Did Buying Links Help Me?

[jdh226]

Hi all. Hoping that someone with more experience in SEO than me can shed some light. I had a site built for me in December with SEO in mind. For a few months I was nowhere to be found, so I purchased links from some PR5 and PR7 newspaper sites and within a week, I was #1 - #5 for all key terms on Yahoo (this was right around the time that they moved away from Google). Then, last week, I finally got the exposure I've been waiting for on Google. I went from #500+ for my key term to #9 overnight.

My contract with the newspapers is up in two weeks and I'm not sure if those links actually helped my rankings. As an FYI, the total number of backlinks Google is reading is 2,350 -- the vast majority of which come from this link buy.

Has anyone here had any (or heard of any) such success actually buying links?

Thanks,
Jeff

[Jack_Frost]

I have never bought those kind of links. I just got a site that was mired on the second page of Google 4 links that shot them up to #2. Three were paid for, but one was an ad on a respected industry organization site (PR6), one was a cheap ad in a content rich directory (PR5), and the other was a link from another very professional directory (PR5). The PR6 was highly on topic.

No knowing all the scenarios, it is difficult to predict the reason for your success, but it sounds reasonable that these links are what's making your site rank so high.

[jdh226]

Great -- thanks for the info. I figured as much.

[blaze]

I bought some links at went up to to pr6. Stop paying, still at pr6.

Anyone else see this sort of behaviour?

[martinibuster]

Sept 16, 2003
PR7 Links with Irrelevant Content
High PR Links - Quantity versus Relevance
[webmasterworld.com...]

Message# 26

I am talking about getting many unrelated PR7 links from one or two sites to link to me without having to link back. It seems a lot of my competitors are using this strategy and are getting away with it. It will definitely take awhile for SEs to figure out what is relevant is what isn't. SEs would have to develop some kind of artificial intelligence and I think that's awhile away.

Flash forward two months later:

November 17, 2003
Nuked - Gone - Kaput! Site no longer in SERPS?
[webmasterworld.com...]

I am in *PAIN* and totally confused.

[jdh226]

Ahhhh. That's what I needed to see. Again, thanks.

[PatrickDeese]

> I bought some links at went up to to pr6. Stop paying, still at pr6.

Yes, well I would imagine that since Google has not updated PR since late March that you will continue seeing a PR 6 until Google updates the toolbar PR meter again.

The real question is if your traffic / rankings improved with the addition of this link, and if removing the link affected it.

[Freedom]

Well, Nov. 16 was the day of the big Florida disaster. The algo has moved away from that, some, since then.

A few PR7s might not be a bad thing.