Paying for Links

[mdewber1]

How does google feel about a site buying text links. Do sites get banned for this? What does everyone think?

Marc

[andy_boyd]

How does Google know about a site buying text links? ;)

[julinho]

How does google feel about a site buying text links.

Definitely, G don't like sites which use paid links to achieve an otherwise undeserved ranking.

How does Google know about a site buying text links?

If you can find a site selling links, then Google can find it too.

[justdave]

< Definitely, G don't like sites which use paid links to achieve an otherwise undeserved ranking.>

If you are buying a link on an unrelated page simply to inflate your PR and thus achieve undeserved ranking, then this is true. However, if you are buying a link on a page that offers relevance and where your site actually fits in the theme of the page, why would Google penalize you for this?

I've been buying links for clients exclusively and I have yet to see any negative affects on ANY search engine. It's simply a matter of staying relevant.

[sugarrae]

>>>If you can find a site selling links, then Google can find it too.

Well, if you're buying links from sites with a list of PR this and that links or who say "buy pagerank here" then yea. G knows the known link brokers. Being down on link brokers and being down in inflating PR does not mean being down on buying links neccessarily.

Don't go to a PR farm to purchase. Find related sites in your industry doing tradityional advertising (or better yet no advertising) and send them a private email and try to set up a link buy - privately.

[LinkExperts]

Buying a link should be approached the same way you would typically buy a banner placement or other display ad. As people all seem to agree on, it is important to stick to relevant sites. In my opinion, this is not because buying a link on an off topic site will not be beneficial to your short/longterm search rankings, however, it could over time have adverse effect to the over search engine quality - thus going against the positive movement of legitimate whitehat SEO. Which actually will affect your long term rank.

There is clearly a lot of contraversy about 'buying links' these. Despite what anyone may say, if you stick to the rules of engaging in activity which is mutually beneficial to your site and all end users - the search experience will continue to improve - and so will your rankings.

And YES, buying links is a critical componet to successful optimization. If you think spending days & nights requesting link trades or pushing out press releases filled with links is any less 'natural' than buying a link - than think again. Once you start to begin thinking about getting more links, anything there on is 'not natural'.

[sugarrae]

Welcome to webmasterworld LinkExperts.

>>>Once you start to begin thinking about getting more links, anything there on is 'not natural'.

Agreed. Doing link development in general makes what you're doing "unnatural" - the key is looking as natural as possible. Usually, doing things to gain users in turn looks natural to an engine.

[ken_b]

Once you start to begin thinking about getting more links, anything there on is 'not natural'

Well placed links, paid or free, on related sites that can be expected to deliver traffic or viable branding are simply advertizing, nothing unnatural about that at all.

Poor advertizing spending choices are always best avoided, but considering the number of examples floating around, still pretty common and hardly unnatural.

Is buying PR or even link counts a poor choice in the long term? I'm sure there are varying opinions on that.