Tonight I'm tackling a contentious, thorny issue and that's always a tough task. Thus, I'll ask, up front, for a bit of leeway in how my words are parsed and interpreted. I'm happy to make clarifications on specifics in the comments.
Lately, we've been getting a lot of questions (through Q+A as well as from clients and the SEO community) about the practice of buying links. A good number of folks have pointed out that, years ago, I endorsed several text/paid link brokers - companies that aggregate link ad inventory and sell it to those seeking to boost their rankings. This practice does violate Google's Quality Guidelines as well as other engines' desires, as do most of the direct forms of paying money to get a link that will assist with organic search rankings (I say "most" because the Yahoo! Directory and a few others like it may be exempt).
I've listed some of our general thoughts about paid links:
- Buying/selling links is an inherently high risk activity
- Certain smart methodologies may temporarily reduce that risk, but never to zero (at least, in my opinion)
- The size, credibility and importance of your organization strongly impacts how you might be penalized by the engines (large companies and popular websites are far less likely to receive harsh penalties or bans in the same way smaller orgs might)
- To perform SEO is to decide that the environment and rules created by the search engines is, for better or worse, your ecosystem
- Choosing to manipulate that ecosystem in ways that violate the engines' rules or intent is not necessarily immoral or unethical but it is potentially damaging to your business (if you rely on search engine traffic)
I want to set the record straight publicly about where I (and SEOmoz) stand vis a vis recommending link buying and link selling as SEO practices.
- We no longer recommend paid links, link ads, link buying or selling to any of our active clients
- We do this because we believe that the risk to reward ratio is too high and not because of ethical, moral or legal reasons
- Our stance has also changed because we feel that paid links no longer offer long-term, high yield value for SEO campaigns, and that other methodologies that require similar effort and finances are almost always more accretive and less risky
This doesn't mean that I want to take back the things I've said in the past about individual link sellers or those SEOs who endorse paid links or link brokers. If your business has risk tolerance for buying or selling links and you go into it with your eyes wide open, I have no problem with that. The businesses and individuals we've recommended in the past value their customers, provide a high level of service and are smart operators. Many of them also offer "white hat" link building and SEO services which we'd still recommend today (some have even left the link ads business entirely).
If you're buying or selling links today, my general feeling is that there are other, more valuable, less dangerous tactics that will add long term value to your SEO. There may be cases where, particularly for large companies, link buying is a low-enough risk activity to make some sense, but as a rule, and as part of SEOmoz's commitment to our core values of transparency, generosity, quality and empathy, paid links aren't going to be part of our toolbox going forward.
p.s. I'd love to hear in the comments how those of you who run consulting businesses or offer SEO consulting services deal with this issue in messaging to your clients.
I applaud your efforts at transparancy Rand, but I think the biggest problem with a statement like this is defining what is and isn't a paid link.
I certainly agree that buying links from link brokers or paid link networks is a high risk strategy but what about sponsoring an event or joining an organisation?
I'm not sure I'd be comfortable making a statement like this:
There are certainly activities we've recommended to clients in the past that involve exchanging money (in some form) for a link and I think we would continue to recommend similar tactics to future clients.
That said the tactics we recommend all pass the spirit of Google's terms of service in that they are relevant and business-sensible links, they're not just for "manipulating" pagerank which is Google's major concern.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on how you go about defining the boundry of what is and isn't a paid link.
Yes defining the boundaries will reduce the risk. One example is with a client I have been working with. They place Ads on big sites for traffic. As they are clueless about SEO, how are they supposed to say 'excuse me can you make that Ad 'Nofollow'. Am I supposed to step in and ask for nofollows to be added to stop the PR7 link juice flowing? - no way!
Just like there are 17+ Ways to Judge the Value of a Link, I also feel that there are many facets to valuing a link for potential purchase (probably a topic worthy of writing a post). I do not fully recommend purchasing links, but do consider purchasing listing on sites that can result in exposure for the business in question.
That's a great point, and ends up being the playground for a lot of inconsistency and flat out hypocrisy (on the part of the search engines), IMO. For instance, if I buy a banner ad, that's clearly considered a paid endorsement and should be no-followed. However, what if I spend $5K for a booth at a major tradeshow and they link back to me in their exhibitor directory? How is that anything but advertising?
If I pay you to link to me, and your site is irrelevant, that's a paid link and could get me in trouble. If I donate money to a charity, though, and they link back to people who donate more than $X, that link is often considered legitimate, even if the charity is irrelevant to my business. Of course, I grant that donating money to charity is probably more noble than paying another business for a link, but does that make the tactic any more ethical?
Tom - that's an excellent point. For the purposes of this post, I used this definition:
but there's no doubt I could be clearer. I'll try to put together a post in the near future with hypothetical examples of "the line" between paid link tactics we'd reject vs. those we'd support.
I think that definition works fine for you and I but I wonder if a lot of people new to SEO might not be able to understand the difference?
A post clarifying the kinds of "good" paid link and "bad" paid link would be a great post but I understand that it might be controversial so it's your call on putting it out! :-)
Looking forward to this, think it would make a great post
I'll be majorly impressed if you can actually find the line - I doubt it can possibly exist. The bottom line is Google's people are reading the reports they get, then making a judgement call on whether or not to penalise the linker/recipient. Very difficult to get anything hard & fast when you factor in a human somewhere!
I agree - surely the line is what you can get away with that works for you. You don't know until you try. Risk and reward.
How about Google selling paid links themselves? If they don't want paid links because it is manipulative to the SERP's but then they go ahead and sell sponsored links that show up above organic results for X amount of dollars are they not doing the exact same thing?
Good point. Their publicised donation to the FreeBSD Foundation springs to mind.
Let call spade a spade. Whatever has been said about paid links whether or not it's ethical top five players in most profitable niches are going to purchase them as long as the strategy proves effective. The batte for domination is everlasting and so is their mentality - to be ahead of the competitors. IMHO this ethical or unethical stuff is bullshiting right in people's face by the greedy google. I fully support FunnyDragons' opinion on their two-facedness. Why don't they practice what they preach?
FunnyDragons, (sorry for doing it here, cant do it elsewhere) can you pm your email, please?I have got some important question to ask you directly.
Great point.
At times, the lines get pretty blurry. A good example is with organization memberships. Look at the list of SEMPO "Circle Members" on the left side of their home page. Granted, members are paying for other services, and getting a "do-follow" link on the home page of the potentially authoritative site is a perk - but if there was no link juice involved, would the memberships be as popular? I doubt it.
I'm not opposed to this sort of membership. It obviously isn't a blatant scam, but the lines need to be clearer, so that when dealing with less popular entities you know exactly which side of the line you're about to stand on.
I also would like to see something along the lines that Tom suggests.
In addition I would add that, when discussing risk I think it should be measured in terms of potential cost vs benefits. Linkbait can have a high risk of failure - there are no guarantees the any piece of linkbait will attract links and yet each piece can cost significant time and money. Even those with lots of experience in launching linkbait can be suprised by the lack of response. What about those who are less experienced? How much money will they spend trying to work out what works for their site?
I use linkbait as an example, but I'm sure you could say the same for most link building techniques (e.g. risk of high numbers of non-responding email campaigns). A post that considered these factors would be an excellent read.
It's not the practice of buying links that's dangerous; it's the low quality and obvious nature of the links usually bought and the fact that 99% of people don't buy smart. But saying more than that will get me into trouble :)
Nicely put Jane, I completely agree. There's ways to fly under the radar if you play the game intelligently. Risk can be greatly reduced (almost to nil) by travelling incognito.
That is true. But google also has a way of telling if even a high quality bought link is in fact bought. IMHO not worth the risk.
I do have a question. My chamber of commerce offers for $35 a link to my website from my directory link. It's less for link juice and more for convenience for visitors to that chamber directory to access my site. Is that bad?
Quote: "That is true. But google also has a way of telling if even a high quality bought link is in fact bought. IMHO not worth the risk."
Please enlighten me as to how they could possibly know this? Or are you just making a claim you heard somewhere with no way to back it up.
PS. I already know the answer.
Completely disagree here. The best paid link looks as innocent as this guy does after he's destroyed half your living room ;)
I think we see that in Q&A a lot. It's all about patterns with Google. I'm amazed how often we see a question that boils down to:
Yes. Yes I do. Thanks for playing.
Edit: I don't mean that to pick on anyone who sincerely has a site problem. Many people make mistakes because they read or heard that's what they're supposed to do. When you see those mistakes en masse, though, it's hard not to be occasionally amused.
I wonder if Google is or will in the future scan messages in gmail for any under the radar paid linking dialogue. I'd assume they can't due to privacy laws but it sounds tempting mainly because of the popularity of gmail.
Call me paranoid, but I'm assuming they've been doing that all along. "All your data is ours"
Does this stance include companies like Text Link Ads, which appear to be the main advertiser on Searchengineland? (not trying to start a war here, just that they advertise a slightly different link buying service on a highly visible SEO platform)
Do your Linkscape stats support the idea that people are being caught out? Do you actually see people being penalised? I still see major competitors getting benefit from link farms and suffering no ill effects, even when reported to the engines. Any stats or case studies?
I would also be interested on peoples opinions on Text Link Ads, because of their free membership with the option of a paid "Full Member" account.
On a side note they are also a prominent sponsor of searchenginewatch.
Also a partner of SEOMOZ when you go into the 'discount store'.
So they have been "reviewed" by SEOmoz, so this means SEOmoz see their link exchange as undamaging?
Though presumably only if relevant links are used.
Just FYI - we did pull TLA out of the discount store today. While I think there's nothing wrong with deciding you or your organization has the risk tolerance for these programs (and nothing wrong with using them so long as you're aware of the risks), it was sending a conflicting message. Thanks for the note.
Yeah - I'd have to say that all direct link brokers would fall into this field. That doesn't mean I'm angry with them, opposed to what they do, think they're immoral or illegal or even unethical. It just means that I would advise our clients and those who ask us for help to choose natural link building over paid link acquisition.
BTW - If I were running a site sponsored by advertisers, I think it would be a big challenge to decide where to draw the line - in the case of TLA and SearchEngineLand, the ad is being served by Google itself! That makes it fairly challenging to cry foul on them, IMO.
Search Engine Land is using Doubleclick to manage their advertising inventory, thus I don't think that can be used as any form of endorsement on Google's part, and I doubt they do much in the way of inventory policing.
Great points for the paranoid but Google can disprove any advertiser that doesn't meet its standards...
For the tin foil hat wearing link buyers, Google has a good idea who is clicking on and visiting these websites so click away and just remember do you really trust a link broker sell mass market links from just $5/month...?
great point firegolem:
"Do your Linkscape stats support the idea that people are being caught out? Do you actually see people being penalised? I still see major competitors getting benefit from link farms and suffering no ill effects, even when reported to the engines. Any stats or case studies?"
Any response on this?
I think the main problem here is that we don't see enough evidence that Google is bothered about paid links, apart from the fact Mr Cutts keeps highlighting the point.
Any active SEO working in multiple industries sees first hand how 90% of top ranking sites are buying links and it works. I work with a client who is constantly behind his competitors for his major keyword because they are buying links, these sites have been reported multiple times and yet have dominated the SERPS for years.
You only have to go over to seroundtable.com to see a great example of how those in the SEO community are utilising paid links (text links in the sidebar at the bottom left). Here we have an SEO resource and SEO services providers openly endorsinig paid links.
Any clarity on the paid links issue should come from Google because at the minute they seem to be all words and no action.
And it took reading this far for me to find someone who speaks the truth. All these people are saying "it's unethical or wrong to do" yet tons of sites do it and rank very well for it. I wonder if people mean to say "it's unethical as long as it's not me doing it". I don't believe for a second that all the people bashing it don't turn right around and do it.
This is business. I could really give two shits what some engineer at Google likes or doesn't like. Neither he nor Google is going to write a check for my mortgage, my food bill or my kids college savings. Google doesn't tell me how to run my business.
What needs to happen is people need to start focusing on different forms of procuring business so you can have the freedom of telling Google to scew themselves. I mean lets face it. That's what this WHOLE conversation boils down to. "Is Google gonna get mad at me?" People, Google does not own you or your business. Wake up and start making Google what it should be, part of the mix, not the whole kit and kaboodle. Remember that they need you far worse than you need them. I'd really like to see what would happen if webmasters and seo's started telling Google how things are gonna be instead of the other way around. Pipe dreams I know.
We didn't start getting decent rankings until we started buying them. And I have yet be penalized or seen one of my competitors (who ALL do it) get penalized either. The fact of the matter is, no matter how much G-Money brags about the size of their algo, they simply can't tell if a link is paid for or not, if it's done correctly. And NEVER will be able to. Period.
Couldn't have said it better myself. Big thumbs-up!
Haha nicely put. I completely agree with your point about building diversity into your 'supply chain'. If you're not taking a diversified approach, then you're carrying massive risk.
Totally agree, the industry I was in last was 99% bought links and all the big brands ranking in the top 5 would never have anything to worry about because if Google kicked them out of the index the results Google would be showing would be hurt. So it is a totally unlevel playing field where every once in a while Google flexes its muscles and punishes some mid-tier group of web properties (just like it did to directories).
Plus as I said previously, Google sellings position anyways through adwords....so they are total hypocrites.
Stick it to da man!
Too true! And seeing this evidence in the landscape day on day makes you wonder when they will start to roll out more behavioural filters to enable the capture of these tactics that our competitors use in a seemingly shotgun way.
I have read a lot of opinion on the landscape about link profile and/or link graph and really do find it difficult to see Google applying the hammer to those that in my mind step wildly outside of their site's profile. Key to remember that one of Google's greatest assets against SEO's is the conjecture on the landscape and also dis-information. A pinch of salt with everything unless you have tried and seen results for yourself I think.
Damien
The inconsistency that Google displays with paid links (penalizing some, not others, penalizing some with only PageRank loss in the toolbar, others with the loss of ability to pass link juice, etc) is, I believe, part of their campaign to sow fear, uncertainty and doubt among link buyers or sellers.
It's true that you have no way to know with 100% surety whether a purchased link will pass value or not, but I'm fairly certain that's how Google wants it. If those selling links could determine which of their inventory flew under the radar vs. got caught, they'd have a much easier time.
That said, I do personally disagree with the method and style Google employs here. Our values at SEOmoz include transparency and generosity. For those reasons, if it were my job, I'd have clear indications and take the sacrifice of knowing that some of the most advanced operators would find ways to use that against me to game results. However, I think the vast majority of link buying and selling would go away if the Google toolbar included a "we know you're selling links" notification of some kind.
When I think of all the small businesses and new-to-SEO marketers who've purchased links that pass no value or invested in techniques that get them penalized with no obvious warnings from Google, it does upset me. I believe Google owes them better than that. But, it's their company and their rules, and since I've chosen to build a business in their ecosystem, it's little use complaining.
The only reason they care about paid links is because it takes money out of adwords and they are greedy. If someone wants to buy a link on my site and I review their site and see that it has value to my visitors and is of good quality then why should I not take a payment and post the link?
Great point. One of the top sites in our industry got busted for paid links and shady linking schemes and finally got zapped from Google's index. Then the new top site in Google had its links publicly outted and still remains #1. Just recently, that site which was zapped came back and is in the top 5 once again. It's hard to avoid the temptation of paid links when everyone ahead of you is doing it and kicking your butt.
We've just started a campaign in a very competitive medical field and so our first port of call was to give the new SEOMoz competitor link tool a workout during the trial period.
We have now worked our way through the entire list (over 800 links held by three major competitors) and from that have compiled our own list of over 150 paid directories where the competitors have all bought either standard or featured links.
We have spoken to the client about this situation and our stance was as follows:
- We don't want to go and buy these 150 links right now even if you can afford to buy them right now
- At the same time we're worried about how much link juice your competitors are gaining from these links due to the number of them (in reality we're sure 150 is just the tip of the iceburg)
- If you want to buy the links then we'll buy them at a slower rate, say 20 a month, in order to try and avoid potential penalties.
To be honest we don't really want to buy the links, everything we know tells us not to and focus our efforts elsewhere, but we feel that the client has the right to be offered the opportunity to go down the same road as their more successful competitors with the proviso that it is their call, and anything bad that happens as a result is on their head.
Do people feel this is sound advise? Or are we copping out of our responsibilities? Brutal honesty is appreciated.
This sounds very reasonable to me.
You're facing a problem that a lot of SEOs come up against in competitive fields. My personal choice and recommendation would be to take the lead with natural links that (as Rob said early this week) your competitors will never be able to have.
Let's say it costs 10 minutes per directory link, and an average of $50 / link. That's ~1500 minutes (25 hours) and $7,500. With that time and money, I'd guess you could build 3-4 pieces of really awesome viral content, launch them and hopefully get 50-100 links per piece (and possibly quite a bit more if they go really big). Even if your success rate was only 50%, I still like the odds on it.
All that said, if, looking through those directories, some appear to be legitimate, high quality, reputable and valuable (not just "paid link farms"), I'd probably advise you to get them, just as I do with links like the Yahoo! Directory or the BBB Online or local chambers of commerce, etc.
I was reading down through the comments and ready to add my own that said "Man aren't all of you tired of this issue? Really I feel like ground hog day whenever paid links come up." But then I read Rand's comment here and changed my mind.
Now I would like to say: Read Rand's comment above 2 or 3 times. Then do it. It actually works.
but how about if the links cost $1 each and get submitted by an overseas company so 500 links only cost $600 - just like that SEO company that was ranking well for a very competitive term using mostly these types of lower quality directory links...then the ROI seems worthwhile? Your not likely to build a very good viral campaign for $600.
If you are paying this rate for links, might it not be a bit risky? I'm not calling the overseas dodgy or anything, I'm just thinking there's no way to manage them and at $ apiece the likelihood is greater that they'll bring in links that might send up flags to Gooogle.
Hi Rand,
I have given this post a big thumbs-down.
You are well in your right to change your mind/view on ethical/unethical SEO tactics, and tha's fine. However, IMHO, I feel that what you now preach about in terms of link-buying is not completely right. There are many online businesses out there that are obtaining great value from link-buying, and everyone knows that.
We all listen to your wise advice and really value your expertise, but it is just too contradictory to have supported 'responsible' link buying previously, and actually brought experts on the subject to some of your SEO events (eg: advanced Pro training Video series sold on your site) and now all of a sudden just change your mind on this and make it public.
Most of my online marketing experience comes from working in the public sector and I have never had to buy any links, so I am not the best person to praise on link-buying technicques but from what I have learnt here and there, including SEOMoz, if link buying is carried out as means of complimenting an strategically aligned link-building campaign, it can bring a lot of value to a website.
Fair points Carralon. I was actually talking to some folks about this earlier and wrote:
I would say that I'd still be in favor of having talented, experienced link buyers/sellers speak at events (just as Pubcon, SMX and SES do) because there's a tremendous amount to be learned. I might not recommend a tactic, but that doesn't mean I don't want to learn all about it and hear how others have struggled or had success.
I'm also not saying "you should be ashamed of buying/selling links" or "I reject any SEO or any SEO campaign that uses them."If you've found ways to do it effectively and maintain a risk tolerance you're happy with, for goodness sake don't let me stop you. Just know that if you hired SEOmoz as your consulting firm or asked us in Q+A, we'd suggest other strategies.
actually Rand your missing a VERY important point here: 1) We no longer recommend paid links, link ads, link buying or selling to any of our active clients 2) We do this because we believe that the risk to reward ratio is too high and not because of ethical, moral or legal reasons 3) Just know that if you hired SEOmoz as your consulting firm or asked us in Q+A, we'd suggest other strategies. So how do you feel about us, your clients (collectively no doubt us PRO members are likely one of your biggest clients) being presented with the above, and then being faced with this: https://www.seomoz.org/dp/premium-discount-store I can see a few paid links, link ads there.... Personally I'd say its up to us, the clients to be wise, however if your going to make the above statements.....
*edit - Tom Critchlow's response is at the bottom, as i moved my post up here.... Sorry Tom :P
Rob - if you're not logged in to your SEOmoz account, you can't see those links there, so engine's aren't seeing those endorsements. Also - none of those companies pay us, nor do we take referrals or affiliate kickbacks; any savings we potentially get, we pass on to PRO members.
Rand - cheers for the response - I'd agree with you, but I felt that it had to be said.
Actually on monday (brain turned on) reading this again I still have issue with your statement:
So thats ok? Isnt that a bit "Oh paid links are bad..." and behind the curtain your saying to people its ok? Also, are you SURE there arent any Search Engine reps with pro accounts?
But your happy to in effect recomend them, and thus their tactics to pro users, your clients?
The reason I'm being pedantic like this is that we've know your stance on paid links for ages, then you come along with a "showmanship" statement like this blog post, knowing it'll stir up headlines and comments. All this whilst playing whiter than white - yet not backing those statements with actions..
*btw TLA arent the only ones I'd say were close to the line in the discount store.
So first off - TLA is no longer listed in the discount store (as I noted above). And second, as I mentioned, those links are not "paid" and we don't get a kickback from any of those services. We link out to people who offer discounts to our members, and only PRO members can see them. I can't see any relationship to this and link buying for the purposes of manipulating Google's SERPs - even if they were paid for by those companies, it would just be like normal "advertising" on the web (which nearly every site has).
1st: Yep I noticed that, however that's after people pointed it out.
2nd: I'm definately not saying those links are paid, apologies for any confusion on that part.
What I AM saying is that there is potential for confusion about SeoMoz's endorsement of said products "we've partnered with some of the top services in the SEO and SEM fields... we think you might find valuable in your SEO/M efforts", and as pro members were your clients, or aren't we? In which case do or don't you endorse paid links?
Not all site owners have the same risk tolerance, and not all link building methods are equally risky.
Link bait is low on the risk list and "rented links in footers" are high on the list. There are about 50 link building methods that I can think of that fall somewhere in the middle.
Most people cant even agree on what the real risk is. Loss of Money? Loss of Rankings? Loss of Indexing? Long Term Rankings? Loss of Soul?
Loss of Money - This is probably the most common and realistic risk. The best way to avoid this risk is to diversify. Sure a link here and a link there will loose value because a competitor narc'd on you, or Google's algos filtered it out, but thats what the other 50% of the links are for. Build new links on a regular basis from a wide range of sources and there will always be some links that work. Even Link bait has the potential to loose money. Most link bait programs cost thousands of dollars and are not always guaranteed to work. What about the lost opportunity cost of doing things the slow way? What If you could have made a million dolllars by ranking for a keyword 6 months sooner? These are real questions that real companies are asking. Slow and Super safe isnt always the lowest risk option.
Loss of Rankings/Trust - Yes this happens but usually only when something stupid is done like building a ton of links all at once on a brand new site, or placing all of your eggs in one basket by buying a couple links on sites that are easy for Google and your competitors to spot and devalue. Again Diversification and timing is the key.
Loss of Indexing - This one is rare and is usually reserved for the worst offenders, and its usually not just for links, its usually for duplicate content etc... This can be reversed by repenting your ways and begging Google for reinclusion.
Long Term Rankings - Sure, someday Google may completely figure out how to devalue every unnatural link, but people have been making this arguement for many years. In the mean time thousands upon thousands of site owners are reaping the benefits of unnatural link building. What will they do if the sky was to fall tomorrow? They will rebuild with the money they have earned over the years using some new optimization technique. However it is unlikely that a change like that will happen overnight. It is more likely that things will slowly change and the webmasters will have to adapt their techniques to compensate which may or may not involve link building.
Loss of Soul - Ill leave that to you and your God but my God doesnt have a problem with it ;)
Yes, there is Risk associated with building links, but it is possible to build links in a way that the risk is so low its hardly worth mentioning.
For example: A local dentist writes an article and submits it to a few article directories, and does that on a monthly basis. I would love someone to show me an example of a small website like this that was penalized for building links in this fashion. I have seen it done for years and have yet to see a penalty.
A dentist from small town USA can spend a couple hundred dollars and can rank well for a local keyword using very simple and safe link building techniques (Albeit not Google Comliant). There is no need to risk spending thousands of dollars on link bait or to gamble money on high pagerank rented links.
Too many times the baby is thrown out with the bath water when discussing artificial link building. There are middle grounds, not everything is black and white.
In reference to your note regarding duplicate content....
https://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/09/16/google-busts-the-duplicate-content-myth
Wezley,
The duplicate content being referred to in that article is related to canonical URL's having the same content etc.. etc...
Or for having different language versions of the same content.That is not what I am referring too. I am talking about the loss of trust associated with domains that are "Copying content from other domains".
Its a common tactic for spammers to use automated programs to rewrite content found on other sites, or to use data from rss feeds or from local directory listings etc.. etc.. Splogs are an example, Million page directories are another.
If a large portion of your website is content that is ripped from other sites, you will in fact have a hard time gaining trust and rankings in Google.
At times, sites are also penalized and/or completely deindexed from Google at for using these tactics, and rightly so.
agreed. just didn't want anyone misunderstanding and freaking out about their site or blog.
Rand, what I don't understand is ...
- First you recommend not buying links. I guess you believe search engines really do hunt them in a big way. And then, in the comments, you recommend people instead use what I would call one of the most obvious types of link buying models - paying for viral stuff with the purpose of link baiting. If you really think the engines will and can (which I don't) hunt down all link buying why do you recomment tachtics that are essentially just "cloaked link buying"? :)
The point is: If search engines want to fight the "manipulation of links with money" how on earth can you believe they will just focus on a few types of paid links?
Wouldn't it be an even safer long term strategy NOT to pay for any kind of activities that would drive links to your site that would not naturally be there unless you paid for the link bait?
Ah yes, I know - that strategy would off course not actually give most websites any visibility :)
After taking a step back and reading this comment, I was reminded why I had such a problem with the mixed-messages being relayed on this site.
While I appreciate you taking the time to put this post together, which clarifies your stance on the topic; what about the client or potential client who never reads this particular post?
There are a few places on SEOmoz where, after reading, one might think SEOmoz actually recommends buying links. One such place is here: https://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors#link-building. I think there were few other places people noted earlier in the comments too.
Just something to think about.
Here is a very plausible scenario:
Client A and B are competitors.
Client A loves the SEOmoz blog and reads it daily.
Client B isn't much for blogs, but prints out the SEOmoz guides whenever they are released.
Client A reads your blog posts recommending turning in your competitors, and that buying links is bad.
Client B however reads your guide stating buying links is a effective SEO technique, and follows the implied advice.
Client A reports Client B and gets Client B banned for following the guide.
They both were following your advice.
Can you see the problem here?
Mikkel - it's seemed extremely clear to me that the engines' formula has been:
money = links | not OK
money = content + product + marketing = links | OK
It may seem to be a thin distinction, but it's certainly not hard to understand their intent. They want people spending money on producing content (which they can then organize and monetize) not on direct manipulation of results. The nice part is - buying links does nothing for your business other than rankings, while buying content has lots of secondary and tertiary benefits (and sometimes the rankings themselves are what's secondary).
Rand, sometimes you act a lot more naive than I really think you are :)
1) From an algorithmic point of view it just dosn't make any sense to totally discard paid links. So by the end of the day that is NOT what the engines will do. (also, read my post on paid links here: https://blog.demib.com/paid-links.html)
2) Valuing different links in different ways is, however, very logic.
3) The most difficult type of links to identify is the "old school" link buying - because only "intent" show the difference. "Intent" very often have no physycal signs.
4) One of the types of paid links that definately polute the indexes the most these days (and its increasing!) are stupid viral triggered linking - and they are SO much easier to identify than old school link buying. 99% af all link bait and viral link boosters I've seen are just as crappy as any link buying network or crap islands.
So, from a resource vs results points of view it will - in the long run, make a lot more sense for engines to hunt down all the other kinds of paid links that you now recommend - over the old school paid links, that are much more difficult to identify.
I am not saying you should not engage in viral link building and baits but I am just saying that I think its extremely naive to think that these sorts of paid links is less of a risk than other kinds of paid links. I think it may actually turn out in the long run to be the other way around.
When I see you in Norway next week I can explain in more details why I think viral link baits may be a much more risky strategy in the not so long term than old school link buying .. :)
Actually that does make some logical sense, as until AI is a lot more effective there is likely too much out there for Google's human team to look at it all and understand the intent, or even go thru all the spam reports.
However if they did decide to devalue linkbait et al that would be easier.
> However if they did decide to devalue linkbait et al that would be easier.
Or even worse ... What if they get to understand the difference between "possitive votes" and "negative votes" and start to put a negative judgement (not just passive) on links pointing to your link bait saying "what a stupid guy".
The fact is, that most link baits and viral stuff benifit very much from both the people linking to it because they disagree as they do from the ones that agree (just take a look at site such as MenAreBetterThanWomen.com). They all count as "votes of confidence" today. But how long? From an algorithmic link value calculation point of view that is just not right.
BTW - Aaron have a really good comment on link buying here - with a funny reference to this post :) https://www.seobook.com/link-buying-good-bad-ugly
I thought Matt spoke out against producing things like Wordpress themes and embedding designed by links??
Taking your stance to the nth degree, one could argue that paying a web developer for a site is indirect paid link buiding aswell.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't force it to drink. Paying for viral content still put's the decision to link or not into someone else's hand.
Link building is hard, so there will always be a need for paid text links (whether they are worthwhile or not!). I have clients that I link build for, and they are always asking about whether they should make use of paid link services instead of my natural link building methods, and given the success I've had recently :( it's understandable. I am trying to keep them on the straight and narrow, but people can be very impatient!Paul
There's also another factor to take into account with the debate on Paid Links, and that is the current economic climate.
See when the economy is healthy, and clients/companies are getting healthy revenue, or at least have healthy balances, the pressure put on marketing is less severe and long term tactics like Rand advocates are welcomed.
However in this climate? Results are demanded, and quickly. Which in my opinion definately puts the onus on to taking shortcuts in order to produce results (whether in-house or agency).
Obviously Google would prefer us to take their paid links (ahem I mean AdWords) route, however if a company has 6 months balance before bust time, who would blame them for going and buying links?
*note I dont think most would go "true" blackhat - however if you know that 6 optimized links will push you to the first position, and that will get 75% of CTR for that SERP......
Thoughts?
From an Agency side, I see how seductive Paid Links are
Clients want to know what an Agency will do to push them up the rankings. Agencies want to make money.
Paid links are a nice line items that bring in the same money to the agency as a viral campaign, but the agency can cream a lot more off the top as they dont need designers, developers etc to implement
Agency clients will mostly be big enough that Google wont punish them, and the site will naturally earn other links anyway so it looks like the agency is doing its job.
For Agencies, I think that paid links are easy and profitable revenue.
I agree - ethical link building is hard, tedious work which requires a lot of time and resource, so I totally see why some agencies take the easy option and just buy links.
(should probably put here that at whole9yards we don't, apart from Yahoo! Directory etc!)
I have a job in this crappy economy because my company values organic links instead of paid links!
In what way are we saying buying links is dangerous here.
I'll admit to having bought links and (maybe I've been lucky) I've not be penalised in anyway.
My thinking has always been that penalties can't be applied to linkbuilding as I could build bad links into my competitors site in order to penalise him (follow my drift). So my thinking is thatthe furthest the engineswill go is to ignore a link if it looks dodgy.
Maybe this is flawed logic on my part and the engines are using analysis of % dodgy links or patterns over time to access sustained campaigns, which I guess would generally only every be undertaken by the people the own the site (or people they employ).
Do people think paid links are dangerous or simply a waste of time?
I think you bring up a good point. I usually don't recommend any paid links at all to my clients, but at times have suggested Yahoo directory and few others that seem to be of higher quality. This is usually out of frustration of competitors hovering above my clients because they are purchasing links.
But is it really that risky? What if Google only ignores these links instead of penalizing? Then, it would be worth buying them for the short term and not being affected in the long term. To be clear, I'm not talking about buying ANY paid link. I'm talking about "higher quality" ones which sometimes even go through a human editing process.
Buyings links is just like doping in sports (especially cycling): everyone does it, and if you play under the rules, you won't be able to compete...although the risk is very high if you get caught.
"We do this because we believe that the risk to reward ratio is too high and not because of ethical, moral or legal reasons"
THAT is the quote of this post: i love it!
Has anyone considered TRAFFIC as opposed to RANKINGS? If the site gets a lot of visitors. And those visitors might be interested in my product/service. And those visitors might click the link to go to my site. And those visitors PURCHASE....then the link is worth the buy.
Traffic is what's important. Quality traffic. Traffic that leads to sales. REGARDLESS of where it came from or how they found you.
Besides...SE's CANNOT TELL a paid link from a non-paid link and as mentioned previously in the comments, they never will be able to tell (if done correctly). To hell with "nonethical." This is the competitive world of business and you do what it takes to succeed. Period.
Dana - I think if you're buying links for traffic, that's an entirely different discussion. Web advertising isn't a world I'm extremely savvy about, but I certainly endorse that practice when and where it makes sense.
On the "ethics" side, I hope I made it clear that I don't consider this an ethical issue and the debate here shouldn't be about that (Thomas Schmitz did a great YOUmoz post on that front if you're seeking to talk about ethics). I'm speaking purely practically and my belief is fundamentally different from the point you made. I think that if you take a large sample set of link sellers/buyers ID'd by humans and put them into a pattern-detection system designed by some of the smartest PhDs in the world (which Google has plenty of on staff), the results are going to catch a lot of paid links algorithmically. You're also facing a huge, incentivized population of webmasters and SEOs reporting spam manually to the engines - I don't think in the long run you can feel 100% safe about most paid links.
Since Google doesn't want anyone buying private links, what we need is a publicly run link program. We'll call it Links for Gray Hatters. The government will pay you $8,000 to write content that will obtain natural links.
Andrew@iGoMogul
The fact is that as long as there is a competitive advantage to be had from links, people are going to pay for them. And for as long as people are willing to pay for them, there will be other people building websites specifically for the purpose of selling links.
In my opinion, if I have been contracted to provide SEO services for a client, it is my duty to explain to them exactly what options are open to them, and give them enough information to decide for themselves the techniques that should be used. I can advise against using certain strategies, but to rule them out against the wishes of the client would be doing them a disservice.
If I was a builder, I wouldn't necessarily rule out using a flat roof on a house because it might leak. I would advise against it, and provide a case for not doing it, but ultimately, the final decision would be with the client.
I don't see this as an abdication of responsibility, more a case of managing risk.
Very well said.
Risk versus reward is the key.
You see my problem here, is that we promote small business sites, which
a) don't have "good content"
b) don't attract links with link bait
c) are simply promoting their business and sometimes selling
d) are only paying us a small amount as we do SEO as "an aside" not as our main business - thus we don't have an SEO budget to go buy stuff
e) may not have resources, top lists etc which are relevant
Which means we end up having very few options for creating links apart from directories which aren't always that great. On the other side, a mate of mine brought some links which are really poor quality and has probably damaged his site, so what must one do?
Have you considered that maybe part of your job (if not most of it) is to help your clients
a) Build "good content"
b) Attract links with linkbait
c) Move away from the "selling" mentality
d) Understand the value you bring to the bottom line
e) Develop their resources
IMHO, SEO is about education, not link building or website development.
This may have been said already as I have not had time to review all of the comments.
I work with large industrial manufacturing companies many of which want to be listed in popular directories like Thomasnet and Global Spec, while the free listing is good the paid provides a link to your website and more visiblity. The amount of traffic is strong from these sources and I feel link juice is certainly passed otherwise as a consulting firm we provide link research, competitive link research and we explain the pros and cons of both trading links and purchasing them. In 4 years only one company has decided to buy links and there has been little or no negative effect that we have seen. Even with that knowledge I always prefer to eat the cake Google provides and live by the Webmaster Guide lines. It also helps me sleep better knowing that most (all but the one) of the companies we worth are only using white hat SEO because I know one day that other site that purchase links may get dings, black listed or penalized and instead of blaming Google or themselves they will blame me.
In the end good content will bring you quality links.
I fail to see how paid links are any different than any other paid advertising on another site unless, of course, the penalty is derived from the fact that Google isn't getting a piece of that payment.
Because of the difference of intent.
Normal advertising you are intended to know is advertising. Buying links you intend for them to be hidden.
This specifically gets a bad rep because part of it is advertising that you are not meant to know is advertising, thus raising the ethical part of the dilemma
The other part sis paid links screw with Googles goals of bringing the best quality sites to its users. Thus its a fairly mechanical decision to weed these out where practicable
"Buying links you intend for them to be hidden." - But that is only because Google wants more money to do into adwords and not into other forms of advertising. Adwords also skews the search results it is just that Google gets the profit from doing it.
I've asked before and I'll ask again. How can you, G-Money or anyone else know my intent on anything?
They dont have to know, they dont have to prove.
They just have to have enough of a suspicion to kick you out of THEIR index
When you are fortunate enough to work at an agency which is sufficiently staffed with masterlinkbaiters, I feel that taking the paid link approach is short term/low ROI focused.
Explaining what differentiates naturally earned- quality links from link farm type fodder to the misinformed masses of potential clients who are basing their SEO budget on spam proposals from unscrupulous SEOs is way beyond my pay scale/patience.
I'm betting some SEO pretender snags this project.. does absolutely nothing except change maybe a title tag or two, cashes a few massive $75 checks and vanishes leaving a disgruntled client behind who is now convinced that SEO is the medium of the modern scam artist. ...sigh
I feel like I have to state the obvious here. Money can be just an incentive for someone to do something.
There's probably a way to use money as an incentive for a webmaster to give you a natural link.
You know that natural link that you were going to ask from XYZCommunity.com webmaster? You may get this link. But to close the deal, you're gonna give the webmaster a little cash incentive.
So, have you bought the link in this case or did you get it according to Google's guidelines? Can Google tell the difference?
The line here is just too blurred for Google.
I agree with your comments in this post. Link buying does have its place, it can be a highly effective technique but carries a level of risk that is usually considered unacceptable by clients.
It is far better (in most cases) to spend the money on content creation and site development rather than to directly purchase links.
You mentioned "risk that is usually considered unacceptable by clients." While I don't necessarily agree with this statement (some of my clients are less risk averse), I do agree that the consideration is the client's to own.
I feel it is my job to educate my clients about the risk/reward tradeoff for link buying, and then to put the ball in the clients court. If they want to buy links, that is their call, if they don't, again their call. Either way, I have performed my duty and given the client all the information they need to make an informed decision.
But we can't play dumb to what the clients say. If they say to you "be as risky as you want, do whatever I don't care", it's unlikely that you'd still use these techniques that could risk the future of your clients website (in SERP terms).
If you're seen to be the professional who has purchased the link, even though the client said "yeah, that's fine", and the site gets taken off the SERP because of it, I'm 100% sure that they'd come back to you and complain, even though it was their decision, because you know better than them.
Which is why I don't even consider buying links as an option. You're right, in that it IS the clients responsibility, but you're also right when you say that if penalized, the client will look at you like it was your fault.
Just not worth the risk IMO.
I believe the problem with paid links is a bit more complicated. It has more to do with the whole issue of 'intent' in aquiring links.
For Google, any link that has been aquired (paid or free) for the purpose of gaming the SERPs is a bad link. It doesn't matter HOW you got it. It matters WHY you got it. Google's algorithm is based on natural links, so any unnatural links (unnatural in the sense of being put for the purpose of gaming Google's search algorithm) are viewed as being harmful.
Of course, most paid links obviously have been aquired by someone to help with some search engine rankings. That is why Google states that buying links is a no-no. But paid links is not the only thing Google frowns upon. Do you think that Google would like to count not-paid links from, let's say, link farms? Or any links that have been put up only for the sake of boosting PageRank/supplying anchor text? Of course not.
Obviously Google has no 100% accurate method of checking the intent of the link-maker. It actually doesn't have an accurate method of checking if a link is paid or not. They do search for patterns and try to find manipulative link schemes by this, but that's all they can do.
I notice the general consensus here that buying links contains varying levels of risk. Mikkel in Denmark, notes below that he sees very little risk; he sees it as a valuable option. Rand in the US opines that the benefit to risk ratio is weighted against our clients; he won't recommend it.
At the SEO session at IMC Vancouver,Rebecca Kelley, 10e20 and I both weighed in against paid links (there are better, longer term, lower risk ways to spend your SEO budget). Jeff Nelson, Anduro Marketing and Shawn Moore, Think Profits, both working in Canada, noted that they see paid links working, "like gangbusters".
As I travel and hear this argument played out frequently at search conferences around the world, I think I see a pattern of varying levels of risk from country to country and industry to industry.
I would counsel that SEOs (whether inhouse or agency) take into account these factors when the conversation comes up:
Begin with a basic acknowledgement:
Google is a private company with an index in which the Client/Company wishes to be included as one of the top results for specific keywords. Google has a TOS which companies who wish to be included in the index are expected to follow. Link buying is forbidden by that TOS.
Hence:
I predict that in most instances in most industries in the US, link buying won't be the highest and best use of funds. In other countries however, that balance may be different.
What patterns are you seeing?
Well I believe that it should not be done and I do not tell my clients to do that or do that for them.It goes the same for text-link-ads and different, or most directories. I say most, because the big ones, like the yahoo, are not so unwanted by google, as I recall from somwehere...
Hi Rand,
Thanks for putting together this post and responding to many of the comments. This post was necessary indeed! As you can see from above, I'm not the only one who, in the past, felt you were encouraging buying links.
I feel you have explained your stance well, and I agree with your overall take on this. Google is probably the only one who can truly clear it up further.
Regarding ethics: I too don't believe buying links is unethical, however if your business cannot survive without Google's backing then DON'T DO IT. Google has every right to promote you in their search results just like you have the right to promote someone on your website or not. It's just unfortunate they are inconsistent, and are harder on the little guy.
Advertising is advertising. If you want to advertise your business on another site you have every right to do it without fear of doing something unethical. We pay for advertising every day in television, posters, flyers, newspapers, pamphlets, magazine, radio, shirts, billboards, etc. Why should paying for visibility on the Internet be considered unethical? Because one company says if you do it like this we wont list you on our website?
I don't think so!
Even so, you'll probably want to staying away from link buying if the only thing you're worried about being listed in those websites.
Like someone else commented above - I think we sometimes forget Google is just part of the Internet and not the Internet itself. We all should worry about pleasing Google becaue they can deliver us a tremendous amount of business, however we should also be focusing on making sure we also get business elsewhere.
Thank you for updating this post from the 2007 version. I know backlinks may not be my biggest problem, but SEOMOZ sure pointed it out to me as something I need to work on. I am new to SEOMOZ, joined about 2 weeks ago. I have been using the backlink research tools about 2 hours a day for the last 10 days or so and compiled a good list of sites to check out for backlinks. I am trying to improve my rankings for Kansas City Real Estate and several of the suburbs.
Here is my problem: It seems nearly 85% my competitors backlinks fall into one of these categories.
So, I don't want to participate in paid links. My competitors do, or did. They are not getting penalized as far as I can tell, since I am hovering around the 45-55 rank. What is the white hat way to catch up to the sites with 3600 links from 400 unique domains?
Second question: What should I do when I run across a sites or companies that are trying to sell the $75 for 40 sites, $199 for 99 sites, or $295 for 350 sites or the local SEO sales guy who says they have 2,000 separate sites which they sell links on for $495 per month? Ignore them or what is the 'right' thing to do. Just keep walking and act like I don't see anything?
I want to compete and win, but it feels like some of the other folks are taking performance enhancing drugs. I want to compete 'naturally'.
Thank you.
Avoid any of those sites/companies selling blocks of links and while it might be a tempation to buy links off the guy that might have a network of 2,000 sites is that it's only a matter of time before they get caught and all those links will be worth nothing... you will have to keep paying the $495/month forever otherwise he will remove the links
Why not go down the content creation path and spend the $495 on employing a local journalism student to write a bunch of relevant to your area/history. You are both building fresh, useful and great content and helping support your community.
Other point is reach out to a local/regional business blog or newspaper and offer to become a guest article writer that way you might not even have to buy links and it will help your brand as a really smart and connected realtor that will reach more people than you could of previously.
Try Kansas City or Wichita Eagle
Here's my thing. Paid links are expensive.
Say you pay $20/month for a link.
That's $240/year for one link!
now you aren't going to drop that link are you?
no, you can't, the longevity of the links matter, so now it is theoretically worth more to you.
what happens when that page drops in page streght because the webmaster churns his sites. Do you get a break on the price? most of the time not, and you are left with the same problem of whether you want a long term link or not.
if you have 10 of those links that is $2400 a year for what?
i can hire a full time link builder for 4-7 months and those links are permanent.
shoot that guy can make a 10 pr4 pages himself
or like Rand suggested $2400 can make a good linkbait
So i don't have a problem with link buying, I recommend all of my competitors do it.
Over the years, I have seen companies involved in link buying but they always do that intelligently or anyhow manage to do that tactfully. Many of my old clients had asked me to jump into the pool of links but I always encouraged them by saying not to do that as it is unethical and the amount of risk involved in it is very high.
Honestly speaking I can still see my competitor websites doing well (doing really well for years) in search engine rankings although being involved in link buying tactics.
Now the big question is: Does those websites (who are buying links and still ranking well for years) have something in them due to which they are getting more weightage and their unfair means are getting negligible?
My view is that, long term, paid links get reported, algorithmically filtered and no longer provide added value to a site's rankings. In the short term (6-12 months or even longer in some cases), they may still be helping, but if you can spend that same time, energy and money building something that will last in perpetuity AND doesn't carry any risks of banning/penalization, that always seems the wiser way to go IMO.
Well my last company did $19 million dollars revenue through the search engines last year and they buy tons of links....so the 6-12 months or longer could mean many millions to some companies.
Okay, the glass is half full.
On the other hand, if that same company built links "naturally", they wouldn't need to risk losing subsequent years of multi-million dollar revenue.
You can get some pretty sweet PR/marketing for that kind of money.
Rand, Lets be serious a minute. I understand what you are saying but Google created this monster and now they are trying to clean up their mess by banning and penalizing small webmasters. I say if they really want to make a point, get off of this 2 tiered justice system that they are on and let everyone suffer the same penalties and consequences.
Wow, I sound more and more like Michael Gray each day. I must be reading his blog to much :)
Using a link broker is a pretty obvious and direct way to buy links - high-risk since many of these services leave traces.
Read between the lines, folks. You don't have to "buy links" to buy links.
I run an ethical SEO company in the UK and this is a major issue I come up against daily.
We pride ourselves in running ethical and transparent SEO campaigns but we come up against other agencies or client competitors who buy links and gain great rankings or guarantee client position
I know Matt Cutts mentioned this month that Google are beginning to devalue footer links in attempt to reduce link buying - but (as seo wizz has already said) until sites are swiftly, regularly and publicly penalised for link buying, it will be difficult to irradiate.
Ok - off my soap box now ;0)
I take this phrase from the Rand post: "large companies and popular websites are far less likely to receive harsh penalties or bans in the same way smaller orgs might".
It is the reason why I try 99% of the times to not even think about paid links.
1st, because my clients are Professionals, little eCommerce, Little to Medium size firms and orgs, and usually don't have the budget to invest in a Paid Links Campaign
2nd, because their size the risk to be penalized is higher, as Rand confirms (even if it sound somehow a "classist" way of operate by the Search Engines; why to penalize more the smallest than the biggest?)
As Rand says - and also because I've to deal to lesser budgets I would love to work with - I always try to convince my clients in develop along the time we collaborate trying others tactics, as link baiting, optimize their News Section or even Blog Niche Marketing, apart the classical SEO tecniques.
ok I agree for seo purposes you should not be buying text ads ...
But what about web marketing purposes. I want to buy links on sites that are releventant to my site and I want the traffic they can bring. Does that mean cause I want to to do advertising on the web I should have to be technical enougth to know if they do no follow or not. Is the only legit way google wants us to really buy links is through google adwords?
Of course it is! :)
I'm kind of new to this ad have the following question. If you're say a wedding supplier and are looking to get listed on some of the many online weddings directories out there, most of which charge for an ad with a link, would this come under the banner of paid links and therefore be damaging form an SEO point of view? Nearly all wedding directories generate a substantial part of their revenue from these types of ads. Obviously the ad itself will generate traffic but I'm wondering whether the search engines will see these as paid links which will be penalised?
How to minimize the risks for paid links ?
I'm going to minimize Rand's risk and answer this one :) This is just my opinion and not the official stance of SEOmoz. Past performance does not indicate future results. Blah blah, etc.
IMO, it's all about patterns, especially when you're talking about the algorithm (and not a manual review). If you pay one relevant site to give you one link with custom anchor text, no one will ever know unless that site owner personally calls Matt Cutts and tells him. There is simply no way a computer could ever tell one hand-selected link was paid, unless it's clearly called out as such.
So, the short answer is: avoid those patterns. Don't obtain hundreds of links all at once. Don't obtain links with the exact same anchor text. Don't obtain links on irrelevant sites. Don't obtain links from sites who have a history and pattern of selling links. Don't rely solely on paid links without also focusing on natural link-building.
great answer dr. pete ! no politics / straight foward
people are getting paranoid with all the buzz around this topic
thanks !
I'd give exactly Dr. Pete's answer (and probably include something about how machine learning can be applied to this issue) and I will say that, if asked directly, we (anyone at SEOmoz) shouldn't be afraid to answer the question. There are "safer" and "less safe" ways of buying links. We think other tactics are better ROI in the long run, but that doesn't mean we're not going to give our honest assessments on important topics.
I understand your position Rand and as an average SEO that consums your posts daily i feel in your statement that i should completely abandon paid links. This post makes me wounder: Why would i continue to buy links if SEOMOZ tells me that they don't recommand this practice anymore ?
As i respect very much this site, IMH0 I don't think SEOMOZ should position itself behing the Google Guidelines as paid links still works well, especially if the risks are minimalized.
What i would do: In the YOUMOZ section, i would ask youmoz users to talk about their "bad result" or "good result" paid link stories. Then i would do a SEOMOZ blog post about this topic / whiteboard friday (i love them). No politics, no ethical / moral standpoint.
sorry for my bad english
Remi
THat's the spirit. I've been mr Squeaky clean for ten years in terms of link buying, never done it, never recommended it. However, I have been working in sectors like travel where I have seen blatant link buying by top 10 sites for top travel terms like "cheap holidays", "cheap flights" - so now I'm thinking.. they're ranking better than me, they're taking traffic and business because of it... what's a guy to do when the client wants results NOW!
I am therefore adopting the safe buys like Yahoo Directory, as well as relevant sites with relevant ads, minus the tracking code so the links are direct.
I hate myself for dipping my toe in the swamp of naughty link buying, but I don't have clients with huge budgets who can afford to invest in great content to attract the links entirely naturally.
Hey Rand,
Interesting post and a topic area that I am sure will be the focus of a lot of discussion on forums and conferences for many months to come.
Others seem to suggest that improving the accessiability for a site and developing out content initiatives are the areas that focus should be assigned to if not on purchasing links.
Your third bullet point:
"Our stance has also changed because we feel that paid links no longer offer long-term, high yield value for SEO campaigns, and that other methodologies that require similar effort and finances are almost always more accretive and less risky".
Do you advocate other types of activities from those that have already been discussed in the comments or am I missing a trick? Would you care to elaborate on what other activities you feel can yield link growth on a par to compete with those competitors that do not shy away from link purchasing and have determined otherwise on the risk reward ratio that purchasing links to be still a viable activity?
Thanks!
Damien
I have one major issue - we don't recommend purchasing (obvious) links, however - we also do competitor analysis, the competitors buy links they get more traffic / better rankings, link building is more than just hard work - it is expensive and frustrating.
It is also a vicious circle, no one links to you naturally if they haven't found you, they can't find you without a few links etc.. and so you need to somehow "push start" your SEO in this way, to get links and Google recognition - easiest way buy some links (or buy the traffic from Google)...
We struggle recommending to clients not to buy / sell some links.
I agree, I am a new seo and all of the competitors in the top rankings either; buy links, use paid directories, articles, bogus blogs with news aggregators and many other methods. I am late to the game and my business could go the way of the buggy whip by building a couple of links per week. One has to do what they have to do. By the way, I have way more content, page views and site age, yet am ranked considerably lower.
I will do all I can to keep developing excellent content, but now that it is an inbound marketing world and the old advertising does not work, forget ppc as big billion dollar companies buy up everything, even when not 100% relevant. I must at least catch up and then we can go toe to toe white hat like.
I own a network of websites about Panama, called The Panama Network. We have over 200 niche sites about virtually every topic that people would be interested in with regards to Panama.
We're building our advertising sales strategy now and have been considering a separate cost for including links in "advertorials" (articles written to advertise something), text links, selling press releases with or without links for a different price, etc.
It seems ludicrous to me that my sites or those of my advertising clients should be penalized for buying advertising that either is simply good information about them or their business with a phone number or includes a link to their website as an upsell. Perhaps in the past, we could've done no-follows or something to mitigate the risk, but now?
There's some money in the advertising that we're already selling, but links and related SEO services are another, important part of our business. We should forego this income because we rely on SEO traffic to the sites and Google would take a bad view of this?
Great post Rand..... very controversial topic ... that's why so many responses :) I was trying to read through the thread, but it's way too long..
What I am still wondering IF there are REAL ways for Google to detect the sites that bought links. How can they really prove it? If it was that easy, I would go and buy lots of links for my competitors and then Google would penalize THEM, leaving me in a nice situation after eliminating my competition.
Anyways, I do think it's risky to buy the links and do not buy links for my clients, but it's so unfair when I see other sites buying links and ranking high.... *sigh*
How about Google selling paid links themselves? If they don't want paid links because it is manipulative to the SERP's but then they go ahead and sell sponsored links that show up above organic results for X amount of dollars are they not doing the exact same thing?
This is just a reminder for me to read this article later. But I'm sure it will be great. :)
Here is the part of the "SEOs' argument" that makes me chuckle. People assume that the search engines are "deeply concerned" about accurately counting unpaid links. Therefore, Google et. al. will count some paid links to avoid not counting similar non-paid links.
That seems risky to me.
It is equally as likely that search engines are willing to accept innocent link casualties. From their perspective, if an authoritative website benefits from questionable links, no matter how innocent they really are, shouldn't there be plenty of unquestionable links too?
Search engines might even count or not count suspicious links based on the nature of a website's overall inlink profile.
Don't depend on the search engines to accept some paid links as the cost of preserving all unpaid links. They may be willing to loose some natural links as the cost of excluding bad links.
Link bait is low on the risk list and "rented links in footers" are high on the list. The clear links to social networks.It is a highly effective link sharing in social networks.
It is too tempting - but sooner or later google will have an update and penalize you!
Why pay for something that you can get for free? There are much more effective ways of acquiring quality links than throwing money around.
not in all cases, especially for those websites are "too commerical" for people to be actually inclined to link to. Unfortunatley not every webmaster will see the benefit of posting quality, linkable content on their websites.
Link buying for some is the only way (not that I promote this fact!)
Search engines do no appreciate any methodology that undermines their ability to control the way results are displayed in the search engines.
Unfortunately this means that they need to suggest in whichever wave, shape or form the risks of employing strategies that, by and large fit this model.
It's good that you've clarified your position, and in so doing, also the position and relationship that you'd like to have with the search engines.
Speaking as one professional to another, I can't imagine why you'd recommend a strategy as you described because you should know more than anyone else the value that a paid link can bring to a campaign, and it's actually pretty hippocriticval when you look at how some of the advertising deals are structured on the biggest SM platforms (branded channels and CPM!), that some of them talk about NO PAID LINKS!
Still we all know that one of the big things with SEO and webmarketing is to say one thing and do completely the opposite.
So, all in all, well done Rand.
IA.
ps.The more I flipback to the various search engine guidelines, the more it's like looking at a sketch from a comedy show from 20 years ago - "did they really say that!"
We have seen many high ranking sites benefiting from paid links from link farms, but it must be hard for Google to determine true links and paid links, but commend Seomoz's new stance in this area congrats. LT
I'm trying to build up my links at the moment and tempting as it is to pay for links I'm going to stick to the straight and narrow path!
Still a contentious issue... some of the top dogs are still being well served buying links; I don't do it, or recommend it, but it does make my job harder :-)
hi
i am form egypt
its my first time to read about paid links, i am confused
should i buy or notif i will buy which one , how
i am owner of travel agency
which links will be good for my website ? , how to get them
M Yousef
Hi Rand,very informative article,as usual. But, I have few questions regarding paid links for You or anyone experienced in this topic.Do you find illegal if you buy content from someone and this person (usually blog owner)and put your link in that paid content? How risky is that? Especially if this blog owner is on market and earn money from creating&publishing this type of content.What if that person have whole network of blogs/sites and you buy content from person who place that content on their blogs? How risky is that? Is there any SEO benefit from that? You can say that you primarily buy content, not links.I've noticed that in last year many blog networks became worthless in eyes of search engines. Also, noticed that these links had indexed very fast, but influence on rankings are really minor. From one side indexing is very fast, on the other side links are practically worthless. I am talking about general blogs. Is solution here maybe to become more connected with your niche or anything else? I know that all what You present in this post is 100% right, but when I visit SEO forums and see numerous threads dedicated to buy&sell links I am wondering where is the real truth.
Great Ariticle! I have been looking into this option for a few of my clients for a SEO boost. After talking about the issue with my clients we are going to do the traditional method of building relationships and links locally and topically.
Thx for the post. It's a catch 22. There is a benefit but hard to evaluate the risk/ROI...
Great post! Have been debating this topic with colleagues, competitors and myself for more than 5 years.
It reminds me of liberal vs conservative, Democrat vs Republican, gay vs straight, etc: Most can see both sides but we all want to be right.
Ok, so IF google were to actually LOOK at the larger sites, and the BAD links were actually discredited would the websites STILL be a BIG SITE..
As of Late, It does not look like Google cares who the site owner is.... You got bad links they are going to NAIL YOU with the PANDA HAMMER..
Great post, a little old from when I read it but I assume not much has changed i.e. Google still doesnt like paid links. I do think you can grab the occassional link from a specilised website or blog that relates to your topic and pay a small fee. But any mass link exchanges or link ads seem like a no go.
Hi Rand and everyone else.
Reading this post as a new webmaster (using that term loosely), concerned about linking strategies. The "what to" or "what not to" and what works anyway.....
Then praying to the google gods, offering to kill a lamb for them every Sunrise BUT in reality does anyone really know the right answer.... is there in fact a correct answer?
The mighty Roman empire once held this mystery and power over the population....
All hail to Google or was that Ceaser.
Hmmm now what to do about the slaves (links).
Not making much sense am I...?
Do it.... it might work but then you might get "caught"
Its obvious that the ones on top have and are doing it but don't you do it.... you could get the "strap" (feeling like a scared school boy)
Ohh lets do the right thing and go viral but hey thats got the same intent... Strap again.
Lets do nothing and offer up a bigger sacrifice to the google gods.... maybe our lively hood, if that doesn't work... maybe our business.
Ohh but thats right they already own our business's.
How silly of me to forget that.
Off to the market to buy more lambs...
Bewildered Pete
What about all the small webmasteres who make a living selling links from their blogs and quality - albeit small sites? Would they be able to survive if they had to use nofollow and only sold traffic (what if they don't have enough traffic).
What Google is doing is irresponsible because if a link is sold and it's relevant and valuable and not just spam it should be perfectly fine. If they start hurting all those little guys and work at home moms who make a living off selling relevant links to companies then those poor guys will be even worse off with this current economic climate.
Google should stick to going after spammers and leave the legit online businesses alone.
If you have a widges business and buy a link from bluewidgets.com you should be ok. If you buy a link from a quality directory you should be fine. If you're buying 10,000 text links from irrelevant pages you should be punished. This is how it should be, not just because I say so, but because it makes sense and it's sustainable. Google needs to make it a level playing field to keep the game fair.
I find that there is a real pressure for companies and SEO developers, as the ranking report 2009 states around 42% of the overall ranking Algo is associated with links.
Link building is not the easiest task and so shotrcuts are being made (i.e. Paid links) and companies are taking them without really realising the consequences.
Rand: Another great post. I am really looking forward to your post about what you/SEOmoz would/wouldn't recommend about paid links. As someone that is new to the SEO field, I had thought (based on past content) that paid links were acceptable. So, this is a bit of news it seems. But, I do value your opinion and give it considerable weight.
In your follow-up post, I would appreciate if you will include more on te rationale in why you are now "not" recommending paid links - I am thinking about "Correlation and Causation" video you posted last week.
Also, what about finding someone that can offer a "Pro" type post to run together with your "Con" post about using paid links? Just an idea!
I just noticed you posted this at 1:38am; great post for that late my mind stops working around 11pm and by one I go into an auto-pilot mode which writing thought provoking posts isn't happening.
It would really be intersting to see how search engines respond to a surge of new links from various soruces. This might give us some real insight into the risk your taking with various paid links (directories, intext ads, blogroll ads etc.).
Hi Rand,
What about directories which effectively act as a "paid links". Examples are yahoo dir, or yell.com etc. Doesnt google endorse/encourage direcctory listings of this nature ?
They do, and it's why I specifically called out "most" in the sentence atop the post. As Tom recommended in an above comment, I'll try to put together a post labeling more specifically what we would/wouldn't endorse on the link building strategy front.
The money paid is for the "review process" and to "Maintain Your Listing Annually" The directory at hand "Yahoo Directory" Has editorial guidelines that adheres to what Google is looking for in quality and bovine scatology. Also in bold "Important note: Use of the Yahoo! Directory Submit program does not ensure that your submission will be accepted for inclusion in the Yahoo! Directory.
MC Explains
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKUlVquEImc
If I'm interpretting you correctly, you're saying no to paid links and any forms of paid link acquisition. But the question then is: what would you recommend allocating that part of the budget to? You allude to it but never say.
I can see this is a sticky area for you to address this morning and I appreciate this line from your post:
Choosing to manipulate that ecosystem in ways that violate the engines' rules or intent is not necessarily immoral or unethical but it is potentially damaging to your business (if you rely on search engine traffic)
There does seem to be a thin line between paying to opt in to Yahoo's directory and paying for links.
One good thing with the search engines discouraging paid links is that it makes it possible for the little guy to compete.
I appreciate your candid coverage of this issue.
Hi DataEntry Services,
I'd agree with you here, except, it appears Google rarely penalizes the Brand names, whereas the little guy will get penalized in a heart beat. So no matter how much great content you provide, if your brand established competitors are buying links without penalty, and creating great content, they'll beat you out every time.
So what is the difference between buying ads that link to your site and buying paid links?
If the ads are on relevant sites to yours is that the difference? If so, great for SEO too, because those sites are going to more authority surely? Just buy higher quality ads on more relevant sites, they're better value for money.
I'm in the situation of having inherited our SEO strategy from a company who managed in 18 months to bring us down below page 10 from pages 3/4/5 for most of our best terms. I suspect that this was because of their dual strategy of paid links and keyword stuffing our pages.
We're now back up to 3/4/5 mostly, after a simple site redesign and building a news feed, but I suspect some of these paid links are bringing us down, but also some are bringing us up. If only I could tell which was which.
thanks Rand for this article...great info and based on the SEOChat posting that may have helped create this article, solves the issue for me!
https://forums.seochat.com/link-popularity-43/textlinkbrokers-com-text-link-ads-com-271417.html?pp=15
and us? we dont buy links, and haven't now for almost 3 years...
;-)
Jim
Great post Rand.
I don't think paid links are going away anytime soon but I do think they have/are evolving. We all know that the SE's have devalued links in certain parts of the page (footer, sidebar, etc) so now the most valuable real estate to place a link is in the middle of content. Understanding that it seems that the futute of paid links are contextual placements or sponsored blog posts.
If the content in the story is unique and the website is linked to 1-2 times with differing anchor text, these links are very hard to police. Esspecially if the blogs writing the posts aren't part of a network of sites selling links and the content is on topic with the blogs focus.
I'm curious to find out what your feelings are on contextual blog advertising. Do you have the same stance as you do on paid links?
Is there actually any real proof that someone who got caught link buying or was reported suffered a "penalty" for the action or was it just assumed the paid links carried no value from that point on?
Bryan,
In almost every situation the penalty is applied to the site selling the link. Google simply shuts off the outbound link juice from flowing on the site to the link buyer.
There have been reported examples of sites that have been directly penalized for buying links, though the penalty tends to be more towards a loss of trust than an actual penalty.
If you are going to build links it should be done thoughtfully, not half hazerdly. It can be quite rewarding, and when done right carries very little risk.
I've never put "buy links" in my seo checklist.
Reason is so simple, you can buy links from him that means everyone else can buy as well. Greed is a human nature, once seller got benefits, he would not stop until Google takes him down.
So do you really want a link from a website which might be on "google blacklist" in the future? Think about the damage after 1 year or 5 years, you will make your choice wisely.
There is a definite difference between buying links purely to get a higher pagerank and displaying links on your site so you can earn money via reputable advertisers such as BuySellAds etc (though I'm not sure of what effect on SEO this has).
Buying a link on a website is, in my opinion, a bit of a black-hat technique. Links should be natural/organic, so the user is viewing useful information, rather than being bombarded with unimportant links that have been stuck there for no reason other than financial gain!
People may disagree with me here, but that's a fact of being online. As with the author of this article, I don't always disagree with paying money for your link to appear on a website, but in most cases I do.
Advertising on a site is fine and a completely different matter, because the ad-space is usually clear and marked out.
Personally I think it is a shame that even honest advertisers have to be leary of buying links... everytime something good comes to be a few bad apples seem to ruin it for all... (hey, where are the smilies?)
Thank you for this - it helps us clear our muddled thinking about link building. Seems to me that the underlying theme here is that good SEO is for the long haul and almost by definition paid links will eventually be found and as a minimum disallowed. which in the long run makes them a waste of time and money.
Yep, which is why if you are going to build links you should not put all of your eggs in one basket.
Build a variety of links from a variety of sources and do it spread out over time. Focus on relevancy and quality. If the keyword you are going after is easy a few months of article submissions or press release distributions should be all you need. The chance of getting penalized for such a small link building campaign is very small, in fact I have never seen it happen except on very large campaigns.
Google will inevitably discount some of them, but that does not matter if you are well diversified.
what is the rough cost per link for smaller websites/blogs? for instance on a fairly populated niche such as SEO and web design?
That depends on the kind of link you are purchasing. It would be free (minus the cost of the content) if you were to develop out some quality articles with a link to you as the source and ask the webmasters to post them for you. Webmasters love free quality content :)
Without commenting in favor or against the practice, doesn't it just irk you that the penalties for paid links are usually temporary / less harsh for big companies and well known sites?
They already have an advantage of having huge websites and being able to spend big on SEO/marketing/advertising. But when they get greedy and get busted they are treated favorably often just getting a slap on the wrist compared to the smaller guys...
I'm confused. I'm relatively new too SEO. So should a link building campaign include paid links? Yahoo is the one that keeps being mentioned and seems to be exempt from the scrutiny.
How would the search engines know if you're paying for links or not?
"How would the search engines know if you're paying for links or not?"
If SEOs knew all the ways that search engines find these things out, link buying wouldn't carry any risk. The truth is that if Google wants to know something, they will. There's a good chance that they have access to more valuable data than the rest of the world combined.
If SEOs knew all the ways that search engines find these things out, link buying wouldn't carry any risk. The truth is that if Google wants to know something, they will. There's a good chance that they have access to more valuable data than the rest of the world combined
I disagree with this. There's risk, but there are plenty of SEOs who know about enough risks that they buy links in a smart way that's not going to be detectable short of the webmaster phoning Google up and saying "I just sold a link."
One of my friends with a personal, low traffic blog somewhat related to the city where she lives was approached by someone about buying a link on her blog for "City name hotels." The person who emailed her never came right out and mentioned anything about buying the link, and she asked me because she didn't even understand what he was going for and didn't know how to respond. In the end she sold the link and makes a few bucks a month, this guy has a relevant link that looks natural and my friend who probably thinks Matt Cutts is a barber shop is happy enough with the fact that she makes more on that one link than she makes from AdSense all month.
The point is, Google's not going to ever be able to police that type of under the radar link buy. If you buy lots of links right next to "cheap viagra, online poker, online casino, big boobs" in the sidebar or footer of some site - yeah, they'll know. But if you're smart about it and build paid links in a way similar to how you build unpaid links the chances of getting caught are slim to none.
Add to this, for all the brilliant PhDs employed by Google, how many do you think are paid to surf sites looking for paid links? Seriously, how many 6 figure engineers do you think sit there and look at sites one by one going "this looks like a paid link"? The answer is very few if any. They hire freelance web quality people who are only hit by the obvious patterns. I know this from speaking to one who thought my dusty old Geocities site was a spam site because of all the ads Yahoo had placed around it. I explained to him that I didn't even control the ads, and he said it still looked like spam to him. That's like me looking at a MySpace profile and reporting the site as a spam site because of all the flashing, blinking crap. So now, the PhDs have to take reports from people who don't fully understand the system, and boil them down to the most egregious offenders so an algorithm can be created to filter them out without getting rid of sites with decent content, but perhaps a poor structure or layout. And those algorithms may catch the people just starting out who leave obvious footprints, but they'll never catch the people emailing somewhat ambiguous link requests to related sites that don't make more than $50/month from AdSense.
Better to create fear, uncertainty and doubt with a few public examples to scare people from trying in the first place. I've had better results focusing on linkbait and resources, but I focus on those things because they've given me better ROI - not because Google is psychic and all knowing.
moved to a better spot above :)
Hi Rob,
I think that's a bit harsh - using Rand's definition above of the kinds of link buying he disapproves of:
We see that having a premium discount store is perfectly fine (and especially since they're very editorial links). I'm sure plenty of people have tried to get links in there and failed because they weren't relevant enough for SEOmoz.
I think Rand's post still leaves plenty of room for various types of exchanging goods and services for links (that is how the world works after all) which is why I think some kind of clarification might be worthwhile but in my opinion it's a bit harsh to take his words literally like this.
Edit: Rob moved his comment! D'oh!
doh! sorry tom!
However if i were to point one out - text-link-ads.com thats gotta be a BIT obvious :P
It will be tough for consultants who's clients have the typical business site with mediocre content and non link worthy content to rank well. I see these situations often where clients restrict SEO's from creating great link bait (due to legal issues and worries about branding), are too lazy to improve their content and offer something unique, but still expect to rank #1 in Google. Paid links are the great equalizer if done under the radar.
I agree, going under the radar is the better way of buying links, for example avoiding sitewide links, as well as links within sidebars and footers.
In content links from sites with no real obvious "paid for" profile can really have a positive impact
Rand et al.,
I appreciate your perspective on paid links; especially your commitment to not passing judgment on those that do. The only point I disagree with is:
“On the 'ethics' side, I hope I made it clear that I don't consider this an ethical issue and the debate here shouldn't be about that...”
Personally, I do consider this an ethical issue. I think that there is a strong case for saying that it is; one that can be made from multiple ethical “lenses,” or philosophical persuasions. I know that many of you disagree with that assertion, and I respect your perspective because I know that it is important to you.
While I understand the importance of not “pointing fingers,” I believe it is a serious mistake to try and wall off this discussion from ethics. When we do, it becomes very tempting to take the easy path, and lose sight of what is most important.
I suppose what I'm saying is that living and working in the “gray,” while comfortable, can be dangerous. It is important to have a guiding sense of right and wrong to navigate dangerous terrain.
I do disagree with you here. What about it is unethical?
I actually have an outline for a YOUmoz post I've been sitting on for a while that explores SEO ethics in depth. I would love to hear more from all points of view first, as it will allow me to gain a better understanding of the perspectives on the subject.
Just to be clear; I don't think the risk is typically worth the reward, however I dont think it's unethical either. See my comment further down in this post..
I find it easier to take the "ethical" path now that buying paid links no longer seems to offer much of a ROI. If seemed fairly obvious that the folks at the paid link brokers were sowing the seeds of their own destruction when they began aggressively promoting their services in arenas that were well attended by search engine firm engineers.
Paid links are worth considering not for long term gain but for short term instant conversion to traffic.
Great blog. I really like this type of bolg, this is really helpful for me.
Great post Rand, but can I ask you what led you to change your mind on this?
Even back in the day when most people were saying "meh, go ahead and buy links, you can't get caught if you do it intelligently", I still didn't participate. Reason being is that if my competitors are as smart as I am (let's face it...for the most part, we all are of "above average intelligence" in this industry) then they could reasonably and intelligently determine whether a link was paid or not.
Then again, earlier this year I commissioned NASA to craft me a Space Grade tin foil hat. Any truth to the rumor that my Gmail account hacked into my laptop to secretly turn on my built in webcam and microphone?
If so, I want to take this opportunity to apolgize to Matt Cutts for what he might have seen/heard me do last night at 2am after I got home from the bar (and didn't meet a chick).
As being a professional SEO company in our country and for our national digital market, we are supporting this article and approach. Paid links are unprofessional and unethical.
We would like to hear how we catch the websites who use paid links so that we can report them to Google.
Thanks.
sexy website that. like what youve done with the colourpalette