Forum Moderators: martinibuster
If you run a consumer oriented website(ie. E-com) can buying links have a negative effect? I mean if I was looking to purchase from an E-com site but noticed that they had purchased a bunch of non-relevant links to help their rankings I think I would be put off. It looks pretty spammy.
I know the chances of the average consumer checking backlinks or even understanding what back links are, is pretty far fetched.
But do you worry about it or just say who cares as long as your ranking well?
These are generally good things, no bad impact - I would steer clear of sites/links that have spammy link campaigns.
AFAIK -
The Yahoo directory doesn't use direct links
The Looksmart directory doesn't use direct links
I tried Information Outpost but haven't heard back from them yet, nor am I listed.
Goguides.org seems to be pay-only now (?); also, the category in question has PR0
Background -
I designed a site that absolutely HAS to be spidered asap. (think: shopping site/holiday season). It's brand new and doesn't show PR yet on the toolbar so it's hard getting people to link to me.
I managed to get a few sites into Google quickly earlier this year with just a few links from PR4 sites, but that doesn't seem to work now.
Any suggestions?
I'm sure there are many others who can add to these strategies, and give you more information about how to avoid being penalized when buying a text link.
Either way google rarely if ever spot penalizes websites - they prefer to modify their algo to catch many spammers at once.
I was just curious if anybody thought it would actually be a concern. I suppose I'm just being a little paranoid. I really only like theme related links myself, so I don't really buy links unless I think I can some good traffic from it also.
I personally think your advice can do more harm than good. Putting links under "Sponsors", or something like this, just openly manifests the fact that these are sold, and both parties are into PR deals.
On the contrary, an "ordinary" keyword-rich link can easily be a result of normal link exchange or favor to a friend. Penalizing this kind of thing would be ridiculous, and I don't think Google would go that far (yet).
Also, you mention a phenomenal idea, simple as it may be. Embedding a text link in the context of regular site context should surely not be penalized. However, an ordinary keyword-rich link for a pill/gambling/adult related keyword would not usually appear in most regular sites' copy. If the text link is located at the bottom of a page with about 10 other totally off-topic keywords, I have a feeling this is a recipe for losing (which is why I mention the "sponsors pay for my hosting" plea).
I'd like your input on those specific circumstances, as you probably have more experience in these situations.
Moreover, as far as the risks go, I've been dealing PR from several PR7 - PR8 sites for months, and I've yet to come across a single problem. One of the seller sites has those links all over the place on about every page, so they're basically the first thing on a page one would notice. Still, it works just fine.
I agree that a keyword-rich link that is clearly out of site's context is going to look suspicious, but that's about it. I bet a lot of webmasters will just link to what their friends asked them and not care about it much, effectively ending up in the same category as PR sellers. Penalizing purely based on this suspiction will create way more problems than it can ever solve.
But do we all think Google is an idiot and there engineers are not watching forums like these to see what people are discussing?
I don't say they are. They may be or may not be.
I say that we should do fair job and everything tends to be fine.
-p
