Are Paid Links Bad?
Depends on the Source
I’ve had a number of clients ask me if they should buy links. My standard response is “no, this would violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines“, but I have to admit that’s a knee-jerk reaction. Let me qualify this with a little additional information.
In December of 2007 Google made it very clear they intended to crack down heavily on people buying up links to build up their PageRank and manipulating Google’s search results. Here is an excerpt from what they published:
“If, however, a webmaster chooses to buy or sell links for the purpose of manipulating search engine rankings, we reserve the right to protect the quality of our index. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank violates our webmaster guidelines. Such links can hurt relevance by causing:
- Inaccuracies: False popularity and links that are not fundamentally based on merit, relevance, or authority
- Inequities: Unfair advantage in our organic search results to websites with the biggest pocketbooks”
And thus Google began it’s attack on link spammers.
Further clarification of what they considered link spammers followed in other blog postings and interviews but basically what Google was trying to say is simple: “Don’t buy links just to manipulate search results”. Pretty simple really.
Google has provided guidelines on how one can manage paid links and not violate their guidelines. Say you wanted to sell links on your web site for traffic purposes and not be in violation of Google’s guidelines, you could do this by:
- Adding a rel=”nofollow” attribute to the <a> tag
- Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file
The above italicized is a direct quote from Google’s webmaster support site.
No Magic Formulas
A lot of people still keep trying to beat the system insisting they have found some magic formula to get highly ranked quickly (you see this all the time in the scam spam emails you receive about “be #1 in Google in 30 days or less”). These guys just don’t get it. Every time somebody thinks they found another hole in Google’s armor to exploit, an Engineer at Google finds the same hole and welds it shut.
Careful of the High Risks
Buying paid links that pass PageRank is a risk but many are still doing it to artificially prop up their rankings. Some paid links bring good traffic and do not pass PageRank, or if they do the site selling the links has the responsibility to report this to Google. The decision is up to the web site owner but there are risks:
- Google has a paid link reporting page (may be reached via your webmaster console), and you have opened yourself up for your enemies to report your site.
- Even if you have been extremely discreet about your arrangement, someone else may report another site in the paid link network and Google will investigate all links from any site selling links. Your site will be one on the list and the likely result is your links will become worthless and you may still be paying for links not knowing they have been discounted to zero PR value by Google.
This emphasizes the value of always looking for real traffic links rather than worrying about PageRank.
Real Content = Real Value = Linkability
It does take a a bit more sweat to earn links but the long term benefits are worth it. Wasting time looking for paid shortcuts almost always ends up costing you more. So get to work writing and od some natural linking! 
