Despite what Google and SEO gurus like Eric Ward tell you, you can easily use ’smart’ paid links to deliver the benefit of editorially earned organic links without tripping any filters or being detected as a ‘paid’ link by Google.
Let’s take two sites:
- Site A is an established authority site in its niche with page 1 rankings for almost all of its target keywords. Rich in content and links out only to quality resources. Site A is highly trusted by Google.
- Site B is a new website in the same niche, has directory links from bCentral, Yahoo! Directory, BOTW and a handful of organic links based on a press release they did on launch. The site is now 2 months old.
Site B wants to buy a link on Site A. Their webmaster uses the following process:
- Searches Site A for a set of pages that are most relevant to what Site B offers.
- Prepares two options – a new page that ‘builds’ upon this set of pages (with links to Site B along with links to authority sites in the niche), and updates one page from this set, adding almost 50% more information as well as links to Site B (and other authority sites in the niche).
- Contacts Site A, presents both options, makes an offer, and waits.
Welcome to the world of buying links ‘under the radar’.
Finding websites such as Site A is hard but not impossible.
Does this work?
Yes, because webmasters love the idea of making money from their website.
Yes, because an in-context link:
- with proper co-citation from a website that is trusted and has a ‘reputation’ of editorial citations only
- to a website that DOES NOT have a bad link profile
- is topically related to the first site
Cannot be distinguished from an editorial citation.
We know that Google says otherwise, but what Google says are guidelines for providing the best service to Google’s users as Google sees it, not law and definitely not the only way to do things.
We know that some SEO Gurus say otherwise, but then I’d ask them to see the above scenario and tell me if it’s possible that such a link can considered different from an organic, ‘earned’ link.
Your comments and thoughts are welcome.
Ahmed Bilal is a search marketing consultant and you can reach him at SEO Hotline.
One of the best ways to get links is to write a unique article and pay a webmaster to publish it. Even Google can’t frown on this.
I’m not sure there is a big difference between paid and natural link. Of course, paid links usually come from high PR pages, but PR doesn’t mean anything important at times. I haven’t bought any link ever and even though my primary site’s traffic trends are unbelievable.
I am in a business partnership with one site devoted to cars. Unlike me, he has bought some links on PR3-PR4 pages. However, his traffic from Google didn’t come throughout a night. It was a continuous process which continues nowadays too.
Also, I’m not sure about a penalty given to a new site, since you’re not responsible for that who links to you. I wouldn’t trust so-called experts speaking about penalties, questionable techniques or even ‘unbelievable stories’.
What I can tell you is that 1 link doesn’t mean anything. 10 links don’t mean anything. 100 links are taken seriously a bit. But what you really need are links to internal pages from forums, related sites, enthusiastics webmasters and so on. And you can’t get them without any unique content.
Don’t re-write other’s pages, write new content. You can get inspired by others, but you shouldn’t copy&re-write. I found this technique to be useless for SERP.
Sounds like work that adds value for anybody interested in the subject to me. Getting paid for providing value is the only right thing to do, regardless how this compensation looks in detail.
Bills don’t pay itself. If you work and spend time on something, you need to paid or you can “move” to the streets one day and beg for food.
When building links i think it is important to have a mix. Whether the link is from another site (exchanged/bought, high-ranking/low-ranking), blog, forum, directory, article or press release the most important is that they are relevant to your site.
It is also important to focus not on just one keyword but spread it across a range of phrases. This is especially true when buying links from high-ranking authority sites such as in your example. Suddenly having links from 20 PR7 sites will just appear unnatural to the search engines.
As we all know SEO is a long but satisfying process. Patience is king!
Patience is important, but I think that persistence and variety are king. It is important to dilute so that you do not have an unreasonable concentration on one type of inbound link. I believe that if you combine the suggestions in this article with a combination of reciprocal linking, content generation for other sites such as articles, targeted sponsorship, etc etc, then none of them will be so concentrated as to be flagged in the algorithm.
While, all of this has to be over a period of time, it is OK to have bursts where you have multiple high ranking inbound links. The key is whether these links persist. If they do, then you are on your way to PR5+.
Buying links is something I have not done for several years and to be honest never got any benefit from it (bad choices on my part).
However we all know even the big boys do it and it is a bit unfair on those trying to do things in an ethical way.
However there can be a win win in this situation. Just because someone receives payment does not mean they are not offering a quality experience for their visitors.
So for me, this will work if the link is relevent (mentioned above) but also adds value to that site (even though a payment has been made).
If the paid outgoing link adds value to the site, why would google want to punish it? I doubt it would.
Still not buying links though. (just in case).