Fri, 7 Sep 2007 15:10:21 by Craig Wilson
Link buying for SEO purposes is a dangerous game. First and foremost: Google says no. It’s wrong. It’s forbidden. It pollutes the natural search listings and violates Google’s search engines’ quality guidelines. On the other hand, however, link buying is a secret art of ‘gaming’ Google and achieving highly relevant search rankings. While the risk of getting caught is too much for most SEOers; reaping the benefits can be worth it. It’s a risky business.
Link buying is the practice of paying someone to display a text link to your website from theirs. The idea is to buy links on websites that are relevant to your own and are usually regarded as a trusted and stable source of information. The purpose is to allow you to choose a keyword and link back to your own website which—when updated by Google—will receive the benefits of the link from the higher source. As previously mentioned, however, Google doesn’t believe in link buying and subsequently bans websites for partaking in the scheme. Google claims that it disrupts the natural selection of websites in the SERPs, which is true.
The big problem is that normal text links are almost impossible for an automated robot to detect and there are far too many websites out there for manual checking. This makes the risk of getting caught relatively low, but the punishment for getting caught relatively high. Is it worth it?
Here at Vertical Leap, we do not agree with link buying in any way. We completely adhere to Google’s rules and respect their authority. Why don’t we buy links? We don’t need to; simple. Gaining high, natural search engine rankings is part of our business and we don’t need the aid of illegal practises to help us achieve our goal.
There are many pros and cons in the art of link buying, take a look below for some examples.
Pros
- One-way link from a relevant website;
- You have control over the anchor text;
- Extra traffic.
Cons
- Monthly fee;
- Bought links are usually a short term measure;
- The risk of being banned from Google.
We’ll let you make up your own mind when it comes to link buying, there’s a lot of grey area when it comes to this subject and it’s been a hot topic at this year’s SES San Jose.
Craig Wilson
Campaign Delivery Manager |
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