In my eyes, there is no paid links debate - I simply don't buy links, for our own sites, or those of our clients. This post will lay out the basics of why we don't buy links, and is the first in a series on link building strategies.
To set the record straight up front - I am not telling you that you should not buy links. However, if you do, you should fully understand the risks that you are taking. Let's start with a look at Google's policies.
Google's PoliciesIt all starts in the Google Webmaster Guidelines with an article titled Link Schemes. This article states that
Examples of Link Schemes can include:These policies are further reinforced by various posts on Matt Cutt's blog. Here are some of the key ones: Popular Complaints and Misconceptions
- Links intended to manipulate PageRank
- Links to web spammers or bad neighborhoods on the web
- Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging ("Link to me and I'll link to you.")
- Buying or selling links that pass PageRank
There are many aspects to this that are not well explained. Here are a few examples:
1. There is a lot of confusion about how directories like the Yahoo! directory work, as is shown by this post on Jim Boykin's blog including the comments made on the post. The bottom line is that Google will accept links from directories that have a strong editorial policy.
Yahoo, for example, will take your $299 and does not guarantee you a listing at all, and even if you get a listing, it may not be placed where you asked, or with the description you asked for. The big issue here is that Google trusts Yahoo's editorial judgment. While Yahoo's editors do make mistakes and occasionally let some pretty crappy sites in their directory, they are in general pretty good.
There are other directories which Google respects. Google does not publish a list. However, I would assert that only about 20% of all directories meet Google's criteria. There are probably a small number of truly horizontal directories (that cover the whole web), and then a larger number of vertical industry specific directories that they would intend to respect.
To make matters more confusing, a number of SEOs have told me that buying links from 300 directories often works well for smaller businesses. This may in fact be the case.
What makes the whole thing more complex is that Google uses an "opt out" strategy as opposed to an "opt in" strategy. To repeat in understandable English, Google does not appear to deny directories the ability to pass PageRank by default, and then only enable this ability in directories that they have reviewed and approved by hand. As with all sites, directories naturally have the ability to pass PageRank until some algorithmic or manual review process causes the ability to pass PageRank is taken away from a site or directory.
However, you need to know that it is Google's intent that buying links from crappy directories (including any program that offers hundreds of directory links for a fee) will add no value.
2. People then want to argue that Pay Per Post schemes should have value. The argument goes that this is just like the Yahoo directory review, and the blogger would not write about a topic, even if they are paid, unless they believed in it. The problem is that this program grew up around the notion of passing link juice. And, Google is not going to be comfortable about the blogger's motives in writing about something they got paid to write about.
3. Another argument is that "Google is trying to control the web and they don't have the right to do that. Google is telling us not to buy links, and it's our web and not theirs." Here is the Google statement on buying links for advertising purposes:
Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such. This can be done in several ways, such as:
- Adding a rel="nofollow" attribute to the tag
- Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file
OK, so the NoFollow thing drives people nuts, and you really can't blame them for that. There is a valid reason for the frustration, because small web site owners who are not SEO experts don't even know what a NoFollow is. However, bear in mind that what Google does, unless buying and selling of links rises to truly abusive levels, is simply stop the link from passing PageRank.
Google openly acknowledges that sites have the right to buy and sell links. If you do it within their guidelines, great, and if you don't you may lose some or all of your Google search traffic when they discover your purchased links and disable them. But, in no event are they preventing you from buying or selling a link.
4. Google sells links through AdWords and AdSense. Why, yes they do. And your AdWords ad campaign passes no PageRank whatsoever to your site.
How Google Can Discover Paid Links
A while back I did a post called 15 Methods for Paid Link Detection. Here is a list of the methods I discussed in that post:
- Links Labeled as Advertisements
- Site Wides
- Links Are Sold By a Link Agency
- Selling Site Has Information on How to Buy a Text Link Ad
- Relevance of Your Link
- Relevance of Nearby Links
- Advertising Location Type
- Someone Reports Your Site for Buying Links
- Someone Reports Your Site for Some Other Reason
- Someone Reports the Site you Bought Links from for Selling Links
- Someone Reports the Site you Bought Links from for Some Other Reason
- Disgruntled Employee Leaves Your Company, and Reports Your Site
- Disgruntled Employee Leaves the Agency Your Used, and Reports Your Site
- Disgruntled Employee Leaves the Company of the Site You Bought Links from, and Reports Your Site
- Internal Human Review
There are two major methods I want to emphasize here. These are:
1. Your competitor can report you. It's the grim truth that your paid links can be reported by your competitor. There is a form built right into Google Webmaster Tools. Here is what it looks like:
This should be your biggest worry if you buy or sell links. Your competitor has every incentive to report you, and you have every incentive to report them. The form is completely anonymous, so there is no risk of exposure for outing a site.
While Matt Cutts does describe an unauthenticated way to report paid links, the most effective way is through using the form within Webmaster Tools. Google guarantees a review of all such submissions, usually within 48 hours.
2. Bloggers can call sites out. This has happened twice in recent memory. For example, when Forbes was recently found to be selling links, and before that the United Parcel Service, they were discovered by bloggers and called out. Of course, both of these programs were rapidly disable by Google.
Actions Google Can TakeAs we have already discussed, the basic action Google takes is to remove a links ability to pass PageRank. Google's objective is to do this to every paid link on the web. Their objective is not possible to achieve, of course, but they are doing everything they can to achieve it. Don't forget, your competitor can report you, so this is not just about their ability to detect the link algorithmically.
If this is the only punishment you receive, it's not so bad, really. However, it can get worse. Now Google has confirmed that they will take action to punish sites that buy or sell links. Over at Search Engine Land, Danny Sullivan covered this in detail in his post Official: Selling Paid Links Can Hurt Your PageRank Or Rankings On Google. Here is a snippet from that post:
So I pinged Google, and they confirmed that PageRank scores are being lowered for some sites that sell links.
In addition, Google said that some sites that are selling links may indeed end up being dropped from its search engine or have penalties attached to prevent them from ranking well.
The first visible step was to lower the PageRank of sites selling paid links. Since links are usually priced in relationship to their PageRank, this was an algorithmic way that Google could lower the value of selling links. So far, most sites that were subjected to lowered Page Rank who have also talked about their traffic after that occurred report that their traffic has not suffered as a result.
This particular move does seem to be an effort of lowering the market value of links on sites that sell links. However, don't get too cozy or comfortable that your traffic won't be at risk here. Once Google has a high degree of confidence that you are engaging in the practice of buying or selling links at an egregious level, they can and will take stronger action.
The PageRank lowering move was a broad algorithmic move. Google likely felt OK with it, because all it did was lower the value of links sold from a large number of sites. As a broad algorithmic move, there is always the chance of some degree of error (sites that get unfairly punished). However, since traffic was not impacted, how punished were they, really?
Your Real Target for LinksEnough philosophy on the risks of buying links. Let's talk about where you really want to get links from. You know what I mean: authoritative sites. Sites like these:
USA.gov Home Page
Generally speaking, you can't get links from sites like these unless they decide to give them to you because of your great content or tools. There are exceptions, of course, but those will all eventually be discovered and exposed by the blogosphere, or your competitors.
If there is a safe haven for buying links, it's on smaller lesser known sites, which, of course, have less value as a link. If you managed somehow to scam a link on the MIT site, someone is going to find and talk about it. Scamming such a link may be a great temporary win, but no way to build a long term business.
The question to ask here is why are sites like these going to link to you? Of course, it does need to be these exact sites. You need to find the authoritative sites related to your web site's topic matter. Then think long and hard about the answer to the question just asked. This is the beginning of where long term stable cash flow is born ...
SummaryThis topic was addressed a while back in an indirect fashion by Seth Godin in his post in which he told us to not bet against Building 43. You can think of it as an arms race if you want, and you can win for a while around the edges of Google's rules. You may even be able to win for years that way.
But the game is rigged against you. My advice is, if you care about Google traffic: Don't buy links.
Now for us who know who Eric is, there is no explanation needed, but for those of you who do not know him...
Eric Enge (the author of this post) is smart. Very, very smart.
I want to just put his bio out:
Eric Enge is the president of Stone Temple Consulting, an SEO consultancy outside of Boston. Eric is also co-founder of Moving Traffic Inc., the publisher of City Town Info and Custom Search Guide.
He also is an active writer for Seachenginewatch.
It is really great to see you here Eric!
But didn't I already cover paid links using Bloom County characters?
:)
Let's face it folks, in the world of SEO the mass buying of links is yesterday's old news. Unless you can acquire a link from a relevant authority site that doesn't obviously prostitute itself, it seems prudent not to go there.
From personal experience an experimental site dropped from PR4 to PR2 after a link buying experiment, which will definitely not be repeated again!
Have an awesome day, people!
Eric, I think you distilled pretty much all the discussion from the last few months on this topic down to one concise article. If I had to point someone to a single place to come up to speed on the topic, this would probably be the summary I'd suggest.
The only point I'd add as a search engine rep is that much/all of the article was about Google. Google gets a lot of attention because we're a leading search engine and we do a lot more communication (e.g. stopping by to comment on blogs, and blogging ourselves), but the reps from other search engines that I've talked to have similar stances.
Very informative post.
Good article Eric!
..."Generally speaking, you can't get links from sites like these unless they decide to give them to you because of your great content or tools."
Actually, even Uncle sells links. I poked around the USGov site and lo and behold, found a page selling links. $250 a year.
https://www.buyusa.gov/iraq/en/needpromotion.html
I guess our taxes aren't enough eh?
Great article Eric. I also will be referring clients to this post because many have the idea that if we are going to serve their needs fully, then we HAVE to buy links for them.
Hopefully this post will make them think twice about mandating this strategy.
Really interesting opinion piece and comments so far. Nice endorsement from MC of the big G (I love the modesty - "Google gets a lot of attention because we're a leading search engine" - gotta be careful here as I don't want to be branded a cuttlet :).
However, I can't help but think bookworm-seo is also right "buy links short term and get the editorial ones for the long term - rank continuously". I say this not from actual experience but it seems as though he is probably correct.
What are peoples thoughts on link exhanges that are not paid e.g. dp coop, linkvault? These link schemes seem to result in low or no relevance links that you might expect from a paid link scheme but do not seem to be treated (or penalised) in the same way even though they can be manipulated quite effectively.
A Cuttlet! Priceless! A thumbs up for that one mister!
I wish I could claim credit for that one but I only heard of this a day or two ago from nice and clever Richard Manley. I don't know where it originated.
The term "Cuttlet" has been tossed around for probably about two years.
*Sighs dreamily*
You had me at "I don't buy links."
Then I figured out that your name sounded familiar because I read you religiously at your other places. Rock on wicherbadself.
@MikeTighe - Awesome call.
Thanks ;)
Great post Eric. Link buying still has some uses but when people talk about it, I feel like they're living in the stone age. Things have moved way past link buying and with the money spent on links, it's much better to pay for good writing and get the natural links.
I still think Google does a piss poor job since a lot of our competitors stay at the top with the paid links but we eventually get on top of them with a consistent strategy of quality content development.
Very well summarized though. Short term thinking is paid links. But there is no legitimate business out there today that doesn't want to prosper over the long term.
Great post, very informative!
Ok, all you say is true, but what is the REAL difference between buying links and paying someone to get free ones? NONE, you paid for links!
Hi Eric,
Excellent post - well written and cited.
Of all the warning signs of paid link detection, I think link relevance is a topic which deserves particular mention in your list. Are there any insights into exactly just how relevant a link needs to be?What about link campaigns to get links from sites which have geographic authority. The site linking in is only half relevant to the target site's content where the goal is to rank for a keyword term plus geographic term. Do you think half-relevance crosses the line?
Hi Tirey TV,
Relevance is, of course, an issue, but I don't see how Google can actively penalize based on relevance. Basically, all they can do is weight the link less.
Most importantly, relevance needs to be measured in 2 dimensions: (1) the content on the page receiving the link, and: (2) the exact content that the user is looking for on Google (i.e. what search query did they enter).
So, ultimately, I don't think half relevance crosses the line - it's just the value of the link needs to be scored based on the what it is relevant to.
So an Austin Texas city site might link to a site about Austin restaurants. Half relevant, but still a useful link.
that makes sense - thanks!
The big fallacy in all of this is that Search Engines can potentially ban you for something going on outside of your site. I don't think they can do this and scale it.
For example: If I were to spend 10,000$ for sponsored posts on a competitor site... then report them, I could easily get them banned. Not that I would do this, but SEs penalizing sites for "buying" links without nofollows are allowing your site to be abused by competitors.
Why do links from spammy subdomains not affect the root domain? because of this same principle. If you have a user generated site that makes a subdomain for each user (WP MU), the root domain should not be affected.
penalizing the sites selling links seems to be a more effective method for google to crack down on this, but in any case, an algorythm that puts so much value on just "link juice" is not gonna last long. Google better have something else up their sleeve if they want to survive the next 5 years.
You got a very valid point there. Karma also applies in the virtual internet world, and if you are intent on reporting people you'd better make sure you're squeky clean yourself!
If it were possible to hug over the internet, I would be hugging you right now.
As SEO itself gets more and more restrictive, we're going to eventually have to deal with the reality that it may be easier to get other sites penalized than rank our own site...and the day that truly happens..it's going to be messy.
I personally don't report anyone, except for 100% carbon copy scrapes of content. No artistry there, so I don't feel the kinship I do towards others.
Purchasing links doesn't build any relationships anyway...
I was looking into it for some restaurants I'm helping to SEO, and I just got disgusted by all the crap out there, get creative and there are some way better solutions.
At the same time, if your in a highly competitive space where everyone else is doing it - do you have a choice?
i just report the hell out of the people doing it... it takes a while to get sites removed.. but ultimately it's worth it.
on one of the highly trafficked terms for a client a competitor had like 5 other clone/spinoff sites all with the same whois info etc.. all with the same end result (a common purchase page and the same 800 contact number) and one had a nifty little link section which featured ths sitemaps of all the clone sites and a bunch of spammy link trades.. (had a link to a local cleaners, dog grooming, things completely unrelated to their channel, etc..).. which ultimately contirubted to the overall downfall of the clone sites.
Where else do you report/how often?
Google, Yahoo! and MSN all have spam report forms..
The example i am referring to, under one keyphrase query 5 different website URLs showed up.. all for the same company all of them eventually ending up at the same contact url.
"all not providing <i>unique</i> content"
i waited 4 weeks before each request but sent the same basic request but with the different URLs, so it was real obvious it was one request yet filled out 5 different times with 5 different URLs from the same IP address.
It took about 3 months, but my client is under a yearly retainer and true SEO is long term anyways. So when the offending URLs were removed my client went from 9 to 2 (think supplemental results.... if u realized 9-5 doesn't = 2) on the query.. they were happy and I had a paper trail and screencaps showing before and afters which they were pleased about.
client: "You can actually get websites removed?"
me: "We got them removed for that query, but yes, one must just be persistent.... and righteous for the Google Gods to answer your prayers."
FYI.... so far i've seen URL filtering on a keyphrase level and on a URL level and have no empirical data to be able to diagnose which one happens at what time. my experience shows when Google finds it and does it they do it on a per-page basis in some cases and also full TLD.
For your restaurants.. i would buy small 140x60 animated gif ads on the local newspaper (food, nightlife and entertainment sections) and local television station, (or clear channel radio stations) websites, (or in this example below a skyskraper) make sure you can specifiy your alt text... your customer will also get the extra traffic from those people viewing articles and a click thru from a major domain like...
https://restaurants.dallasobserver.com/
(they have packages where u can buy an ad in the magazine and get the banner ad/link at a discount)
https://www.guidelive.com/portal/page?_pageid=33,97299&_dad=portal&_schema=portal
also doing reviews of your restaurants with a link back helps.. just make sure it's for the BIG newspaper and a network affiliate TV station.. not some blog or net radio station..
well.. unless it's a media powerhouse with an authoritative URL like Belo...
https://eats.beloblog.com/
Another HUGE thing if you have the budget.
Buy some Myspace ads.. target them to zipcode for each restaurant.. buy several ads in bulk and zip-code-target each one to maximize your ad spend.
You've gone through a great extent to make your point. I agree with what you have to say. For those thinking of buying links, Beware - Google is Aware. If Google punished sites such as Forbes, by stripping them off their PageRank as they once knew it for buying links and generating link farms.. you finish the thought.
I disagry, buing links vork fine for me
There's something to think about.
But why are people still selling and buying links if this doesn't work?
Buying links can be a fast way for getting good results, but so complicated and dangerous that most of times you're catched. The question is: can't you get that link in another way? Maybe you'd try.
Thanks for your information. Recently , I got a SEO project.The web owner has asked me to exchange links to get more page rank and promote the keywords. Spending much time to explain the new way of SEO but he seems not happy with it. I will forward him this articles and hope all mentioned information will make him understanding it.
I wonder how Google can find out a paid link from the relevancy of neighbouring link? Say for example I have a blog on tourism of a particular place, I will list hotel(s), shop(s), hospital(s), nearby places of interest etc. SO hospital is not linked with travel industry and if a shop selling "local natural viagra" is listed in the same page will it be of no help to the hotel(s) website which is genuine?
Thank you for the post Eric
It would aaaaalllllllll go away if Google were to eliminate PR as a publically viewable metric. One that's not even accurate at any given moment, not so incidentally.
As I understand it, the PR toolbar is offered for a means by which Joe Websurfer can know Google's interpretation of a webpage's importance.... the problem is that Joe Websurfer hasn't the foggiest idea what PageRank is; ergo, this rational doesn't withstand even superficial scrutiny.
Truly, I wish PR were something Google used internally, and only internally, given the abuses of the metric when this some-version-of-what-this-metric-was-at-some-point-in-the-past toolbar is used almost entirely as the basis of an economy that seeks to - by definition - manipulate Search in a manner that is contrary to the TOS/Guidelines of every engine that matters.
Google is (in my opinion) the only real pioneer of Search. That being said, it would be nice to see them take responsibility for the problem they have created. And, more importantly, actiely work towards resolving it in a way that most reasonable people would agree is advantageous to everyone doing their best to play by the rules.
Great Article.
Thanks Eric
Hi,
I am against both buying and selling links on sites different from directories. And here is the most important question - how to determine the "real" and quality directories. But I am sure this will be done at some point. The whole search criteria need to be changed in these terms and the content of the site and its relevancy should be considered instead. Also, I think that banner advertising is more effective when it comes to branding and the real effect from one advertising campaign at all!!
A.
I also heard that websites where outlinks regularly change are also put under radar as the ones selling links.
Can someone confirm this?Ok, that is just out of curiousity ;)
Ann - basically any identifiable pattern that lets Google or the other engines classify a site as a potential link seller is going to be used. I'm sure that a certain amount of shared link fluctuation (with other link sources) is one of the big indicators of paid linking, and thus going to be leveraged by the engines.
GREAT POST!
FINALLY!
i buy from Yahoo! Dir. and of course niche type sites that are actually print publication websites specific to the B2B .. mostly in terms of banner ads with a link. and 10 times out of ten these are either in a package or free with an ad for the magazine, and their e-mail newsletter.
Your avatar makes baby jesus cry..
Great information... This is getting better and better. We say in spanish: "Esto se puso caliente" (This is getting hot). And having Matt Cutts reading all this... man! He knows a lot more about black hat SEO than any body.
Great post no wonder it was promoted.
It really makes you take inventory and think.
Thanks for taking the time for such a thorough article.
Those article were really great and very informative., that was true if you want to be safe at Se's Don't 'buy links.,
HI Im very new at all this link building and so forth the read was interesting thanks
Honestly,
To me all posts on SEO, appear like rewriting the same issues over and over again in different formats.
They seem to refresh known ideas, in a new way sounding exciting at first, and leading us nowhere later..
Regards
How to report paid links?
I wonder whether recession has hit google so hard that it has resorted to selling links in such a flagrant breach of what they say.
I actually saw a sposored ad by Google selling links to increase the Page Rank. Have a look.
https://wyselabs.com/marketinglab/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=878&p=2072
It seems pretty hypocritical to pay ghost writers, as you do, https://jobs.problogger.net/view/4215, then to say you shouldn’t buy links. You are buying links when they post to blogs. Buying links is buying links through blogs, articles or whatever. It is going to be very difficult for any company like yours to have 200,000 links pointing to your site without the help of someone else. You can’t sit on your system building links all day and handle customers and handle SEO.
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