Paid text links on high PR sites

Does the Google spider see right through this?

[vnsco]

There are a lot of high Google PR sites that I've found that are willing to sell hard-coded text links on them. Usually, however, the link is in a box that is labled something like "paid advertisers" or "sponsored links" -- and now I'm not talking about ads that are syndicated from Overture or Google, but rather text link ads that are sold independently by the site itself.

In particular a lot of local newspaper sites sell these kinds of links.

Usually, when you buy one of these links you are sandwiched in between online casino, Rx, debt consolidation and the like.

Do these links really do much for you as far as Google is concerned?

[sugarrae]

>>>Usually, when you buy one of these links you are sandwiched in between online casino, Rx, debt consolidation and the like.

You gave yourself a clue, IMHO.

[joaquin112]

For MSN, yes.
For Yahoo, yes.
For Google... I personally think that yes, though not as heavy as any other text link embedded within text and in a highly-relevant website.

Remember every link helps... though probably in a couple of months they will be completely ignored by Google.

Advice: Stick to natural link development.

[alanluong]

"Advice: Stick to natural link development"

Can I have some example of natural link development?

[JollyK]

Can I have some example of natural link development?

Usually what people seem to mean by "natural link development" is "Make a high-quality site that other high-quality sites will want to link to, and your links will develop naturally."

That's just my interpretation, though. :-)

JK

[econman]

As noted above, "natural" development generally involves investing in content which attracts links.

This current thread has some excellent suggestions for other things you can do to encourage links -- some of this activity may not be "natural" but at least the results may look more "natural" than having all of your links sandwiched between links to online casinos and pill pushers (unless your site is an online casino that rewards the winners with pills instead of cash, in which case this might look perfectly "natural").

[webmasterworld.com...]

[Kufu]

Matt Cutts has specifically said on his blog that Google can spot the text paid ads (done solely for PR) pretty easily. I would stay away from them.