Bought Some Links, Got Site Banned by Google

Paid bloggers for links, promptly punished

[Teshka]

Well, it looks like I screwed myself, so I just figured I'd post a warning for anyone else. After article submissions, directory links (Yahoo!, DMOZ, etc.), and getting a couple of links naturally from authority sites didn't get my 2.5 year old web site anywhere to close to the top of the search engine rankings, I decided to try a company that hooks you up with bloggers willing to write about, and link to, your site for money. I only paid for 60 links, and at first it seemed to be helping (traffic nudged up a bit), but as of this weekend, my site is getting absolutely no traffic from Google whatsoever. It seems I'm penalized big time.

It's frustrating since the guy in the number one spot for my keyword bought his way in with links from <SNIP> and sites like that... I guess you're just out of luck if you can't afford to buy links from authority sites....

Anyway, I don't know if this penalty is forever, but I just wanted to warn everybody that these paid posting companies are NOT a smart decision, no matter how tempting they may be for SEO purposes...

[edited by: Teshka at 5:34 pm (utc) on Oct. 22, 2006]

[edited by: martinibuster at 11:08 pm (utc) on Oct. 22, 2006]
[edit reason] See TOS [webmasterworld.com]. [/edit]

[defanjos]

I only paid for 60 links

Did you get 60 links with identical anchor text?
This could be the problem and not where you got the links from.

What position were you at, and what position did you drop to?

[jakegotmail]

how quickly did you obtain the backlinks? did you get 60 links overnight?

[rjwmotor]

a lot of people lost traffic from G over the weekend...might not be the links...check google search new for the thread

[sugarrae]

>>>It seems I'm penalized big time.

What drew you to that conclusion? Are you checking the same datacenter to compare your now/then rankings? Also, there was quite a shift in Google over the weekend - is it possible it just happens to coincide with the same timing of you purchasing these links? Are you coming to that conclusion based simply on you bought links and now traffic is lower? If so, do a little more digging - you may be blaming the wrong thing.

[MrStitch]

Must be due to the sunday thing. Seeing the date on the initial post, I see that it was on Sunday. I think everyones site had the same thing happen. My site hit rock bottom on Sunday, and then back to normal on Monday.

Teshka - Can you follow up with this post? I think most of us here would be greatly interested in whats going on with your site this week.