If publicly soliciting buyers for paid linking with pricing based upon Google PageRank and incoming links is a surefire way to get a site and its link advertisers penalized by Google, why would a link selling service send out mass emails to thousands of publishers and SEO’s with this email subject line : PR4 @ 39 euros / Sitewide 59 euros ?
I’m sure many of you SEO’s and site owners have seen these mails pop up in your inbox and I’ve even had some colleagues ask me about whether or not they should buy links on such sites. My answer to them, as it is to you, is no. Publicly selling such links via mass emailing is like selling crack in front of the police station … out of a fluorescent green van that says “Cheap Crack” on the side of it.
It’s an invitation to get busted and bring down everyone with them. It’s a stupid sales tactic and exposes everyone involved in the transaction process.
Here’s a sample of the email I received yesterday, which I’ve received from the same link seller various times, who sends these out for different sites. I’ll try to share this without outing the seller.
PR4 @ 39 euros / Sitewide 59 euros
Hi ,
Another great offer for a contextual link on a domain which dates
back to 1996, it is a strong PR4 domain with over 350 back-links
registered by Yahoo.
This is the domain:http://xxxxxxx-xxx.co.uk/
For a single link, these will be placed in the main body of the text
on the first page after the flash page (default.html) directly under
the title ‘ENHANCED COMPANY ENTRY’.To buy a single link on the default page @ 39 euros please fill out
the form on this page:http://www.linkxxxxxxcom/xxxxxx
This domain has 47 pages indexed by Google, of which there are three
PR3 pages and seven PR2 pages. To buy a site-wide link @ 59 euros (a
link on the 46 pages excluding the default page) please fill out the
form on this page:http://www.linkxxxxxxcom/xxxxxx
Once you have done so it will take you to Paypal where you can pay
with a credit card securely, afterwards you will be returned to the
XXX and your link will be made
live.As usual there are only 30 links available then these offers will
close!
OK, do you think this is a bargain? Well I’ll tell you what’s wrong here.
- First of all, I never signed up for these bulletins and I know many others are also receiving them who never signed up so either this company has a list of conference attendees (which could be 4000+) or is simply working off of a spam mass email list.
- If I’m getting this email, sure as hell thousands of others are who could send this mail directly to the Google spam team.
- This site is selling links based upon a price set to value the links according to the Google PageRank metric. Google does not like this.
- They are selling these links OUT IN THE OPEN, even defining the pages where the links will be placed, therefore, outing the companies that they have worked with and who are buying links from them.
- I don’t know, but 350 Yahoo backlinks is not a whole lot of links. They could be from relevant authority sites in this site’s niche, but I doubt it.
- You should never buy links based upon Google “Toolbar” PageRank value. It is not an indicator of the quality of a link or juice which is passed through that link.
- If you’re gonna buy links, do it quietly. Don’t buy links from people who are selling them on the open market. This is just not a very good idea at all. This site is not careful and will be outed or penalized by Google. As will yours perhaps.
Don’t buy these links. If you do so, they are a recipe for danger and failure. Be smart in your link building, you’re better than this :)
I’ve been receiving this kind of emails from months now.
“As will your’s perhaps.” Grammar police here: it´s “YOURS”!!!
And thanks for the warning and the interesting article on this.
Thanks Barbarella, I was never the grammar whiz :)
“Barbarella
Come and save me from my misery
Can’t you see it’s a disease
Shoot the bad guys
and I’ll gladly sing a tune for you
Lost in space- we could be free“
Plus not too many Floridians have a stash of Euro’s in their possession.
@Todd Mintz True that!
Funny, got the exact same email. Guess I now know for sure that buying links from this source is NOT a good idea.
thanks Loren for bringing up this SCAM in the open. I never know where and how they got my mail ID – but I am sure the same company/source has been SPAMING my INBOX for quite a while now – it irritates me to no end – but they don’t even give “unsubscribe” option.
You are right on every point – except you didn’t mention that buyers won’t get link juice simply because there are too many OBLs on those pages (out of curiosity I once visited one of their so called sites).
But there are many ignorant people who still buy links on the basis of Google TBPR.
Just today – I saw on a forum selling PR 6/7 blogrol links for $50/permanent. Out of suspicion I asked for the URLs- found two .info domains – with posts dating back to August (Archive) . Further analysis revealed they were exported -duplicate posts.
I checked backlinks of both– they had 47 each on YSE with PR3/2 profile.
When I checked PR of them with an advanced tool- I found both of them showing FAKE GTBPR.
I asked the seller why his domains were showing fake PR and little to none backlink profile (I pretended I was noob) – he answered boldly that those are FAKE PR.
Just imagine.
My point is — try to get links naturally (practically which is very difficult in these days of SE marketing). But if you have to pay for a link – do some research on the site you want link from – and then open your payment account.
Cheers
John
Agreed and thanks for posting this. We get the same question @ LinkXL.com daily and we always say “when in doubt…” . So easy for Google to spot and others to out you to the spam team. Your better off on posting “open calls for PR links” on DigitalPoint.
If you really want to buy quality links register your website to Yahoo Directory (PR8) and Business.com Directory (PR7) they are expensive but they are quality links.
Otherwise register your company to:
http://www.dmoz.org (PR8) it’s FREE but it’s very difficult to appear on their directory.
Good luck!!!
Totally agree with the above 2 posts.
Good article too
Just to do a little update to this post –
I got an e-mail today – which I took screen shot of and loaded keeping privacy policy in mind -
Please take a look here-
http://f.imagehost.org/0805/report.jpg
To be sandboxed with Google you must sale 1-2 hundred links from your sute
Any good articles on the linking value of social websites? Any chance Google will ignore those sites from rankings?
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