i notice in logs that alot of clicks come from sites where i have traded links with as has our competition. i honeslty think its a good thing to have your link anywhere your competitons is. that way people start to reconiginze the name. its branding.
I think you have to bear in mind that buying links may not be bad for the site, as in have a negative effect, just that it may not have any positive effect on your site, you need to be aware that if you are paying for sponsored links and hold a good position in the serps, chances are you could probably stop paying for paid links and you may very well see no change as google gets better at dealing with them. Edit: If your in a niche market with low/zero PR on a new site it can still often be beneficial to get good PR links on sites that may not be in your genre, if those links pass PR it then puts you in a better position to go back to your genre and deal with the webmasters that are still hung up on looking at your green bar before deciding to give you space on their site for articles/links etc So for that reason I would still consider paying, just as a webmaster to make my job easier, but not for ranking.
Good points. My headline is a bit sensationalist You will not be penalised for paid links. You just won't benefit from them when it comes to search engine rankings. If you get traffic, that's another story entirely. That's advertising. As you rightly point out, sji2671, there are so many webmasters hung up on the green bar and PR0 who won't reciprocally link without seeing green first. Which is kinda dumb since new sites never have any PR but are probably the most active in a link campaign.
SEO expert raises a good point. Is Matt Cutts talking about paid text link ad type backlings or all backlinks that are artificially "procured" e.g. the backlinks that an outsourced backlink company gets?
Just because they are "getting better" does not mean they can determine ALL links that are paid, and there are certainly different levels of what constitutes paid (ex. trades 2 or 3 way, or having a limited role in a network).
Well, I've been reading the article and comments very carefully and my understanding is that reciprocal linking is ok so long as it isn't overdone. You obviously need to use your own judgement about what is and what isn't overdoing it when you build up reciprocal links. From my own experience, if you get carried away with the link-building you get 'sandboxed'. It isn't really a 'sandbox' that holds your site back, it's overdoing the link building because this trips an algorithmic filter. Honing in on the specific question, golfhomeconnect, outsourcing your backlinking to a company carries an inherent risk that they may use some sort of short-term strategies that will boost your site for a time before you get blasted out of the serps come the next update. Some companies will use legitimate and long-term-friendly strategies. Others will go after the quick buck. A cautionary tale from Wayne, who commented the following: Purchasing links in the various paid directories such as Yahoo will be viewed as favourable in terms of link building, probably because paid directories tend to demand a minimum standard of website and are generally used by sites which have the longer term in mind rather than the short term hit and run strategies favoured by spammers.
I think the point of this is that we should use links in moderation and good taste. Dont build links of any kind so fast that it doesn't look natural If you do pay for links, make sure they look natural on the site. Limit sitewide links. Limit links on pages that have obvious placement or are saturated with links. Keep links STATIC and placed for the long term. Vary link text as much as possible
You all have very good points and I guess it comes down to walking the fine line between promotion and manipulation.
I think ServerUnion hit the nail on the head with that bulleted list. Do what looks natural. Some paid links will be good and others will be seen as a way to artificialy inflate link popularity.
I think that there have been a lot of people that have beening high PR links as of late trying to improve their SERPs, and this has worked in the past. Buying links for the advertising value, on the otherhand is still important. As most know, the click view rate of text link advertising is usually higher than graphical advertising. How is google going to be able to tell the difference? If I buy a link for traffic am I going to penalized?
That's the beauty of the system. There is *NO* penalty. A filter is applied to determine if the links are part of a buying / selling network. If they are, then no benefit in terms of search engine rankings is derived from the links. Assuming you have bought the links for advertising and traffic then this makes no difference to you whatsoever. If you have bought the links to try to gain a boost in your search engine rankings then you have wasted your money. I'll repeat that there is no penalty. The worst that happens is the links don't get counted.
Ahhh, I now I get it, so there still isn't no REAL penalty just to the people that are trying to increase PR by buying links on high PR sites
I do believe that buying backlinks for the purpose of manipulating rankings can hurt your site long term speaking.
That may well turn out to be the case, not because of the links exactly but because of the forthcoming TrustRank which is said to be in the pipeline. Links: Trustrank - SEO Book Trustrank - Search Engine Watch Trustrank - Search Engine Journal
Yup, it's all about PR, finally someone mentions traffic, to me that is a benefit. In fact traffic from a paid link can get you other natural links that do have pr benefit so in a way paid links still give pr benefits. Looks like G is trying to corner the market on making money from advertising.
On December 9th Matt Cutts posted this: ..........and I can tell that you’re buying them (links) from the same network, and here’s an example page from ketv.com where both of you are even on the same page, and it’s not doing you any good at all........ OK, this is a short part of what he said. If you want to read the full thing its here What do you read into this "and it’s not doing you any good at all"l