certain web site. How can we achieve this goal?... by working [using different techniques] in order to gain new links.

I strongly believe that, ethically, there's no difference [for example] between link buying and posting on technorati.com for back-links...

On the other hand...

...let's discuss about the off-line media, comparing it with the online media.

If I, a successful company, have enough found to advertise my business, I buy several ads in magazines, becoming a well-known business. So, if I have founds to invest in links, why shouldn't I do it?! If I have money, I have to be able to make my business more popular and more profitable.

 

It's like the Burger King Jingle "We do it like you do it, when you do it like we do it at Burger King". Google is all for you advertising, they just want it done their way.

So sell as many links as you want, just make sure the buyer is putting them up in such a way to make Google happy.

So we can all get along if we play by their rules...which is fair, they are the SE in SERP after all.