Paid Links

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As surprising as it is, there are still people in the industry who don’t know about paid links. So, I’m positive that business owners and webmasters have no clue and could easily be misinformed by an SEO about paid links. So, let me cover the topic briefly.

What Are Paid Links

Paid links are when you sell text link ads on your site and do not place a nofollow attribute on the link. A nofollow is an attribute that instructs Google to not pass pagerank or a vote. By not placing this nofollow you are not allowing a person to purchase a vote. People will buy links off high ranked, high PR, sites that are highly related to their site. In addition, they’ll usually use their desired anchor text.

Why Are Paid Links Bad

Well, the ethics is debatable and I’m not going to get into it. But let me note this: its not against the law, tons of SEOs did it for a long time (even white hats), and its only a major concern for Google. Google has cracked down on it recently by making it against their Terms of Services and the result of getting caught doing it is a PR slap. Many bloggers/SEO/Internet Marketers were slapped with heavy penalties.

But the reason Google doesn’t like paid links is because selling links allows people to use money to influence search engine results. It’s like letting a government official buy his way into office. They want to stop that, because their concept is to allow a democratic voting process via link select the best sites. This gets diluted when a spam site is willing to spend lots of money to obtain a ranking. So this gets in the way of their business model and they’ll slap around anyone in the way.

Should You Buy Links?

Hard question. Yes and no. I’m going to be honest, I’m not a pure white hat in my eyes. People still buy links. They’re just underground about it. Instead of advertising it on their site, people are contacting webmasters one by one, and requesting the purchase. They aren’t using services or forums as much to announce them. Also more people do it in less competitive niche. The reason is that your competitors can report you if they notice your activities. I, for example, would never buy a link for this site, the risk is too high. I’m in the SEO field and these guys know about paid links.

So its an individual choice, you just need to be informed. Paid links can hurt your sites PR and ranking. But many people are still doing it, and using it to out rank others. So you have to decide the risk you’re willing to take with your business. Its cheating Google, but has amazing results.

How Do You Report Paid Links?

We’ll if you learn on of you competitors is buying paid links, you can snitch on them. I don’t like this too much, but I would do the same to one of my competitors. If they’re breaking the rules to beat me, a simple report will take care of the problem for you.

If you’re wanting to report a site buying or selling links, check out Matt’s post: How to Report Links

How to Correct a Paidlink PR Slap

If Google slapped your PR down a few points, you can get it back. No worries.

You can file a reconsideration request.

To fix your errors:

Stop buying and selling links
Add nofollows to all links on your site people paid for
Add sentence to your advertise page that clearly notes that you do no sell PR
Make a public post about no longer selling PR on your blog
File a reconsideration request and explain all the changes you’ve made

Most websites get their PR back over time, but there is no set page rank. The clearer it is that you’ve stopped, the better chance you have. Make it clear, and ask them to reconsider your site and to remove their penalty.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, its just important to know Google doesn’t like paid links and will penalize you for buying or selling links. It’s still done constantly though, and is still an option. Buying links is still risky though, so its a personal choice about the risk. You can manage to rank high without them, so its just a risky short cut. Just make sure you research this topic when you launch a site. Also, be sure to talk to your SEO about it. If they aren’t open to talking about it, or don’t even know its wrong, than I’d suggest looking elsewhere for an SEO.

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