Link requests are nothing new, of course, but the person with whom Danny was emailing did more than just propose link acquisition. This particular link broker attempted, with some not-very-clever smooth-talking, to convince Danny that the followed, non-redirected, non-javascripted, PageRank-passing purchased links would be within Google's guidelines.
Danny was knowledgeable enough to mess with this person for a while and ended up revealing how much he actually knows about the issue, at which point the person stopped emailing him back. To quote:
I’d love to think there was an “oh shit” moment when this arrived in their email box...
But what of the website owners who don't have the extensive knowledge--or any knowledge at all--of what Google considers fair play? The smooth talking employed by Danny's correspondent is more likely to work. Take, for example, my Dad.
My Dad has a blog that gets about one link exchange / directory submission / link acquisition email per week. In the beginning, he didn't know what was "legit" and what wasn't (it turns out that 99% of it wasn't). He used to forward me the emails and ask me what I thought, but after the fifth or sixth installation of "nope Dad, don't email them back," he just started ignoring them. Out of all the emails he ever received, only three suggested that the sender had looked at the website past checking its toolbar PageRank, and just one site dealt with a related subject matter (despite all claiming to be within the same "theme"). The problem, as I said on the Sphinn thread, is that not every person who runs a small website has a daughter working at an SEO company with whom they can discuss the issue. The person who emailed Danny could have sounded quite legitimate to an uneducated website owner.
And I think we often forget about uneducated website owners. Even people who know a lot about web development and marketing don't necessarily know the fine-print of Google's guidelines. They aren't necessarily idiots because they fall for these tactics (although I agree that the people pitching at Danny were idiots for not simply Googling him, especially when he began to sound like he knew what he was talking about).
The Sphinn thread, and yesterday's discussions on Twitter, debated whether webmasters should report truly deceitful practices like this to search engines. The arguments tend to fall into a range of categories:
Personally, I recognise that cold-emailing still happens and I don't forward regular paid link requests to anyone. That doesn't sit well with me. Paid linking is a daily part of SEO and I am neither against it nor actively participating in it. Pretending it doesn't exist or willing it to stop is naive. However, I don't see how anyone can gladly accept a company that is willing to exchange multiple emails in which they lie about whether their business proprosition could spell the end for another company or individual's website.
I am honeslty curious as to what the community here thinks about paid link requests. If you are going to contact a website and offer them the option of selling a link, surely it's only ethical to make sure they know the risks? Or is that not your responsibility? Yes, I'm tired of the "e" word: it's taken up a lot of time in the SEO world lately. What someone does to his or her own sites is none of my business and strikes me as fair game, as long as everyone involved in the site understands the risks. However, I definitely don't see anything wrong with calling people out who put others at risk by capitalising on their ignorance and deliberately lying to get what they want.
My Dad has a blog that gets about one link exchange / directory submission / link acquisition email per week. In the beginning, he didn't know what was "legit" and what wasn't (it turns out that 99% of it wasn't). He used to forward me the emails and ask me what I thought, but after the fifth or sixth installation of "nope Dad, don't email them back," he just started ignoring them. Out of all the emails he ever received, only three suggested that the sender had looked at the website past checking its toolbar PageRank, and just one site dealt with a related subject matter (despite all claiming to be within the same "theme"). The problem, as I said on the Sphinn thread, is that not every person who runs a small website has a daughter working at an SEO company with whom they can discuss the issue. The person who emailed Danny could have sounded quite legitimate to an uneducated website owner.
And I think we often forget about uneducated website owners. Even people who know a lot about web development and marketing don't necessarily know the fine-print of Google's guidelines. They aren't necessarily idiots because they fall for these tactics (although I agree that the people pitching at Danny were idiots for not simply Googling him, especially when he began to sound like he knew what he was talking about).
The Sphinn thread, and yesterday's discussions on Twitter, debated whether webmasters should report truly deceitful practices like this to search engines. The arguments tend to fall into a range of categories:
- No, why do Google's job for them?
- No, the web is a free-for-all and if they fall for it, they fall for it.
- Yes, it cleans up Google's SERPs and that benefits all of us.
- Yes, it slowly eating away at the problem and will result in less of these annoying emails.
- Yes, these people are scum and deserve nothing less.
Personally, I recognise that cold-emailing still happens and I don't forward regular paid link requests to anyone. That doesn't sit well with me. Paid linking is a daily part of SEO and I am neither against it nor actively participating in it. Pretending it doesn't exist or willing it to stop is naive. However, I don't see how anyone can gladly accept a company that is willing to exchange multiple emails in which they lie about whether their business proprosition could spell the end for another company or individual's website.
I am honeslty curious as to what the community here thinks about paid link requests. If you are going to contact a website and offer them the option of selling a link, surely it's only ethical to make sure they know the risks? Or is that not your responsibility? Yes, I'm tired of the "e" word: it's taken up a lot of time in the SEO world lately. What someone does to his or her own sites is none of my business and strikes me as fair game, as long as everyone involved in the site understands the risks. However, I definitely don't see anything wrong with calling people out who put others at risk by capitalising on their ignorance and deliberately lying to get what they want.
While companies like the above continue to exist and do business, this industry will continue be seen as "scum of the earth" by many outsiders.
I have a fairly good idea who the company might be, as I recently found a whole network of sites that link back to a UK SEO company, always from their root page, and always using "search engine optimisation" as the anchor text.
Upon reading their /webpromotion.html page, it was very apparent that almost all of the services they offer are what I generally class as "Bullshit SEO"...
-- GET 1ST PAGE RANKS IN THE NATURAL LISTINGS! - £100 Optimisation fee + £25 per month for 1 year.
-- We submit to over 350 search engines including manual submissions to Google, Yahoo, MSN, Lycos, Ask, Alta Vista, Windows live, AOL, alltheweb, Overture and many more every month. -- ALL FOR FOR JUST £99 PER YEAR!
-- For £200 you can enter our Link Building Programme. ... We use an rss feed to update the links automatically to ensure a speedy process without having to go into your site every time the links are updated. (Can you say Reciprocal Link Farm here?)
-- Pay per click guarantees your website will appear on the first page of any search phrases you may choose. ... If you want to be number 1 and you want it now, this is the service for you.
This is all just so wrong, and on so many levels.
Tell me now that this company isn't run by people with no clue for people with no clue.
Its a grey, gray world out there. I am constantly fooled by blog posts that pump a product or website, for example. How are paid links any different? Google frowns upon them because they cut to the heart of the effectiveness of Google's page rankings. But that's Google, nothing to do with the true ethics of the issue. Until we get a business model that works here in blog world, it will be tough to consistently enforce ethical boundaries.
"Google frowns upon [these practices] because they cut to the heart of the effectiveness of Google's rankings."
That's the problem, in a nutshell. The basics of paid links isn't ethics, it's search engines' algorithms. The longer I spend in this field, the more I think Google (especially) deliberately makes paid links sound like an ethical, moral issue when it is, in fact, a business issue and one that directly influences their company. Demonising a practice in order to better one's own business, in my opinion, is more unethical than is buying links.
However, they do have the power to effectively end an online business and thus websites can still be penalised for violating these guidelines.
Ignorance is not a defence.
People need to know the risks involved in anything they do, particularly online. But, the fact remains that a lot of site owners do not know what they are doing when it comes to SEO (Hell, I am one of those site owners). There will always be people trying to take advantage of others for various reasons and while most people would be assured by the reassurement offered by this twirp and figure there is no problem, I mean, its only a link... Right?
But the fact remains, if you own a big site, you should be researching *anything* you do surrounding external traffic. Making a mistake can destroy a site in no time.
But, if you make a mistake, Google still gives you the opportuniy to request your indexing block is lifted. So you can always have a second chance.
Personally, as my site is a community, I nofollow *all* external links as I have no idea what my members are posting. I am more than happy to add links to reputable businesses that I have dealt with or sites we use, but not for money, justout of respect for their services.
I think, when the love of owning a site goes out the window and you start looking at it as a way to make money, you have already made the first mistake.
Agreed about the reconsideration options. Of course, site owners have to know what they did wrong in the first place in order to fix it and have a reconsideration be successful, but if they're not able to research what they may have done wrong, they probably have bigger problems.
Danny Sullivan knows about Google's guidelines? Bugger - I better delete my sent items...
Remeber not to send any more of those "please Sphinn this" messages to Rob as well.
If only that was something which had actually never happened...
Hey Jane - great post!
Whilst not being directly affected like you have mentioned above, I know that a few years ago I built a site for a friend of a friend. Did an okay job, and was achieving some very favourable Google results (positions 2-7) for some high ranking keywords. I was pretty pleased as I built the site more as a favour (for which I never received a return favour)!
However within a few weeks of that site going live, the company owner received multiple requests from "SEO Companies" all promising to deliver him No.1 In Google results. It became so bad that almost on a daily basis I was answering their calls, wanting to know if I thought it was legitimate! My response was simple, why the heck do you need to be worrying about paying these idiots when you are already ranking No.2 for certain terms?
For every email/phone call they received (well for about a month) I researched the company, and time and time again, I found no information at all. In the end I told him, leave it be, your site is performing well, there is no need to worry about it (hey I was young and by this point sick and tired of the hassle related to a "favour").
Generally speaking I always keep an eye on previous sites performances in google etc, and 6 months later I thought I would type a few product related searches into the big G for keywords I knew he pretty much owned. It wasn't until I got to page 27 that I found the same keywords that he used to dominate. In utter shock and bewilderment, I did a very quick (if that is possible) View Source Code, only to be shocked by the amount of completely stupid Meta Coding (is the only way I can describe it) and B***S*** extra dodgy code which had been ploughed into his website.
Shockingly the friend of a friend had actually paid over GBP 800 for that work, my work including website design and build was done for a very low GBP 500. All because the guy was uneducated, he was in his late 60's, was sold on the promise of riches from appearing number 1, and was also duped by people who talk all the talk, but don't know where to start walking. I know Rand has mentioned recently the problems REAL SEO's face, and educating clients is definately a major portion of that. There are so many people out there who do not know what the hell they are doing, yet make money from SEO, Web Design, Graphic Design etc, these people make our work so much harder.
Anyway better end this reply, got a bad Press Release to sort out! :)
Thank you for the detailed input! People definitely fall for the lure of riches; the owners of unmonetised blogs (like my Dad) are less likely to, but when the website has a commercial interest, it must be hard to turn them away.
I would (and do) have a problem with promoting something that I know can harm someone else. This is really independent of whether I agree with Google's stance or not... I KNOW that there's a risk to the site. It's the same reason I couldn't sell cigarettes for a living - I know that they will harm the person I'm selling to.
Would I report this guy? Since he's actively lying about Google's guidelines (and since he's too dumb to even recognize Danny), yes. If he'd not said that? I honestly don't know.
This is a problem where I work because of the revenue we get from selling links, which is tens of thousands of dollars every month.
In an industry where profits are dwindling, that looks a lot like free money. We cloak the issue in some type of corporate speak, but nobody above the level of grunt has any idea that there is a potential downside.
When warned, they simply say we're too big and important to be pulled out of the search results.
I for one will always go the ethical route, and will try to pull the masks off the those who don't.
I've actually had a massive company (with a market cap ~5 billion) request some targeted links on a few pages as a condition of them running a legitimate ad campaign with us.
I said yeah sure, but they'll be nofollowed and went ahead with the links - was never sure if they realised what nofollow was though.
"My take: if it isn't illegal, calling it immoral or unethical is a matter of personal opinion."
I realize that you are saying this in the context of link-buying, but I'd caution you against allowing elected officials tell you what your ethics and morals are, which is the net effect of saying if it isn't illegal, it's just opinion.
To use an extreme example, in Somalia there isn't a government, and murder, rape, etc are not against the law. That doesn't mean these activities are not immoral or unethical. I don't want to invoke Godwins law, but many of the activites in Nazi Germany were also "legal" at the time. To use a more current example, apparently, it's not illegal to torture people in Guantanamo Bay. Also, pretty much everything that the Chinese government does is legal (since they make the laws).
I hope those examples show why I think letting laws and rules tell you what's right and wrong may be a good starting position, but it's not necessarily the be all and end all of a persons moral responsibility. There have been a great many immoral and unethical laws in history. Many have been changed because people allowed themselves to disagree with them. Womens right to vote, and emancipation in the US come to mind.
I realize that the above ws far more wide-ranging than you were actually discussing in you post, but I can't pass a statement like that without at least trying to point out that the government is not necessarily the final moral authority on anything.
Heh, I had a great laugh reading danny's article, but when I then continued to read your article, I stopped laughing. Especially the part with your father made me think. Just imagine there's a blogger, as you said, without a daughter working for a SEO company who tries to make some money to pay his vacation or whatever ... it's so easy to convince him with foolish arguments...
I have seriously mixed feelings about paid links, especially deceptive ones. I work on a few sites that get requests here and there for paid text links and it's almost always readily apparent that they've never looked at the page beyond it's PageRank or placement in the SERP. Generally, they request terms I've worked pretty hard to optimize for. It's pretty ridiculous.
Part of me feels like it's just another form of advertising, akin to a banner ad, and when done with moderate transparency I don't think I'd lose sleep though. It's better than spamming blogs and forums by far!
I think it's important to determine whether or not there is malicious intent involved in the exchange. In Danny's case, this representative was CLEARLY misrepresenting the truth and deliberately lying in an attempt to acquire the link. In this case, I believe the company should have been reported to Google. However, as I said throughout the conversation on Twitter yesterday, the responsibility then falls on Google to take the action they deem appropriate.
Purposely acquiring links that can ultimately result in a site being penalized and relying use of deception and fraudulent statements to do so doesn't fall under "black hat" or "white hat" SEO...it's simply reprehensible behavior that Google should be made aware of whenever possible.
As far as paid links in general, I don't automatically dismiss all paid links as malicious or undeserved and don't fully understand Google's position that they are. If I have a new product that no one knows anything about and I elect to have a paid review written, why should I not get credit for the link back to my site from the review? Having paid for the review doesn't necessarily mean I paid for a GOOD review, nor for the link itself. Rather, that I have paid for the reviewer's time and effort. It's a very gray area and Google shouldn't necessarily dismiss all paid links as "low quality".
What I want to know is why your icon isn't updated with a "head-cold" Jane photo.
For me, the paid link requests are really hard to tell apart from spam. Especially when they put in the wrong URL in the request.
Someone once put it well to me. As long as the links are completely relevant and on topic, it's hard for Google to discount them or get the site into trouble algorithmically. As for the ethics of it, it's hard to say. Is it any worse than a car company slapping their cars all over the Transfomers movie? Or Apple placing their hardware in may TV shows? Or celebrities getting all that free crap they wear to the Oscars? It's hard to say where the line should be drawn.
Hmm, good post and a tricky one too.
Definately comes under the 'morals' umbrella for sure.
You show quite clearly that innocent or ignorant website owners can fall prey to this type of thing but on the same hand there will be those that try to buy links like that and they themselves have been misinformed and think they are doing the right thing.
Ive never really been a fan of sweeping penalties in various guises. I know a few hard working site owners that were punished during the whole purchased links debacle and they certanly didnt deserve those negative impacts.
I do see cold calling as fair play and it will never stop, its half the ethos of sales after all. Of course I dont appreciate the real crappy spam that I get in my email box everyday but in reality this is rarely the mom and pop or newbie webmaster that are the major irritance, its the generic porn and prize winning spam that just keeps coming. I think the cold calling ones still deserve my attention the first time around.
Should we keep grassing people up at every instance we see of a continually growing list of no no's that Google puts out there? What if you are doing something totally legit on your site and big G decide they dont like it tomorrow? You dont keep up to date for a few months and when you come back you have been reported a thousand times for linking to your home page via your banner. I mean paid links were totally fine last year right?
I dont think we should grass on these these types of incidents. I think we should continue to offer the correct advice and let Google decide what is good and what is bad and deal with it appropriately.
Appropriately in an ideal situation would mean looking at each scenario individually and not punishing those that do things without bad intent.
That of course is often a matter of opinion and conjecture and needing further knowledge of the background. A very difficult task for sure. Thats why Google would appreciate assistance in spam reporting and cheating. But for the reasons above I myself would be reluctant to report anyone without a lot of knowledge of the individual case.
Reminds me of Widgetgate, where off-topic embedded widgets and badges helped seemed highly effective for a long time and then Google decided to tighten their policies. The appeared to do anything from discount the widgets' links to penalise the sites.
If you'd heard about widgetbait but didn't read SEO blogs, you'd have no idea that it was wrong... and there the argument turns into one of, "is ignorance an excuse?" Most people here seem to be saying that no, it's not. For me though, the issue of previously-acceptable practices turned unfavourable is a(nother) grey area.
Jane - excellent insight. It kind of borders on my next small business SEO post so wont say more, but I have to admit, small businesses with a PR 2 and above get inundated with these requests and its important to educate them on whats the right or wrong thing to do with each individual situation.
As to ethics - I am just as tired of the arguments around the conversation, however, if you are screwing with someones livelihood, they ought to be made aware.
I think that's the key, for most people to knowingly take advantage of someone else is unethical.
Personally I think to do so reflects badly on you on a personal level, and the ethos of your business. It's that kind of egoistic business that contributed to the current crisis in banking and housing in the US and the UK - the few looking after themselves at the expense of the many.
I'm of a similar mindset to Jane - I'm not for it or against it.
I haven't ever sold any links and I don't think I ever will. It might be 'easy' money but I am happy to endorse something I have used and enjoy - and I'll almost always endorse good/useful/relevant resources, blog posts, software, etc. If somebody actually sends me a link request for a useful site, I might consider it. Until then, I'll just keep ignoring all link requests.
Have you ever seen a link request - paid or otherwise - that was actually asking you to link to something useful?
I haven't. If the website is useful, then there is probably not a need to request links - the people behind the site will just continue to produce useful products, services, content, etc and the linkerati will be all over that site like flies on sh*t. Right?
I agree with Jameszol.
Being both a business owner and an SEO we get hundreds of requests per week. I see maybe one in a thousand that even are in the same ballpark of our product and all of those are dubious.
I spend my time working on being relevant with content and stuff others can benefit from. Eventually, the work pays off without the scams and schemes.
Doing the right thing is hard. If it wasn't everybody could do it. (did that come out right?)
Well I work for a rather small company that focuses on natural on-page SEO, though for a small fee we will include a Backlink Guide, which is a document explaining to the small business owners why links to their site are good, how the anchor text would be most beneficial to appear, and how to go about acquiring links.
I advise them to only offer link exchanges and never have to pay for links or be paid for links. I get them started with a list of example sites that would be great to seek link exchanges from. They're carefully researched and not just picked out because of PR. This gets them in the habit of looking for link exchanges from the most appropriate sites.
It feels good to empower our clients like this since we don't currently offer link acquisition services, so that at least I can tell them which paid directories for their particular business are full of crap, which might be worthwhile, and get them on their way to really taking their SEM into their own hands.
Since our clients usually have the average understanding of the Internet, it's almost assured that the links they'll seek on their own will be appropriate and carefully selected. They won't look at it from a shady SEO perspective of "Well, this site has a PR of 7, and even though it doesn't really apply to my business, I'll try and get them to link to me anyway..." And since the clients aren't (ideally) paying for any links, Google shouldn't have a problem with any of it.
If only it worked this simply for everyone, and buying links wasn't ever even an option, my small business owners would be even better off. And even though Google says it doesn't sell its top positions, we all know they're for sale in one way or another.
Anyone want to discuss the morals of music/video downloading?
Seriously though, this is an issue around what Google defines as acceptable vs. unacceptable and I think Jane is spot on when she said "The basics of paid links isn't ethics, it's search engines' algorithms".
Google, et al is trying to deliver the most accurate results to their users to preserve their business model (which is advertising, not search btw). SEOs are doing their best to deliver their clients websites to the top of said results. Are those sites the most relevant? Maybe most/some of the time, but I'm sure we'd all agree that not 100% of the time so herein is where I see the "ethical" debate if you want to call it that.
In my opinion, this is not an ethical issue but the whole issue has been, quite adeptly and successfully demonized by the search engines and we have bought into that tripe. Our job as SEOs is to do the best we can for our clients, and sometimes that puts us at odds with the search engines, who are trying to do the best for their *cough* shareholders. Is that going to put us at odds which each other sometimes? You bet. And when this whole issue of link buying goes away (please!) it'll just be something else...
This is all what happens when you dont have knowledge in any field. At car repair shop I am asked for 100's of bucks and i dont evn know for what....Either have the knowledge or you will have to pay the price.
In this case I agree that some people are taking unwanted advantage of others because of there lack of knowledge but we cant ask everyone to study SEO ;)
Coming at this from a different direction for a minute.
If a Person finds another attractive. They have a natural desire to be associated with them and pays a compliment to them.
Is that a "Paid Link"? It is a compliment paid.
(not trying to get in to a discussion about linking other than internet)
Compliments are paid because of a desire to affiliate with another you find relevant. In our case here it is the desire to connect with others in our field.
If there is relevance to be passed shouldn't that the only factor to be concerned with?
Or are we going to consider ANY "Paid Linking" prostitution of the natural linking process? What if you're paying for a membership to a group you participate in?
(I need to switch to decaf)
i agree but id like to point out i don't think its just the seo industry that deals with the cheap / lame people in their field i mean as a developer im constantly running into people who have been screwed (on purpose and through stupidity) by their developers that end up giving the others in the industry a bad name
Of course you should make them aware of the risks. But so should a dodgy used car salesman, In an industry as new and unregulated as SEO snake oil salesmen like this can thrive.
I don't subscribe to the view that if they get scammed it's their own fault. That's like saying if a pensioner falls prey to a smooth tongued con man selling fake life insurance, it's the pensioner's fault.
I think that from a purely ethical perspective if you are trying to persuade a site owner to sell you a link really ought to make sure that the site owner is fully aware of the risks.
Whilst it amused me greatly that anyone would have the gall to ask Danny to sell a link, what really worried me was the broker's dishonesty.
Despite Danny asking several times about the risks, the broker continued to mislead him. Clearly, this is ethically wrong.
The difficulty is, that legally you are perfectly entitled to buy and sell links. Likewise, legally you are not required to explain the potential risks of such a transaction. Therefore these link brokers are not breaking any laws, and as such cannot be regulated.
I do think that more could be done to help to inform website owners , as lots still do not understand the potential risks.
Perhaps more importantly, I think that given Google's position on paid links, they really ought to stop allowing link brokers to advertise via Adwords. It seems to me that it's ethically wrong to damn those who buy and sell paid links and yet happily accept advertising revenue from those who facilitate this practice.
My take: if it isn't illegal, calling it immoral or unethical is a matter of personal opinion.
As for the unknowing webmaster: ignorance is unfortunate, but at the end of the day it's not a great excuse. Google's policy on paid links has been pretty clear for a while now: don't do it or we'll punish you. I think they've considered that many webmasters still don't know about all this - which is why they'll take a reinclusion request and remove a penalty once the webmaster has identified/removed the paid links.
As for those who send the cold paid link request emails: it strikes me as a waste of time and effort, but as long as there are uninformed webmasters these tactics will remain.
The best thing we can do is discuss it out in the open as much as possible in the hope of educating webmasters. This post and Danny's do a good job of that.
Whether paid links are ethical or not is a different debate (and a well covered one) than what should be done about shady and deceitful link requests.
In Danny's situation and in situations like it, if the person requesting the link is being openly deceitful and trying to take advantage of someone's perceived lack of knowledge I think they should be called out. There's a reason why SEO has a less than stellar reputation and it's due to things like this.
I'd prefer to have the deserving parties called out rather than have them potentially harm someone's web presence through ill advised link practices.
I don't buy or sell links. However, is listing in a directory that requires a listing charge, buying a link? If so, Yahoo is selling links? Your blog caused me to think about that and where the line is? And what consititutes a directory or a site selling links?
Ouch, I'm getting a headache.
The difference with a lot of those directories is that they will have a free submission option (which can take up to 2 months to be reviewed sometimes!) and a 'fast track' option, where you pay a small fee and get your link added sooner.
In Yahoo's case they are maintaining the quality of their directory by charging quite a lot to be listed, so that (in theory) the directory will maintain it's value.
These guys are different from webmasters buying and selling links to their own sites however, as the search engines recognise a link directory for what it is, whereas buying and selling links between websites can skew search results and make them less useful, or worse, irrelevant, to the searcher.
The difference is that these links are considered "editorial" links because they have editors that review the website to make sure it's worthy of inclusion. And most of them say that payment doesn't gaurantee that you will be included, the site has to pass approval first.
Balony! They sell links just like the people Google penalizes except in the case of Yahoo its on a much grander scale. Fact is if you buy a link from anyone they are going to "review" the link. Google makes me sick. BAH!!!!!!!!!! Ok, so if I charge a review fee to "consider" you in my blog role I am all good with Google. BAH!!!!!!!!
How about I spend ten million advertising on television your chance to win $100,000 but require a page rank passing link back to my site from you. Is that link buying?
Newayz back to Janes post, I don't think you have any ethical responsibility what so ever to explain Google guidelines to anyone. This entire discussion of paid links is rubbish. As you stated Jane its their algorithm or perhaps business model that is messed up.
right, they're all manually reviewed... wink wink ;)
I'm refraining from a full-on blog post, but I will say this much. I ignore most link requests I get because I know better and I link to what I think my readers will benefit from. That wasn't always the case and I learned the hard, costly way.
On the other side of the coin, I don't waste my time reporting such people either. I have far more important things to do with my time than play Internet Police. That's not my shtick. I'd rather write layman's term tutorials, commentaries and reviews that help new "webmasters".
Regardless, I had to learn the hard, costly way because the vast majority of resources out there for the amateur or novice webmaster rarely, if ever, cover topics like linking to bad neighborhoods, paid links, Search Engine policies, etc. Most just focus on teaching you a little high-level code and some basics of marketing. Much of which is full of pre-2002 advice which will get your site banned in a New York minute now.
I think it's a personal decision whether you should play Internet Police and report such unscrupulous "SEOs". Personally, a better use of my time is to get in the trenches with new "webmasters" and teach them what they are obviously not learning elsewhere.
Thanks for the time you guys have put into these replies: I really appreciate it :)
As Stuartpt pointed out, buying directory links helps maintain the integrity of the directory itself by keeping search results relevant. If that's the case, then it shouldn't be no big deal to sell links as long as they are relevant? Not that I condone this behaviour (we've never bought links for a client before, other then directory listings), it's just a thought (and I like to play devil's advocate). Is link buying unethicial if it keeps search results relevant by buying links on relevant sites?
Interesting you should say that actually Steph; the only link I've ever purchased was under those exact circumstances. One of the ecommerce sites I run is in a niche sporting market, and there is a big community/social network/league/forum site which is a dream site to get a link from.
The guy who runs it is a developer however and pretty web savvy, so he only sells links, and only sells them to sites that pass his quality guidelines.
He is just trying to monetise his site, and we are trying to make more money out of ours - in this situation I don't see any problem with buying a link, as both parties are fully aware of the benefits and implications of doing so.
It also doesn't clash with Google's guidelines, as we are keeping it relevant, and maintaining the quality.
I think this is just as much of an ethical issue as exploiting any other company's product or service for your own good.
That being said, if you want to take the risk, its not illegal to do so and there is a CRAP LOAD (thats the official term) of money to be made taking advantage of Google and mom & pop shop sites.
Oh wait, that was a bit b-hat. my bad. scratch that last statement.
We don't buy or sell links. However, we do receive requests on a regular basis to sell links, for which we have just gotten in the habit of blocking these requests. All of our SEO is organic and as such we don't have to worry about any issues arising from that point.
However, as bothersome as it is, I don't think I would ever go so far to report the company. For one I don't have the time and secondly there are so many. I suppose if our company was larger or less busy (boy, that would suck) we would pursue reporting.
For the most part, (we work only with small business owners) the whole SEO aspect of a site makes virtually no sense most. Kind of like someone trying to explain to me which way is "north" without a compass.