Thread: Link Buying, Does It Hurt You?

I was told that link buying can actually hurt you, not help you. Like when you buy one of those big packages of 1000 links. Does it really hurt you? Just curious cause I have gotten a package of links in the past. Now I am a little scared...Anyone have an answer? Thanks in advanced for any answers.

It's not good to get too many backlinks at once, you should gain backlinks gradually...

How do u do it gradually? Like do u just buy one at a time. Doesn't that take forever?

Several here and there, not 100's and 1000's at a time but then again, this is all stuff I'm still learning as well, just passing along what I know.

Thanks Kalina, appreciate it!

Nothing wrong with paid links as long as you avoid the pitfalls like the already mentioned too-many-too-quickly

Also look out for the number of other outbound links on the page (too many will dilute the link benefit), the location of your link (footer links for example are too easy to detect and filter out), the surrounding text ("advertisers/sponsors" can signpost links to Google), and of course the content of the page (and the site's theme on the whole).

You should also check the page is indexed and cached by Google, and even the little green bar (as a guideline only, of course)

at worst paid links won't help your site, but I don't believe in penalizing sites for paid links. otherwise people would buy their competitors out.

Large packages are generally poorly setup link farms. THAT hurts you. Merely buying a link or two does not.
Either way, you have to maintain "link velocity". A good way to fake this I've found, is to try and get some homepage links, then some hidden further back in the site. Google is less likely to crawl deep, so the timing is staggered.

we use a program and recommend a program called link machine by ironzog -
we have been using it for years

Typically, I try and stay at a a rate of 300 the first day, and 100 a day for the next week after that.
Although that's not buying links.
If it's a blackhat project, I say screw link velocity, and just load it up.

Buying quality, long term links from authority websites will help you in he long term.

Another aspect to be considered in buying links - buy them for targeted traffic and not for PR concern

I don't believe there is such a thing as 'too much too fast', nor does link velocity matter too much.

Think of a new site that is very unique and spreads virally extremely fast. Everybody is talking about it and blogging about it and linking to it in a very short time. This can happen naturally with sites like that. Should it be penalized for too many links?

And for link velocity, that same site will reach a peak in link volume once word has spread around, then it will start to slow down and taper off.

Any site at any time is capable of this. A nobody blogger breaks a hot new story, and gets thousands of links in a couple days, only to not be able to continue posting "hot stuff" and keep getting links at those volumes. This happens all the time. Are these sites getting penalized for these kinds of link spikes. I doubt it.

BUT, this kind of activity does tend to attract links from very trusted sources like major news sites and bigger established blogs, etc... So perhaps that trust factor of those kinds of links will negate any penalty from a link spike.

Just thinking out loud here, I have no hard data on this.

Now when black hatters still load up hard and fast on links and get results, well, what does that say?

Google doesn't like paid links (unless with nofollow) and is always developing their algorithms to spot such things. I don't think they'll ever penalise a site for using paid links, but they will take away their PR/SERPS power

It doesn't hurt me but it hurt my pocket real bad and I never saw any results coming out of it.

Originally Posted by marsguitars

Google doesn't like paid links (unless with nofollow) and is always developing their algorithms to spot such things. I don't think they'll ever penalise a site for using paid links, but they will take away their PR/SERPS power

Matt Cutts however discussed in his blog How to report paid links about paid inclusions in directories - citing the following:

"Q: Hey, as long as we’re talking about directories, can you talk about the role of directories, some of whom charge for a reviewer to evaluate them?
A: I’ll try to give a few rules of thumb to think about when looking at a directory. When considering submitting to a directory, I’d ask questions like:
- Does the directory reject urls? If every url passes a review, the directory gets closer to just a list of links or a free-for-all link site.
- What is the quality of urls in the directory? Suppose a site rejects 25% of submissions, but the urls that are accepted/listed are still quite low-quality or spammy. That doesn’t speak well to the quality of the directory.
- If there is a fee, what’s the purpose of the fee? For a high-quality directory, the fee is primarily for the time/effort for someone to do a genuine evaluation of a url or site."

"..there’s absolutely no problem with selling links for traffic (as opposed to PageRank). At Hidden links I mention a couple ways to sell links that Google would have no problem with..."

Ergo, not all paid links are being despised by Google

From my own research google does a pretty poor job filtering out paid links (assuming it is trying). But if a site has a penalty attached to it paid links won't do anything, but without a penalty on the domain paid links do help your rankings.

Paid links should be "nofollow" so as not to influence PR. Should be primarily for traffic concerns only. Google knows if a paid link is out to manipulate PR and SERP - this is the case that a site (buyer of the paid link) gets penalized

Cat, google doesn't peanalized purchased links because you have no control who links to you. Selling links or linking to irrelevant or crappy sites can cause a penalty.

Originally Posted by Ned

Cat, google doesn't peanalized purchased links because you have no control who links to you. Selling links or linking to irrelevant or crappy sites can cause a penalty.

because you have no control who links to you - maybe you were referring to natural links where you really don't have control who links to you.

A site does get penalized for buying and selling paid links for the sole purpose of manipulating PR and SERP

See this source : How to report paid links and this Selling links that pass PageRank

I buy lots of links and will continue to do so, as long as its effective.
I don't buy links for traffic, and I don't buy links for PR (I couldn't care less about PR).

I buy links because they influence rankings.

exactly. Buying links for traffic is a waste mostof the time

I buy links for traffic.
It is in where you buy links for traffic.

Originally Posted by Ned

exactly. Buying links for traffic is a waste mostof the time

It may be a waste of time for you but a beacon of light for other site owners

The main source of revenue for most websites are advertisements - through paid links, banners, ads, text links, etc. And other sites buy them for exposure and to get more targeted traffic. Ofcourse there are other ways to market your site for free - a bit time consuming though, the reason why some resort to buying links or ads. There are also those that buy them because they have been successful with it in the past.

I have a site where I have 100's of inbound links yet 75% of traffic is from search engines. Only a small % of traffic comes form the links.

As long as you follow a basic set of guidelines, you should be okay. For instance, purchase links across a wide variety of websites instead of just focusing on a few powerful links (or many but from the same network of sites)... and as many of you know, make it a priority to purchase links from websites that include various unique C class blocks.

Also, be sure to purchase links from sites and markets that focus on your niche topic (related topic sites), PR isn't everything and shouldn't be the primary focal point when determining what sites to purchase links from.

Some people will advise against a sudden flood of backlinks, and instead gear their link purchases so that their site experiences a more 'natural' link-growth.. One of the most important things of all however is being careful to use a variety of anchor text rather than the same one (or two) over and over again.

it all depends on what your end goal is. If you get your traffic and income from search engines you might want to watch out since you might be putting your serp ranking in danger.

But if your not worried about serps and just want traffic then link buying is a great way to get fast and targeted traffic. You need to find whats best for you. look at john chows blog. he doesn't rank at all for any of the major keywords yet hes getting tons of traffic and backlinks.

Once you have something that goes viral , its hard to stop the run away train. A lot of webmasters can not just depend on google rankings for traffic so this is why link buying isn't going to go away no matter what google tries to do. you just need to find out whats best for your business.

it depends, it won't harm your site if it is related to yours too...

I would recommend paying to advertise on a high profile website for your niche. One great ad will do far more than 1000 crappy ones.

Originally Posted by clink

I would recommend paying to advertise on a high profile website for your niche. One great ad will do far more than 1000 crappy ones.

a lot of people still don't believe this but its very true.

I know they don't but that's a real shame. Hopefully people's awareness of what works and what doesn't is gradually increasing over time though.

It all depends on your site and your niche.

Many smaller niches simply don't have any high profile sites to actually advertise on and that would actually send reasonable and worth while traffic. Yet buying links to help that niche site get good search rankings is essential to getting any traffic to the site.

Originally Posted by Gasmoney

a lot of people still don't believe this but its very true.

/me raises his hand
The very fact that blackhat exists proves that lots of crappy links can beat a few good ones.
I'm constantly surprised at the stuff I end up ranking for. I always think "Really? They couldn't detect that? I did that pretty damn sloppy!"

You can actually shoot yourself in the foot by getting too many links at one even if the domain is aged. I blogged about this today. I was surprised, but its true.

Originally Posted by Ned

You can actually shoot yourself in the foot by getting too many links at one even if the domain is aged. I blogged about this today. I was surprised, but its true.

Vary the anchor text, and you'll dodge most filters. Keyword matrix=big plus

Originally Posted by SlightlyShadySEO

Vary the anchor text, and you'll dodge most filters. Keyword matrix=big plus

Very true!

Just remember to always include the main keyword you are vying for.

Originally Posted by MrCat

Very true!

Just remember to always include the main keyword you are vying for.

Hence the keyword matrix
Take a look at the article I did on them: anchor text

No I don't thing is hurting the site...

Originally Posted by blackhumor

No I don't thing is hurting the site...

if google decides to punish you and you really survive only on SERPs your in deep doo doo.

Just an important pointer (again) : Buy links for traffic reasons only and make sure that the links you buy are "nofollow" - then you don't have to worry about Google frowning at you