Paid Links

I know google doesnt like paid links. What exactly is a paid link? Can my site be penalized for paying for a directory listing?

 

This is when you buy links from sites and yes, you can get burned.

The way to beat the system is by using link-vault or coop ad network combined with fresh news. Make sure you only ad a few links a day or google will spot it.

These programs really do work!

 

It depends on the directory. Lets take the Yahoo! directory for example, they have to options you can use. You can....

a) Pay $299.00 for a fast review within 7 days
b) Free review that can take up to 6 months

Option a really only means your paying for your site to be "reviewed" and doesn't mean you'll get added to the directory. You don't want to buy links in directories that do just that, sell links in their directory! You should really avoid buy links all together, its not worth the investment and could be spent more wisely else where.

http://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/directorysubmit/directorysubmit-159.html

Googles response on paid links\text links: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66736

 

it is funny that google doesnt like you to have paid links, or in other words advertise your site, that is so you have to advertise with adsence instead

 

Actually, you would be advertising with Adwords, Adsense is the publisher program attached to Adwords. I'm sure you aware that Adwords ads do not pass on pagerank or any SERP value, unlike text links, that do pass on pagerank and seo value. In all basic theory, text\paid links are just a method that you can use to manipulate search results and pagerank.

If your buying text\paid links only for traffic you should have no problem in allowing or requesting the rel="nofollow" element being used in your hyperlink syntax for your text\paid link. Think about it, if Google allowed text\paid links 100.0% and confirmed it the results on the search engine could be bought.

 

How would google know you purchased links if you didn't purchase them from a site that blatantly sells links?

 

That is the $1,000,000.00 question, if you new the answer you could be the only person who could sell text links that 100.0% pass on pagerank for life.

 

I think they are targeting sites like TLA that sell multiply links across sites.

 

So would it be a bad idea to use tla?

 

I wouldn't touch TLA with a 10 foot pole. For a start their links are way overpriced without even bringing Google in to the equation.

 

Yeah, great idea. Google doesn't like paid links so instead of buying links you recommend a blatant link scheme?

Did you miss where Matt Cutts condemned the Coop?