In an earlier post I said that “The best links are not paid. Given the recent discussions of paid links, I wanted to talk about this issue in more depth. By Google's Matt Cutts: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/text-links-and-pagerank/ Google's Matt Cutts has released a number of videos in which he talks about the way Google works at: http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=matt+cutts Google Webmaster Tools Access tools that will enable you to diagnose crawling issues and sitemap.
IMO G can detect some paid links - however if you take care (e.g. don't let the links be marked with "sponsors" etc.) there is no way for them to tell if a link is bought or not. Cutts just wants to scare you away from link buying because it's a pain for G.
I think the key is not to publicly list the domains you sell links on (uhh, like here? dont you think they have a troll reading it?). If you want to buy links buy it from a group who keeps the privacy of both parties confidential (the buyer with their anchor text and urls and the seller with their urls). The classic example is www.phpbb.com which is PR9 but not worth shit because they have publicly said on their website These are sold links. I am pretty sure google has de-valued the entire sites OBLs. If interested in buying links with confidentiality PM me, I do that business but never reveal clients to anyone anytime.
yep.. interested to know, since there are many well established paid directories, and yet known to deliver high quality backlinks.
The greatest positive jump I had in Google was they day my $299 link was posted in Yahoo. No I don't work for Yahoo and I'm not trying to promote them. I'm just stating what happened.
Actually Matt Cutts has said that yahoo-links are an exception, probably because the review is paid, not the listing. They can take your money and decide the site should not be listed. I feel that 1) yes, Matt Cutts wants to scare people a bit 2) don't buy too many links 3) buying a few links can certainly help, if it's done 'under the radar' - which really means: on sites with few paid links.
I'm off for reading those 59 pages... But one thing for sure is that a paid link from a good and trusted site with high rankings and PR won't hurt anyway. But a link from directory - I consider to be a waste of time and money... let me know if I'm wrong
Yeah i kinda agree with Nevalex, most directory links aint worth a bean! - I buy high pr links all the time, from various sellers on DP, Linkadge and such like ... Interested in what gford can offer me ... i'll send a pm