Comments on: Google Penalizing Paid Links Buyers & Sellers

By: Ollie

Ollie — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 14:22:48 +0000

I totaly agree that his could be a problem for genuine link builder like my self. How do you think google would view a reciprical links page, they are not paid but can be unrelated. I know they are trying to stop manipulation but it seems to be opening up more door than it’s closing.

By: alfromla

alfromla — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 21:27:00 +0000

that's the problem…how do you find the relevancy of a link. for example on my blog I write about SEO and internet marketing a lot but I also do have favorite beer breweries and burger shops which is irrelevant but I put them on my blog anyway because I like to recommend them.

By: alfromla

alfromla — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 16:27:00 +0000

By: princess

princess — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 03:32:05 +0000

what happens when a competitor starts to buy links useing your site name and then reports you?

By: Marcel

Marcel — Thu, 31 May 2007 15:59:18 +0000

Instead of buying irrelevant side links, it would be better to buy blog link within relevant content.

By: Paolo

Paolo — Fri, 18 May 2007 06:58:32 +0000

So…If I buy or sell a link to a relevant content site, it’s not a big problem for google.
I understand the google policy but I think it’s a bit utopistic. Buying links it’s a consolidated SEO strategy

By: Mukesh

Mukesh — Fri, 18 May 2007 06:13:34 +0000

In other words, google is only telling us to buy/sell links from/to good sites, with relevant content.

Here is what I think this is all about:

Buy links from:

1.) Quality Relevant websites
2.) Websites which do not link out to unrelated sites (vertically/horizontally unrelated)
3.) Deep link to relevant pages instead of homepage only links
4.) Buy relevant intext links. Links that go with the context of the article
5.) Do not go for sitewides
6.) Do not buy links from pages that have more than 50 outbounds

Sell links to:
1.) Quality Relevant websites only
2.) Do not give too many links from the same page
3.) Try to sell intext links from internal pages (similar if you are exchanging links)
4.) Sell links on the basis of backlink strength, age of site, rankings, traffic, site quality; and less on PR

If you follow these pointers, google can never ever penalize you. This holds true even if someone reports your links as paid links. What is the proof they are paid? They are relevant links and could very well be natural, isn’t it?

Google can take action though if the links are unrelated, as in case of the examples shown by big guy, Matt. Otherwise, you are on the safer side.

No matter how advanced the algo bcomes and not matter how many people report your links as paid, Google can take action only in case of high level of non-relevancy.

Am I right, Loren?

By: Sushubh

Sushubh — Thu, 17 May 2007 19:53:39 +0000

what about the links which are liked using images… like the popular right bar on here, techcrunch and similar sites. :)

By: CarstenCumbrowski

CarstenCumbrowski — Thu, 17 May 2007 19:42:06 +0000

This is actually a good step, IF and ONLY IF topical relevance can’t be established.

This can be sometimes very tricky, especially if it is not a boilerplate/site wide link, but a link within the content itself and only on one or a few pages.

I found myself more than once linking to a site that is not really relevant to the site I linked from, but it was somewhat related in the surrounding context of where the link was posted, if you consider links to illustrate a metaphor contextual relevant at all.

The penalization is today a manual process from what I can tell and considering the severeness, should it remain that way.

By: David V.

David V. — Thu, 17 May 2007 18:56:47 +0000

So from what I’m reading here I can put up a spammy site about some random topic and make it totally obvious that I’m putting up a “paid” link to my competitors and I can cause damage to their SERPs? Awesome!

I’d be a little surprised if it were true that your site could be damaged by sites linking to you, but I do believe that losing value from purchased links would do damage if you relied on purchased links heavily.

I know Naylor is a smart guy so I’m sure there’s some element of truth in this. If it does turn out to be true I can see a lot of people using an algorithm like that to damage their competitors.