In a cruel, unambiguous and brutally honest fashion, Matt Cutts ripped apart a link network today. I'm feeling really bad for them. Here's what Matt said:
My favorite overall moment was when a totally legit company (micromatic.com) stood up and asked for advice. Overall, their site was great: good architecture and very crawlable. They had lots of really good backlinks, including industry-specific links. But I could also tell that they’d been buying some backlinks. And they were buying backlinks from the exact same place as one of the earlier sites! At the point when in a minute of typing, I can say: you guys are both trying to buy backlinks, and I can tell that you’re buying them from the same network, and here’s an example page from ketv.com where both of you are even on the same page, and it’s not doing you any good at all: that just made my day.
When Matt noted KETV.com, he's calling out a link network that runs on a lot of TV, Radio and Newspaper sites throughout the US. In fact, I've bought on this network for some of our clients, and while I'm dissapointed to learn that Google is devaluing those links, it may shock some folks to learn that you actually get click-throughs on those ads (although the highest numbers I've seen are around 40 unique visitors in a week from one in particular).
I suspect that a few things will result from this:
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The company will build a new network
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The old network will get cheaper or possibly dissapear
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MSN & Yahoo! read Matt's blog... they'll probably do likewise
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The link network's owner will drink a lot tonight
When we were getting featured in Wired, one of my biggest fears was Google looking through the links to 2 of our 5 full-time clients (who were to be mentioned in the article - Shoe-Store and Avatar Financial). I wasn't worried so much about our devaluation (as my research had showed they devalued those links sometime in the mid-late summer) as I was about them pulling the value from the entire network.... I guess that's not a big concern anymore.
I can actually empathize with both sides on this issue. Matt (and Google) need to show the SEO world that link networks can't succeed forever or their credibility will drop. The link network company, on the other hand, was providing an excellent service and doing a great job of it. I hope that they can rebound from this and continue to provide webmasters with valuable links through other methods.
I suspect they've already got links in place that aren't being discounted. The question for the long term is "how do you keep links relevant over the long term, even if the SEs discover they're paid content?" The obvious answer is to serve links that pay for themselves in visitor traffic and if the search engines don't count them - who cares?
Good luck, anonymous link network guys. Please drop me a line if I can help.
I agree - its not a long term solution, but just as in business it sometimes takes money to make money. In this case, sometimes it takes a little "umph" to get things rolling.
I also have to say, if a link thatcan bring in theme and authority to your site but also serves as a good traffic source, it may be worth it.
But do Not think that link buying is a long-term solution, just as monthly marketing is not a long-term solution compared with SEO.
kipp - Yeah, we watch the SERPs and the links that point to many sites and can typically tell when one kind of link or a set of links has been manually devalued - it shows because all the sites relying on those links to rank well will fall.
Google devalue paid links. Like some directories in category pages write before site listings "regular links" and then in the submission form they set some price for "regular links = $20..or so" .This shows directory is selling links and google devalue such links.
Was just curious how does one know when a link is devalued.. ex. when you said you had known the "links had been devalued in the mid-summer"? Do you use a specific tool? Or just through researching articles and current online events?
it seems that a majority of link buying networks are following a Google Adwords model of cheap links $10-20/month knowing that if you want more traffic/rankings you will spend more money over time and if you dont want to go backwards you will continue to buy links gradually...
The surprising thing is following:
There are some rules, but if a big player breaks them and is spending a great adwords budget, it seems don´t happen nothing regarding google and penalization. Do you have made this observation also?
The biggest compitor at top1 with the main keyword combination of my major client is buying so many links spending much budget to increase link popularity and trust. Surely the question is, if this operation is the main factor of position. But the analyze of his 3 times more links quantity pointing to his domain seems to show this.
Greetings from Hamburg
https://www.suchmaschinen-experte.de
One question:
Do you know, why Google shows up sometimes two result in the SERP for a specific keyword(s)? The above compitor has the first two places, then my client comes.
Thanks and peace,
When it is clear that a competitor is out ranking for a term and they show back-links from a sponsored site the questions that comes to mine is how is this fair, and what do you then recommend to your client?
Hi, is is not fair, it is a question of budget. I say my client, without adding some of these links in the backlink profile it would be very difficult to out rank this competitor. Adding our links would decrease the power of the competitor links is one of my mayor argument.
lol... this made my morning..
{anonymous} is a smart guy. There is a reason why he started allowing outside webmasters to signup to sell links, it diversifies his network. It's also why he has tried to get away from promoting anything that has to do with pagarank on his site.
Focusing on traffic is key but unfortunatly he suffors from the same problem we do, most webmasters want to push the ads down to the bottom of the page and advertisers arent going to continue to pay a premium price for links that do not offer a SEO benefit, and that only get a few clicks.
I wish {anonymous} the best of luck, the only real option he has is to inform all of the people on those sites that they no longer work for SEO purposes and hope that they like those links for ranking in MSN and Yahoo or for traffic. Even being a competitor it is in none of our best interest to see him have to take a hit like that. I know personally how big of a hit it is to have to discontinue selling links on a site that is no longer passing pagerank. We have had several sites where that was the case, and it sucks. I can only imagine what it would be like to loose an entire network, especially one that was as high quality as the his.
As for the issue of buying links for SEO purposes I personally do not think there is anything wrong with it (and I think I would feel the same even if I wasnt a broker. As long as the site being promoted truly adds to the usefulness of the internet and nothing dishonest is being done whats the harm of optimizing its link popularity?
Of course its about a 50/50 split down the middle on people who would agree that buying links is ok. I personally believe that for a mortgage site to buy links to help rank for mortgages is ok as long as the site was deserving at being at the top for that keyword. Deserving being that when people visit that site after a search, they find what they were looking for.
I'm sure my comments are only opening Pandora's box though. This will always be a topic that is debated heavily.
Jarrod,
I think you're right. The problem is that many "editorial" links that SEs count are actually paid. If you remove the ability for paid links to count, they'll be very little to make a determination about which REIT investment project in North Dakota is right for you.
Paid links, in many sectors, form the bulk of link data. Google, et al will simply have to hope that those who allow paid links are editorially reviewing the "linked-to" sites - which most of the good ones are (in my experience).
Yep Rand,
Some of the best links out there have been artificially influenced by such things as advertising etc... The rich will always get richer, whether they are buying links directly or buying advertising that indirectly influences people to naturally link to them.
There is very little linkage data out there that hasnt been influenced in one way or another by the site being linked too. Devaluing links that are bought directly will only lead to people doing more passive link building.
Link Building is Link Building is Link building... Period. Why Google even wastes their time manually blocking sites is beyond me. There are plenty of ways to automatically penalize sites that dont deserve to rank highly that have nothing to do with devaluing their bought links. Google will never be able to keep up with artificial optimization techniques manually.
I think link buying can be bad unless it is done in very moderation and on relevant sites.
I strongly believe that a few dollars per month is peanuts compared to the value that one well themed back link drives. Other than this, I don't do much link purchasing - but in some cases, I think that it is worth it.
Jarrod- Agree completely with your last comments about links always being influenced. I guess we have to start somewhere and that place because of its authority probably has sold links at some point.
What do you guys think about marketing companies, using text link ads on their own network of site, since that is the name of the business for them anyways? It's some business is to sell advertising, and this seems to fit right into their business model, but will it be a bad longterm idea for them and companies like them?
Let's try not to name names, gang.
Scott - I honestly can't say. It depends on a lot of factors, including how relevant and valuable to visitors they're willing to make their ads. No one can forever rely on the link buying model for SERP-boosting power, IMO. This post from Matt is just one more piece of evidence.
Rand,
I think you made the correct decision in making this posting anonymous. No company deserves to be publically called out like that, unless they truly deserve it, and this person doesnt. I wish more bloggers would follow in your footsteps.
I do hope however that the anonymous person in question takes the correct actions in providing full disclosure to his clients. Our entire industry relies on trust that the links we sell actually work.