Paid Links - Do Webmasters Need To Worry?
Unless you’ve been under a rock for the past few months, then you’ll no doubt be aware of the furor surrounding paid links. This furor pretty started when Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Web Spam team, made this post "How To Report Paid Links". Many webmasters beg to differ on Google’s link policy.
So, what is a webmaster to do?
There’s no doubt that if you want to stay within Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, then it is clear that you should not buy or sell links, unless they are clearly marked as advertising. Google states:
"Buying links in order to improve a site’s ranking is in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results."
However, Google does make a few distinctions on what constitutes a paid link. For example, Google advocates submitting your site to directories, such as Yahoo!, which requires an annual fee. It would appear that Google does not regard this as a paid link, rather - a paid review.
Says Matt: "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"
Having said that, there is a danger in letting Google define your practices. Google are, after all, a business, and their business involves selling links, albeit a slightly different flavor.
In this respect, Google competes with other links sellers for advertisers budgets. It could also be argued that any money being spent improving algorithmic placement for a site is not being spent on Google’s PPC offerings, so Google’s advice and policy could be seen as self serving. What is good for Google may not be good for you.
Webmasters who do go against the guidelines need to evaluate the level of risk they are happy with.
If Google isn’t important to you, then you have no risk. If Google is important to you, and most webmasters would feel this way, then one must obviously tread carefully. On-topic and in context links are least likely to raise flags. The further off-topic you stray, the easier it will be for Google to detect and discount the links.
For those who are overly worried about this issue, I’ve yet to see an example of an outright ban attributed to link buying or selling, so it would appear Google is simply discounting the value of certain links, rather than removing sites althogether.
So, do you need to worry? I’m guessing you already know the answer. If you can’t sleep at night worrying about links, then the Guidelines are your friend. If you can’t sleep at night worrying about your competitors beating you in the rankings, then don’t bring a knife to a gun-fight.
Rand Fishkin made a good point the other day (I can’t locate the link at the moment - if you know it, please chime it in the comments) - say if only 10% of webmasters are even aware that link buying is an issue, and if you’re in that 10% and don’t emulate the tactics of the other 90%, you’re essentially handing your competitors the high positions.
Food for thought.
As an aside, I had a comment on a post I made yesterday:
"Alive Directory Blog - WTF ? Please remove that or Chris paid you for this"
This highlights one of the problems with paid links. What is a paid link? How could anyone tell if a link is paid or not? The truth is that no, Chris did not pay me for the link. The link is one of the best kinds - editorial
Scouts honour, m’lord 
August 30th, 2007 at 8:24 am
I think you’re looking for this one: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/rand-on-the-hotseat
August 30th, 2007 at 10:19 am
Peter,
I’ve made that conclusion for Alive Directory Blog because there are much better link building sources than Alive Directory and I can’t see any value in articles which are posted there.
And I think that this is the first time when somebody is making a list of link building blogs and puts a directory blog in it.
I think that Alive directory blog is dedicated to directory owners not link builders.
Best,
Zoran
August 30th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
Hmmm. It seems to me that Google doesn’t like paid links because they feel they are either (a) losing revenue to link sellers or (b) having their search engine algorithm gamed.
Either way, this is a Google problem:
if (a) Sorry-compete in the free market like everyone else.
if (b) Change your algorithm and risk skewing your search results, which is what brought you the fame to expand to ad sales in the first place.
August 30th, 2007 at 9:41 pm
Thanks Martin. That’s the one.
Thanks for your comments Zoran. If you can recommend more blogs and resources dedicated mainly to links (as opposed to generalist blogs), I’m all ears.
Agree Sadcox. The value is there because Google and other search engines helped create that value in the first place.
August 31st, 2007 at 2:26 pm
What I find interesting is that Google says that doing this for PageRank is against their policy (hee–I almost said “wrong”). So if it’s done in order to get traffic (which means “nofollow” should be employed) then it’s okay? If Google is so great at detecting paid links and not allowing them to pass PR, then why should anyone bother with nofollow?
The ultimate question is does this really benefit the user? Isn’t nofollow a Google invention that isn’t obeyed by the other search engines? If Google doesn’t follow these links and they do, does that make Google’s search results better than, say, Yahoo’s, or worse?
I have the feeling that in the long run, it would make Google’s results less relevant to people, because it will begin to be noticed that certain expected results are missing.
ALL internet advertising is paid links, including Google AdSense/AdWords. This is just a misguided self-protective move on their part. As the old cliche goes, they are cutting off their nose to spite their face.
August 31st, 2007 at 9:41 pm
“If Google is so great at detecting paid links and not allowing them to pass PR, then why should anyone bother with nofollow?”
Heh heh. Good point, Michael!