I HATE it when I find people have brought Links

[simplybeastz]

Hello , I was searching today for some Idea for my New website. I found one! I looked up all Their PR and their Backlinks.Guess what? I found someone in #1 Who had brought Links. How can I compete with that? Annoys me Like hell.

[seobro]

It is becoming very common. People need to rank high and most sites will no follow links so you have to pay. That is the way.

[brag]

Just pray that the search engine gods figure out what they are doing and put them deep into the SERPs

[AnimalSpirit]

Create your own high quality backlinks or buy too

[Steven Miranda]

This is really how many sites get those higher rankings. I do deep backlinking analysis for my clients competitors sites and I often see they are buying links too. This is one of the many reasons why their higher in SERP.

Of course Google does not want people to buy backlinks but it is very widespread in the industry.

[BenoitT]

dofollow doesn't matter that much. Just keep building links and you'll beat him.

[simplybeastz]

I know , But most of the sites that Buy links in my niche are frankly Adsense Farms , or have very little content or use for the User. I Mean , Thanks God , I have Chrome Adblock On!

[Jim Gillum]

The Google clock is still ticking.......we have recently seen the clock strike one....
tic-toc...waiting for another strike......
Patience..........

[Landis]

Originally Posted by BenoitT

dofollow doesn't matter that much. Just keep building links and you'll beat him.

rofl...and you do seo consultations?

[MichaelG469]

Keep doing it natural ways and you'll eventually end up ahead. Doing things the right way will work out better in the longterm rather than shortcutting for quick short term success.

[TomVa]

Whats wrong with buying links? If you can do it for a few dollars there is nothing wrong with it!!! Build your own links and buy links as well!! *shrugs*

[simplybeastz]

It's cheating. Like Cheating in a game of Tennis , it's unfair

[Landis]

Originally Posted by simplybeastz

It's cheating. Like Cheating in a game of Tennis , it's unfair

unfortunately, life isn't fair.

[Robert Puddy]

Originally Posted by simplybeastz

It's cheating. Like Cheating in a game of Tennis , it's unfair

How is it cheating?

I can buy add spaces on websites, that would be seen as a backlink.

Are you saying no one can buy ads on other peoples sites?

[J Bold]

Let's be clear, you could be talking about two different things, here.

One, you go to a high PR site and pay them to link back to your site, so you are effectively buying a quality link from their site.

Two, you pay someone to place backlinks for you all over the internet, but you do not have to pay any website for your link to be on their site.

Which is it?

[matt5409]

The thing is - it's not going to change. Google has stated they will penalise sites SELLING links but they can't do anything about the buyers. If they did, you could theoretically buy a load of links for a competitor and have them banned.

The SERPS are made up with articial results anyway - I wrote this article some time ago: Genetically Modified SEO | Digital Fusion Magazine

P.s if you read the article, the "lightbulb" part is actually incorrect. I might get round to editing it at some point...

[christopher jon]

So, who's selling good backlinks?

I have this site, bing.com, that could use a little help

[David Bryant]

Originally Posted by matt5409

Google has stated they will penalise sites SELLING links but they can't do anything about the buyers.

Selling links is OK, so long as the 'nofollow' attribute is added to them - as far as Google is concerned. Kind of defeats the purpose of buying PR, but it's still great for driving traffic if it is a relevant site to your own.

To the OP:

You're going to find this in many niches and for many keywords, but don't be discouraged, you can always overcome them with the right SEO strategy. You can accumulate lots of links yourself with your own link building campaigns, while focusing on building links intended to drive targeted traffic toward your site.

It is just a process, and if the keyword is going to be profitable for you, and the work involved is worth it, then by all means, go for it.

[bebsicles]

You can compete, but you also need to work hard for that. You can search many sites containing high PR and you can have your quality links then.

[blue_sky]

Originally Posted by simplybeastz

Who had brought Links.

Of course you have to bring your own links - its not like Google donate them to you....LOL

[Robert Puddy]

Originally Posted by matt5409

The thing is - it's not going to change. Google has stated they will penalise sites SELLING links but they can't do anything about the buyers. If they did, you could theoretically buy a load of links for a competitor and have them banned.

The SERPS are made up with articial results anyway - I wrote this article some time ago: Genetically Modified SEO | Digital Fusion Magazine

P.s if you read the article, the "lightbulb" part is actually incorrect. I might get round to editing it at some point...

So Google are saying I cant sell advertising space on my website?

Because thats what this amounts to, a backlink is just advertising space on someone elses website

[matt5409]

Originally Posted by Robert Puddy

So Google are saying I cant sell advertising space on my website?

Because thats what this amounts to, a backlink is just advertising space on someone elses website

no there is a clear distinction which I missed out in my previous post - selling a text link on your site is absolutely fine as long as you add the rel="nofollow" attribute to the link.

This stops the googlebot following that link, thus prevents pagerank being flowed to the target page. This stops search rankings being influenced.

If you sell links for the value of passing pagerank and manipulating Googles search rankings, THAT is then God.. I mean Google, will come down on you!

[Peter76]

If you got the money to spend you are going to try and succeed as fast as you can. They just better hope Google don't figure it out and eventually they will.

[rain21]

you also have to do that, create high quality back links or buy them

[HammerFist]

Originally Posted by simplybeastz

Hello , I was searching today for some Idea for my New website. I found one! I looked up all Their PR and their Backlinks.Guess what? I found someone in #1 Who had brought Links. How can I compete with that? Annoys me Like hell.

That tells you that the niche is good enough that paying for links is profitable.

Now create your business case and budget and either spend your time and money building links (via articles, blog posting, comments, guest posts) or purchasing them.

Whining isn't going to get you any further down the road.

[Agent89]

Originally Posted by Landis Phan

unfortunately, life isn't fair.

You hit it on the nose. While it certainly isn't the most ethical way to go about it, the fact is that your competitors ARE buying backlinks. So you can either rail about the injustice about it...or start competing with them on their own terms.

I myself buy backlinks. I know it's what I have to do in order to compete. Period.

[naijanetwarrior]

There is no cause for alarm!

It has been there for quite a while now. So many people buy links to get higher rankings. And I do not see anything wrong with that. Just be more competitive if you really want to be up there. Do something different.

[John Romaine]

Umm, how can you say for certain that these links are paid for? How can you verify that?

[PatriciaJ]

I think of paid links as advertising and it's fairer than spamming blogs and forums with links or setting up profile links on sites where you aren't wanted and you have no intention of participating in.

[simplybeastz]

The way I see it is... If you have good content and some really helpfull information for the end user , then great! If you have some **** website , which as loads of Ads then I hate it. Yes I could overcome the website , but How can I compete if the website buys thousands of Links , I can't. I'm Human.

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by Robert Puddy

So Google are saying I cant sell advertising space on my website?

My understanding is that they're not saying that at all, Bob.

They're saying simply that they won't intentionally credit the people buying them with link-juice.

This is surely a very different thing indeed?

[Dan C. Rinnert]

Originally Posted by David Bryant

Selling links is OK, so long as the 'nofollow' attribute is added to them - as far as Google is concerned. Kind of defeats the purpose of buying PR, but it's still great for driving traffic if it is a relevant site to your own.

The "dofollow" and "nofollow" attributes serve no purpose for the end-user of a website. Therefore, it is not my responsibility as a website operator to declare them.

Buying ads/links on websites was happening before Google emerged on the scene. It's their own fault that link-buying became more popular due to Google's heavy reliance on links for determining a website's value. So, they created their own problem and they expect me to fix that for them?

Well, then they better compensate me for my time managing the links on my site if they want me to spend time adding attributes to the links that are valuable only for them.

Now, some may argue that it is within their rights to demote my website's standings in the SERPs for not playing by their rules and that is true. However, their end goal is to benefit their users. That means they have to deliver the most relevant and highest quality results to them. So, if my site is the best out there, and they place a lower quality site ahead of me because I don't do links the way they like, then they are doing a disservice to their users, which could result in those users going elsewhere to find things online.

Given that, Google may try to bully webmasters into doing things the way that Google wants, but, in the end, the power is in our hands because we're the ones with the content that Google's users are looking for.

As potential proof of this, I have a site that was PR4 or PR3 that got knocked down to PR0. I suspect the reason may have been that I was selling links. Being knocked down to PR0 did cost me some earnings, because some advertisers rely too heavily on PageRank to determine the price they will pay as opposed to some more useful measure of value. However, being knocked down to PR0 did not affect my rankings in the SERPs nor did it affect my traffic. (Plus, I flipped the table on Google and removed AdSense from the site so they no longer get any income from that site. Ha ha!) So, they lowered my PageRank (which is enough to put the fear of the big G in the hearts of many a webmaster) but they didn't lower my site in the SERPs (because doing so would effectively hurt them).

The bottom line is that Google is a lot like a big ol' paper tiger, but too many webmasters don't realize that and continue to let Google push them around.

[mattlaclear]

Originally Posted by simplybeastz

It's cheating. Like Cheating in a game of Tennis , it's unfair

Upset you don't have the cash to buy links yourself I take it.

[DireStraits]

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

My understanding is that they're not saying that at all, Bob.

They're saying simply that they won't intentionally credit the people buying them with link-juice.

This is surely a very different thing indeed?

Correctamundo.

Although Google doesn't really want webmasters selling links left, right and center for the purpose of helping others manipulate their rankings, they clearly recognise that there are legitimate reasons for selling links other than for this purpose, and just ask/advise that those doing so assign the rel="nofollow" attribute to them so that they can distinguish between them and avoid passing PR through them.

If you want to sell links, then either use the nofollow attribute on them, or else face a potential penalty if they somehow identify that these links have been bought or incentivised (yes, they will penalise for this in some cases - I've seen it happening; they won't necessarily just discount/ignore them. It's a prohibited practice ... so worth bearing in mind.)

[Eidolon]

I popped in here looking for something else and find this debate about FAIR a little naive.

Since when is business fair. Business is about ROI within a framework of ethics - which may be limited to "not getting caught" by some.

You can't buy links but you can pay an article submission subscription. Just now it will be unfair to register all the domains for a key word phrase, or use automated software for research or running processes. Ok - I'm outa here

[Chris Sorrell]

I have trouble believing there are still people who think that sites ranking for 'viagra' or 'web hosting' and the like are building those tens of thousands of links naturally. It's quite amusing. But wait, the big G will punish you and chop off your fingers for having too many links. Get real.

[simplybeastz]

Originally Posted by mattlaclear

Upset you don't have the cash to buy links yourself I take it.

yes , I'm young and don't have the Money. Now stop making Bad comments otherwise you'll lose your creditability , as someone said on another Post. "Creditability is everything in Community."

[David Bryant]

Originally Posted by Dan C. Rinnert

Well, then they better compensate me for my time managing the links on my site if they want me to spend time adding attributes to the links that are valuable only for them.

I have to admit, I couldn't agree more with your entire post, it is the way that I feel sometimes. Oddly enough, the paragraph that I quoted above assumes the perspective that we have to take in order to play Google's game, and make no mistake, it is their game - if you wish to obtain direct search traffic from them.

You said it yourself, you didn't follow their rules, and your income suffered from it (doesn't matter the amount, there was a negative affect associated with not following suit). Fail to follow enough rules, and someone's site ranking, say... 100 pages, would be devastated by getting de-indexed, or through suffering an extreme penalty of some sort.

So, in a way, you are compensated for adding the requested attributes to your links.

I actually either add the 'no-follow' attribute to all affiliate links on my sites, or I use Pretty Links to track and cloak them. Either way, it's just something that I've practiced for quite a while.

I tend to steer away from 'who has the power' type of thinking, as in truth, it really all boils down to a mutual agreement. You can have the most wonderful site ever created in a niche, but without traffic, no one will ever see it.

Yes, I know the initial response to that, many will argue that natural search isn't the only way to get traffic, but in reality, that statement is false to its core. The majority of all content on the web is found by search engines. You can obtain traffic from any site, but people only found that site, because THEY (that site) were playing the SE game in some way. And it goes round and round again.

So, for as long as I can profit (in any manner - traffic, profit, education, news) from Google and the other SE's, then I'll take the relatively small amount of time to stay within the boundaries, because I profit more by doing so. I think taking a broader view of my success is more important than worrying about the details of whom I have to please (in such insignificant ways) to keep the status quo.

These days, personal opinion on these types of things become less important for me, mostly because my decisions affect so many. I have my entire business, employees - their families, and my family to consider, and a good portion of my traffic comes directly from search engines.

Same goes with anything really, I expect my affiliates to follow my guidelines for promoting my products, and I follow other product owner's guidelines when I promote theirs'. There is always a balance to be found when entities work together for mutual benefit.

Anyway, like I said... Great post

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by simplybeastz

It's cheating. Like Cheating in a game of Tennis , it's unfair

Tell that to adobe, microsoft, Fortune 500 companies and the whole business world. When they do business with each other I don't see them putting nofollow taqs on their press releases, partner lists or other announcements. All those are in effect bought links because theres a financial interest between the companies.

Ad when they do an television ad campaign and use it to drive links to their sites they are also paying big money to get that attention.

Still, there is another way coming.

[simplybeastz]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Tell that to adobe, microsoft, Fortune 500 companies and the whole business world. When they do business with each other I don't see them putting nofollow taqs on their press releases, partner lists or other announcements. All those are in effect bought links because theres a financial interest between the companies.

Ad when they do an television ad campaign and use it to drive links to their sites they are also paying big money to get that attention.

Still, there is another way coming.

Your taking it out of context.

[margaretrobles]

well, using such strategies like this will put your site in to a high risk, link buying is now considered a black hat strat, once google detected that you are buying links escpecially on such websites having high PR pages and unrelated to your niche, then you might have a chance to be penalized or even de-indexed you site pages on the SERP.

[finemoves]

This discussion is getting very heated. I find it really interesting that people are defending Google, and basically trying to keep anyone else from buying links because it is "Cheating".

You're welcome to that point of view, but understand that you're not going to rank very high in the search engines without doing one of two things:
1. Building and Buying Links
2. Building the World's Greatest Content, Marketing like crazy for 2-4 years, then hoping desperately that people link to your site naturally. Maybe a book deal of television spot would work for this.

It's your choice. Neither viewpoint is wrong, they are simply choices with risks and rewards.

As for "Cheating" Google Organic: What about when Google decides to cheat you and ban your site arbitrarily?

I worked with one well known marketer that was paying $100,000 a month in adwords and had his site slapped overnight. He changed no content, and his offer was actually very good, and well targeted to the search terms.

Google wants to play the game of being a big, impersonal company that arbitrarily changes it's algorithm. You can beat it's game and rank sites, or be a slave to Google's will. Your choice.

[Chris Sorrell]

Originally Posted by margaretrobles

well, using such strategies like this will put your site in to a high risk, link buying is now considered a black hat strat, once google detected that you are buying links escpecially on such websites having high PR pages and unrelated to your niche, then you might have a chance to be penalized or even de-indexed you site pages on the SERP.

In that case hostmonster and godaddy better cash in now before they go bust. Oh sorry, they have nothing but relevant backlinks and have 2 little filipinos doing it all manually. Wise up.

[Goin Green]

Originally Posted by sorrellaff

I have trouble believing there are still people who think that sites ranking for 'viagra' or 'web hosting' and the like are building those tens of thousands of links naturally. It's quite amusing. But wait, the big G will punish you and chop off your fingers for having too many links. Get real.

Touche..Take a look at the major players in highly competitive markets online..I don't know if I have found one(in this specific market) that hasn't paid somewhere/somehow for a link.

Moving into these more competitive markets, people have the money/resources to do so...Get into one of these markets and tell me what you think, have fun spending thousands trying to rank above them..As Long as ROI is exceeding what they spend tactics/partnerships/paid links/will ever evolve(and im not talking about spammy links). Once you start breaking down some of the back linking strategies of the major players in highly competitive markets what they're doing isn't rocket science..

[App Developers]

I feel the same. I just found my competitor bought 1,000 links to directories.......and they are number one......yuck!

[simplybeastz]

For the record , I didn't mean for this to be heated. I see that most of you are Like , well Google Screws us over kind of thing. I agree , But sometimes it's a bit annoying for me , as I spend hours doing Backlinks. when all It takes them is a simple Mouse click.

[atlandbiz-com]

it is very common, buy backlinks save time.

[JRCarson]

Make better content than them. Then worry about the links.

[Natlex]

Originally Posted by simplybeastz

Hello , I was searching today for some Idea for my New website. I found one! I looked up all Their PR and their Backlinks.Guess what? I found someone in #1 Who had brought Links. How can I compete with that? Annoys me Like hell.

You can report websites that use paid links btw.

I've seen a few people use them... I'm taking note of them and going to observe if/when they lose those paid links or lose ranking/get indexed.

Honestly, I've seen offers to buy paid links and never considered it for now, I don't see why I would bother when they're are so many other inexpensive methods to get links but that take time...

[simplybeastz]

I found a website in My Niche (around 10k Search a Month.) and It has 67k Of Backlinks. It has been around for 1 month acroding to Whois and I even contact the owner , to see how long it's been around. Now Thats stupid