Buying links to a web site is a controversial subject in the search engine promotion industry. Some experts eschew paid links altogether, while some make very aggressive use of them. Our stance is somewhere in the middle, as discussed below.
Our Take on Paid Links
My firm has gone back and forth about paid links. Do paid links work? It's hard to say. Do paid links hurt? I don't think so. But don't quote me on that.
Does Work Media use paid links? Yes, sparingly. We do not believe that Google will take a punishing action against a site that uses some paid links. Otherwise, a company's competitors could destroy its Google rankings by buying a bunch of links and pointing them to the company's web site. This has pretty much always been the case - because of the potential of using it as a weapon, Google is unlikely to punish a site for being linked to.
But does it help? We believe so, but don't go overboard. It has been our experience that Google will give you a ranking boost to an extent from certain activities, but there is a limit to how much of an advantage you can gain from any one linking technique. So buying a few hundred keyword links on high quality web sites is probably a good move. But buying 10 million links probably won't help relative to buying a limited number of links. Spend a couple hundred bucks a month to get a nice collection of paid links to your site, but don't go beyond that. It's the old law of diminishing returns.
Have we come to this conclusion based on a backward engineering of Google's search algorithm or some other kind of voodoo? No, it is simply our opinion based on our experience. We have never been all that concerned with trying to figure out exactly how Google ranks sites. If you take a multi-pronged approach and get links from lots of different places, with paid links being only one small part of a greater strategy, then you do just fine with paid links...if used in moderation.
HOWEVER...purchase paid links at your own risk. As you can see from the statement below, it is "officially" against Google's policy.
Does Work Media use paid links? Yes, sparingly. We do not believe that Google will take a punishing action against a site that uses some paid links. Otherwise, a company's competitors could destroy its Google rankings by buying a bunch of links and pointing them to the company's web site. This has pretty much always been the case - because of the potential of using it as a weapon, Google is unlikely to punish a site for being linked to.
But does it help? We believe so, but don't go overboard. It has been our experience that Google will give you a ranking boost to an extent from certain activities, but there is a limit to how much of an advantage you can gain from any one linking technique. So buying a few hundred keyword links on high quality web sites is probably a good move. But buying 10 million links probably won't help relative to buying a limited number of links. Spend a couple hundred bucks a month to get a nice collection of paid links to your site, but don't go beyond that. It's the old law of diminishing returns.
Have we come to this conclusion based on a backward engineering of Google's search algorithm or some other kind of voodoo? No, it is simply our opinion based on our experience. We have never been all that concerned with trying to figure out exactly how Google ranks sites. If you take a multi-pronged approach and get links from lots of different places, with paid links being only one small part of a greater strategy, then you do just fine with paid links...if used in moderation.
HOWEVER...purchase paid links at your own risk. As you can see from the statement below, it is "officially" against Google's policy.
Google's Official Position:
...some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links that pass PageRank, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google's webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results.
Link Brokers
- Text Link Ads
- The most respected company in the industry.
- Link Brokers
- Another well known company.
Blog Posts from Google that Relate to Paid Links
- Will paid tweets become the new paid links? | Blog | Econsultancy
- Now that Google and Bing have access to Twitter's firehose, the speculation about over how Twitter data could eventually be used as a search engine ranking factor has begun. ...
- Is Google really capable of detecting paid links and webspam ...
- Paid links are something I've written about lately as the possibility of Twitter data being incorporated into the Google and Bing search indexes has raised the spectre of a much more complicated situation vis-à-vis paid links. ...
- Does Google Penalize Paid Links in Javascript?
- You may recall back at SMX Seattle earlier this year, Google's Matt Cutts talked at length about paid links. He touched upon the topic of Google being able to read javascript after giving out advice for so long to use javascript as a ...
The Work Media Internet Marketing Blog
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byReader Feedback
Like this lens? Want to share your feedback, or just give a thumbs up? Be the first to submit a blurb!
by WorkMedia
Company Bio
Jerry Work was working in Memphis as a financial analyst at one of the top business appraisal firms in the country when he realized he wa... (more)
Jerry Work was working in Memphis as a financial analyst at one of the top business appraisal firms in the country when he realized he wa... (more)
