Ok, so far in my link building quest I've been hustling for free links Well, I need to speed up things!!! I heard you can be penalized for buying links...... How does Google know? Even if Google can tell its a paid link... would they really penalize you, since a competitor could have bought it for sabotage??
It is sure that google penalize paid links. But the condition is some one report to google . I think few people spend their time to report other's site.
It's an not an ethical way to promote website, still man you can buy links, i have seen a site which is purchasing links from other sites as decent PR as well as Good Rankings. You can buy it.
See..... paid link means... you are trying to manipulate google results by using money and not increasing quality to your site. And this is what Google really hate. So, Google don't like paid links and have a way by using which paid link can be reported to Google. You said it right .. competitor could have bought it for sabotage. In that case Google's door are again open for you to report that these links are not made by you but your competitor. Also, Google itself has their own way to check it. Google says... google is able to find a link in paid or not by seeing the quality of link and text around links. If you can fit your links on site from where you are buying link, in way that your link appears as natural link, then for sure you are safe. For you I suggest to read http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/how-to-report-paid-links/ Hope you'll get answer to your questions.
Buddy, Google not only use algorithm to find paid links, but also Google use persons to find paid links (i.e manually). So, care about it. May be Google give less negative weight to paid links, but in future Google is going to be more serious. And it should be.
why? how is paying for links any different to free directory submission, posting on do follow blogs and even your forum sig? you know full well they are going to influence the organic listings, so don't take the moral high ground. the ethics of natural listings are about as corrupt as most other ways of doing business.
Well, if one is smart enough to buy links which are very very close to natural links then for sure... it work great. If one buy links under sponsored link heading or something similar then Google can find out. Next, Google can find out a link made on bit unrelated stuff or less researched stuff so Google consider it as either a paid link or less knowledgeable site... so give very very less value or no value. Even misspelling raises ears of google and suspect as there might be some paid link. I may sound not believable but this is what Google says. And there is a logic behind it, so I fully agree with Google.
Yea if google finds out, but to be quite honest with you over 90 percent of sites ranking through organic search is probably because their buying or building links.
if yuo know what you are doing and buy links from sites that dont advertise selling links publicly, then the risk of being caught by google is very minimized. for example, you can submit to directories yourself or buy a directory submission service to submit for yo. google doesn't have any way to know. same goes for the blog comments, you can do them or someone can do it for you. blog review can be purchased or natural as well. where i'm getting at is, as long as there is no mention of link sell on the site where your are getting links from, you are lot safer