Matt Cutts and the paid links

I think people are getting this wrong. It's not the end of paid links; it's the end of paid links for Google PR. It’s still fine for the other engines and link traffic. Most of the sites that will suffer are the thousands of PHPLD dirs and other sites with popular link directory scripts that sell links for SEO and PR. Fingerprinting and phrase matching for anything to do with paid links and links for sale and so on. Custom coded directories will still do fine and unless they state somewhere on their site they are selling links for seo purposes there's really no way for Google to detect them. The worse they can do is ignore the PR passed to the links.

Time for you link peddlers out there to sell as many links as you can before people catch on and stop buying links for PR. I guess it was good for you guys while it lasted. Google doesn’t care if you guys suffer, because in general it will improve the SERPs and I’m all for it. I personally hate people that get good rankings just because they have a bunch of paid links. That’s not SEO, that’s brainless link building and they will pay for skipping the real SEO. I deal with mostly white hat SEO and a diverse marketing strategy for my sites, social bookmarking/networking, newsletters, articles, anything out there you can stick a link and say a few words. It takes longer and costs more but in the end even if Google died tomorrow I’ll still get money and traffic, will you? It’s something to consider.

If anything, this is a wake up call for a lot of you out there to invest in hiring someone that does real SEO/SEM/IM. All that money you spent on those paid links could have gotten you some long term SEO. People should know by now that you can’t depend on a single strategy or a single search engine for traffic, Google can just change something and you’re screwed. I guess people don’t read algo update horror stories anymore.

Note: The reporting procedure is temporary, just so they collect more data to work with for their algo change. I don't think they'll want any more reports after they have enough data and implement the algo.

 

Not really, they just don't want you to profit from selling PR and messing with organic results in the process. You have to look at it from Googles POV, I'd be a little more than irritated if I was in Google's spot too.

 

SEOs and SEMs always adapt to the ways and whims of the search engines, Google included. And that's just what will continue to happen even IF google works out a way of discovering all those paid links (near on impossible IMO). But hardly anyone relies on link buying for the rankings, since this is more a PR thing.

So, yes, sell links, buy links, diversify into social media and whatever, just keep on keeping on is all anyone can do. At the end of the day the stats will tell the story and more than likely blackhatters and whitehatters will have their little victories. It's game after all and there's plenty of ways to the top.

 

What do you mean???

 

As long as links are a major part of the algos, people will find a way to game the SE's based on links.

As far as PR, even if PR & the toolbar dissapeared tomorrow, it would'nt matter. There would be (already are) plenty of 3rd party tools to determine the importance of web pages (and their links).

 

You got that right. This 3rd party tools help determine the quality of websites.

 

I hear Google's asking webmasters to clear all their link exchanges with them too. So if you want to trade links or add someone to your blogroll you'll need to check in with Google first. It's for the good of the search results. And what's good for Google is good for all of us, right?

Just kidding. Sorta. But it feels like that's where this is heading. And meanwhile my Adwords costs keep going up.

 

maybe matt will comment here

 

I think google could be smart enough to discover automatically 70% or more of paid links.
The big problem is if they devaluated paid links and then discover that search engine results quality is influenced negatively.

 

No matter which way I look at this, I keep coming back to the fact that 'G' are assuming that every site that purchases links is an inferior quality site, clearly this is not the case.

I have a friend (honestly - a real friend, not me ) who has just released his first ever blog, he has NO formal training or experience in blogging and SEO yet he is recognized as an expert in his field.

He has the ability to produce quality posts for his niche and generate content that (in theory) 'G' should love BUT he does not have a network of blog friends or social bookmarking contacts.

He has no idea about Technoratti, digg and the myriad of other social bookmarking sites but he does have a number of contacts within his niche who would be willing to sell him links on their already established sites (after all his niche is a commercial industry).

How can he generate links to his site without initially paying for a few links to get noticed after all, how many times have we seen here on DP where member will not consider link exchanges with PR0 sites?

Now I ask this question in all honesty, how is he supposed to get his PR0 blog out to the world?

Somehow devaluing paid links will in my opinion only serve to harm the development of new sites and when we talk about improving the quality of search results this is not necessarily true, all this will do is strengthen the positions of the already established sites. Ultimately this will lead to the weakening of search results because no one will be able to challenge established sites.

In theory ‘Gs’ search results may even stagnate as new site have no way or find it much more difficult to rising up the ranks.

 

adsense are okey, the purpose of adsense is traffic not the link juice.

 

Apparently, the English language is also an "art" you have yet to master

Very well said, complexor. Sadly, the lemmings probably aren't going to read your posts - anything longer than two sentences is too much work.

This is nothing new, really, other than the reporting feature. Google has been telling us for a very long time that the buying and selling of links for PR is largely throwing your money away. Anyone who just woke up to that fact since Cutts' post on reporting just hasn't been paying attention.

 

No one believes Google!

My estimate is 95%+ of the webmasters have bought links sometime in the past, just to influence SERPs.

It works and everyone knows that.

 

Write unique articles for other sites which link back to his site. Learn how to linkbait.

 

In the world of lemmings, "everyone knows" a whole lot of absolute BS.

Do I believe that buying links helps some sites? Yes. But the nature of those links matters.

Do I believe that Google is alert to and has for a long time been tracking down and discounting the value of the buying and selling of links? Absolutely.

Can link buying still help in spite of this? Yes. But not if you're buying solely on the basis of PR.

 

sticking a link with a description on the newsletters you send, bookmarking, blasting articles is not different than buying links., Most people do these only to influence Rankings and not to provide value to the user.,

Please tell me:
How do you link while sending articles?
Do you link to your site's name directly or use an Anchor text?., If you use an anchor text (thatz mostly searched other than your site name), You dont have any reason to talk about link Buying

How Do you create bookmarks?
Do you use the title tags for these bookmarks which are anchor texts or you directly use your Site name! If you use an anchor text (thatz mostly searched other than your site name), You dont have any reason to talk about link Buying.

Same goes to your newsletters (Wether you use a call to action phrase for linking or use your site name)

 

Google's goal in the long run to to make it's results as human uncontrollable as possible. You can control the amount of traffic you get via advertising, but not the free traffic you receive for being a valuable resource.
Removing fake importance generated by "bought PR" increase google's result quality and integrity of information provided to users.
In my eyes, any PR7 or above site that sells links is aware of the fact that it's deliberately sabotaging in Google's service, and should be removed from the index altogether.

 

What's so special about PR7 and higher links...why not PR6, PR5, PR4, PR3 and so on?

And if that is what you feel, why are you buying links in first place?

Right from your signature:

 

This is something that Google thinks you should do. By the way this has been put in my own words:

Now many people use TextLinkAds because publishers get more money for their advertising space. Alot of people are not selling because of PR, but because they earn more for their advertising space via programs like textlinkads, which is what any webmaster would want to archieve from their site.

Why is Google different, why do they think they can get the most out of their advertising space and we can't. They are not the ones who own the web, they are just another site like ours, which at the end of the day needs to make money, the more money the better as longs as it's legal.

Why does Google Adwords use a bidding system, this is so they can make their advertisers pay as much as possible to rank well with different keywords. They are trying to get the most out of their advertising space just the same as other website owners that are using things like Textlinkads and other top ad networks.

If there's a problem with their algo then why don't they fix it instead of trying to make us pay for it.

 

Like many others, you're confusing advertising, where the purpose is to try to gain additional traffic, with link buying for PR, where the purpose is to try to gain better Google ranking.

Google doesn't have an issue with the former. They do, obviously, have an issue with the latter.