I like to buy links. In fact, I love to buy links. As powerful and relevant as possible. The more they are such, the more they will help search engine rankings. Search engine rankings help sales. I love to buy sales even more than I like to buy links. I love to scale this process too. I am a capitalist. Capitalist theory may have it’s downfalls, but overall it has served our country pretty well. I think a case could be made for just about any link on the web being purchased in one way or another. You can read my thoughts on not being a link communist here.
About two years ago, I formed an opinion on buying links that is contradictory to that of search engineers at Google. I obviously have a vested interest in doing so. The above is my disclaimer. I like to make money buying (and sometimes selling) links. Engineers make their employer money by keeping search results relevant. That is two perspectives. The third (4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th) perspective is the Visitor, Owner, Consumer, or Partner. They are what I truly try to justify my biased perspective off of because they are the most important. I think the FUD is really only doing detriment to them in the long run, and creating unwarranted confusion to those who have legitimate needs to purchasing links in various forms.
Maintaining perspective is the important part of the link buying debate. Staying informed, and being able to defend your case should the issue ever arise, and knowing that there are no hats, only goals in this business.
Article link buying
Perspective: SEO
1. Quantity – I write a press release which takes time to write or resources to have written. Hopefully it is worthwhile news. The anchor text linking back to the articles sometimes helps as a link. Submission services take money.
2. Quality – I spend a LOT of time writing a superior article to have it published and have links put in. I send it to someone, and they review it and publish on their site with relevant links. I value my time as money.
Perspective: Engineer
Anyone can publish a crappy article. Some are relevant and well written, but they will get aggregated to higher quality sites if they are high quality press releases that are truly citation worthy. These links probably should be severely dampened in terms of their quality score.
Perspective: Visitor, Owner, Consumer, Partner
It’s probably good to publish any relevant articles I have, but I’m concerned with the value of doing so, because it is difficult and time consuming to write good articles uniquely for a lot of different sites.
Directory link buying
Perspective: SEO
Yea, okay – the engineers are right on this one – it was only for the rankings. Yahoo directory and two or three others is probably as much as we want.
Perspective: Engineer
Muahahaha. We’ve eradicated 99% of directory link popularity since update Florida.
Perspective: Visitor, Owner, Consumer, Partner
I know a bunch of great directories we can get links. I have a list of awesome places we can submit!
Press Release link buying
Perspective: SEO
These aren’t going to help a whole lot, but every little bit helps. We might as well pay the extra money to get our link embedded in the release, as the anchor text could help a bit.
Perspective: Engineer
Any press release sites probably shouldn’t pass a lot of link weight because anyone can buy them.
Perspective: Visitor, Owner, Consumer, Partner
Will the links even count if we put them in a press release?
Partner link buying
Perspective: SEO
I’ll buy some links from their sites, and sell them some from mine in trade if the partner is a good fit through non-reciprocated (or some reciprocated) sites.
Perspective: Engineer
We know all your partners. Have you seen touchgraph? Our data is WAY better.
Perspective: Visitor, Owner, Consumer, Partner
Is this a link scheme that will get me banned? I’d ask someone at google, but all I ever get is canned responses.
Affiliate link buying
Perspective: SEO
I don’t really want to piss off the affiliates, but a few extra links where it doesn’t is kinda nice.
Perspective: Engineer
Not enough people have figured this out yet anyways to tell if 301’s are really working for affiliate urls.
Perspective: Visitor, Owner, Consumer, Partner
Our affiliate program is either really important, or hasn’t yet been started.
Paid link buying
Perspective: SEO
I’ll buy some links for my clients where it is relevant.
Perspective: Engineer
No comment. Send in your spam reports.
Perspective: Visitor, Owner, Consumer, Partner
Is this a link scheme that will get me banned? I’d ask someone at google, but all I ever get is canned responses.
Viral link buying
Perspective: SEO
Good content is expensive – we’d better make sure we can promote it effectively.
Perspective: Engineer
Please send in your linkbaiting reports.
Perspective: Visitor, Owner, Consumer, Partner
Is this a link scheme that will get me banned? I’d ask someone at google, but all I ever get is canned responses.
My question is – if paid links are going to be discounted – where will the link juice come from?
Overall perspective on link purchase:
Perspective: SEO
Links help my rankings. Rankings help my sales, and the sales of my clients. We need to develop strategies for more effective links.
Perspective: Engineer
People are always trying to find the short road to rankings. We frown on our search results being manipulated in any way, and want to stop it wherever possible.
Perspective: Visitor, Owner, Consumer, Partner
We need traffic and sales. We want relevant results when we search.
Conclusion:
Every link has an inherent cost – whether it be time, money, or a combination – most links are sponsored in one fashion or another.
Google can certainly discover your links and discount them, but they hopefully also respect the effort it takes to purchase effective text link advertising. Labeling purchased links as “grey area” makes the job of engineers a bit easier, by buying time until the algorithm is more effective by becoming dependent on other factors. Links has long been a MAJOR factor in rankings – and making the most of links is the job of a good SEO.
You should purchase RELEVANT on-topic links. If you can NEARLY justify the purchase for clickthrough, it’s probably well worth taking a leap of faith on the link passing link popularity. As a visitor, owner, consumer, or partner – your site NEEDS links, and the handful of links from friends and relatives just isn’t going to cut it.
More on the paid link debate:
- Matt stirs the pot on the paid links debate.
- Michael on why Google wants to tell you how to run your website.
- Google want you to report paid links at threadwatch
- Why Google shouldn’t penalize me – SugarRae
Public aside to Matt and the world’s greatest spam fighters:
With all the great things you guys do for webmasters, this is truly a disservice. They look to you for clarification, and having the average webmaster expect they can rank at all without paying in some form for some links is sending them on a fool’s errand. With the highest level of respect, I really think this is a debate/ problem which will work itself out through the marketplace – and NOT with the help of the FTC. I hope you will continue to consider the nature and philosophy behind paid links without resorting to creating this level of fear, uncertainty, and doubt with web publishers.
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