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Buying
Backlinks For SEO: Yes, This Is Still A Thing - October
21, 2022
Paying for backlinks can shoot you up search engine
rankings, but it comes with a whole host of drawbacks.
Should you invest in the practice?
(Search
Engine Journal)
By
Aleh Barysevich
It
wasn’t long from the time when search engine
optimizers first realized the important role backlinks
played in search rankings until some enterprising
soul came up with the idea of selling links.
Of
course, it wasn’t long before bad actors started
abusing it, just like nearly every other ranking hack
in SEO. And Google, doing what Google does, began
cracking down on the process.
There’s
not much in the way of a gray area regarding Google’s
position on the issue.
The
first bullet point in Google’s Webmaster Guide
about link schemes states that buying or selling links
that pass PageRank will negatively impact your site’s
ranking. This includes “…exchanging money
for links, or posts that contain links, exchanging
goods or services for links, or sending someone a
‘free’ product in exchange for them writing
about it and including a link.”
And
as good, white hat SEOs, of course, none of us would
ever dream of doing such a thing. Except a lot of
sites still do. It’s not openly discussed in
our field, but the practice is still alive.
This,
of course, raises some questions. Namely, what’s
the benefit of paying for links? And is it worth the
risk?
In
this piece, we’ll answer these questions and
take a closer look at the buying and selling of links.
Disclaimer:
The author and Search Engine Journal in no way promote,
condone, and/or endorse link buying. This post is
for informational purposes only, and if you choose
to do so, you do so at your own risk.
What
Is & Isn’t A Paid Link?
*click
here for full article and multimedia
(Search
Engine Journal)
Social
Media
Greg
Tingle
Search
Engine Journal with a most interesting read on buying
text links put together by Aleh. I find myself agreeing
with about fifty percent of the points made. This
is partly due to my two decades of experience in and
around media and later online/digital media and publishing.
I went from subscription television bundling, media
and PR over to journalism, later online journalism
and news, and then created my own agency. We did some
very big online PR press release campaigns and many
agencies and clients requested some text links to
further add to existing campaigns. These covered sports
and combat sports promotions, movie and television
show launches and campaigns, sports betting, beverage
promos, corporate art, property development and management
firms, technology solution firms and even some web
agencies and more. We made a point of matching up
the content in generally a logical and suitable manner
to add value, relevance, and to be helpful to the
global readership. Let's say if 1 to 3 percent of
all our online content including articles on a website
network of 20 plus quality sites had suitable links,
one would be remain Google friendly? That's the $10,000
question right! Two decades in biz and going strong.
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