Buying One Way Links

[titaneye]

I just finished building a commercial website, and it's unlikely anyone would want to do a reciprocal link exchange with me for fear I will undercut their own products. I was over at Elance the other day, and noticed a lot of people over there are paying companies and individuals to get them quality one way links [by the 10's or 100's]. Is this practice acceptable, ethical, high risk, etc.? If this practice is not frowned upon, does anyone know if it works, and is worth the money spent?

[Chippy]

Be careful accumulating too many high ranking IBL too fast, particularly if the sites are off-topic. You want them to look natural so slow and steady is the way to go.

[Worthy Content]

Before you buy check out the sites you're paying for. Some may not be relevant in the least even if they do hold decent ranks.

Build gradually and make sure you're placed on relevant pages within the site instead of something like a "link farm" page.

I know of a good service, I use it myself and for my clients. I'd post the name here but an not sure it'd be compliant with forum rules. If you're interested at all email me and I'll give you more details. If not, that's fine too.

Buying links is still ok, just do make sure you are paying for what you think you are and not paying for just an inbound link from anywhere.

[olgerdviz]

I heard rumours that Google is able to determine the paid links (or will be soon). Try not to buy links from websites that specialize in selling links (like most of the paid directories - but not Yahoo Directory).
However paid links may be very useful. A friend of mine has bought a link from an authoritative site in his niche, and gets almost 90% traffic from it (well he pays a lot, but it is worth every penny).

[sugarrae]

>>>noticed a lot of people over there are paying companies and individuals to get them quality one way links [by the 10's or 100's]. Is this practice acceptable

My god what a paranoid bunch of people Google has created (referring to internet marketers as a whole, not to you specifically, so take no offense). You hire people to write content, you hire people to do the web design, why would it automatically be a bad thing to hire someone to handle your marketing (one part of which is link development)? Just be careful to hire good ones. As with content writers and web designers, there are good ones and bad ones and bad ones can cost you a lot of time and money and leave you with nothing to show for it. I really am amazed at the fact that hiring employees is being debated as being "approved" by Google or not.

[Receptional]

Try not to buy links from websites that specialize in selling links (like most of the paid directories - but not Yahoo Directory).

Here lies a dilemma for anyone thinking of links as search ranking fodder. What makes Yahoo directory better than the Institute of Chartered Accountants' Directory if you are an accountant?

Think of links for humans. Then you can buy Adwords - YSM - Yahoo Directory and even the odd advert in your chosen vertical. One person's link for humans is another person's spam link. For example, I just bought an advert on a very specialized search consultancy site. In the process we dropped a campaign on an alternative site because they started advertizing loans. I mean honestly - if the site is about search, DON'T link to loans if you want to keep my business! It's not useful in real life, so Google will strive to emulate real life equivalent decisions.

(Then again - maybe they make more money out of linking to loans? who knows)