Does buying link packages from WF members count as black hat?

[Mike81]

So the big G tells us not to ever, under any circumstances, pay for links. Are they talking some kind of linking scheme? Does buying a blog commenting or profile link service count as black hat or grey hat seo??? Cuz really, who has the time to manually link dozens of sites to places all over the web? And can they tell if you pay for a link?

What are your thoughts?

[Revolves]

What Google means by "paid link" is that a website should not link to another website (with an intention of boosting its backlink) just because it was paid some money to do so. However, when you pay a freelancer for linkbuilding, he's still building links (most probably) the "natural way." The sites that link to you in the end don't do it because you PAID THEM. You only paid some money to have someone do what you could have done yourself (like writing & submitting articles).

-Revolves

[CDarklock]

Originally Posted by Mike81

So the big G tells us not to ever, under any circumstances, pay for links.

And then they suggest you join their AdWords program, where you bid against others for clicks on your links instead of paying directly for the links themselves.

Hmm.

[markowe]

You can argue that all backlinking is blackhat since you are creating links with the express purpose of manipulating your rankings. And there's very little Google can do about it - they created the situation where there are billions to be made with good SE rankings, so now they have to deal with it!

[TryBPO]

It could be said that paying anyone to "build backlinks" for you is definitely not natural...whether it's black hat or not depends on where you'd put the limit for black hat seo, I guess.

To be completely natural, what Google is saying is that by having a strong, authoritative site, people will NATURALLY want to link to your content. They may write a blog post mentioning what they found on your site, there may be sites that use your ideas as a resource to support their own arguments, etc. That's natural linking...

Unnatural linking is us trying to mimic that...by creating (or having created) links to our sites to make it look like natural linking. Maybe our content is not good enough to be naturally linked to, we don't want to wait the required time to actually receive natural links, etc. It's always us gaming the system to take advantage of a tactic to improve rankings that we know works.

[steadypay]

Ye I'd say all SEO by definition, or at least how it's practiced, is unnatural.

So as the saying goes: When in Rome...

[Mike81]

I just don't see the logic in the "natural" way. Like seriously, who would possibly have the time? And more over, if my site is about promoting toasters, how many people are going to go out of their way to link to it to say to their friends, "check out this great new site I found on toasters!" If I knew people who were writing blogs about finding toaster sites, I'd think they'd gone over the deep end.
But yeah, hopefully my outsourced links appear "natural" by whatever definition....

[bigcat1967]

J.C. Pennys got busted on that - paid links (at least part)

[Tony1231957]

Hi all warriors I do not have a job or money right now to invest in any paid link building so I have to do it the slow way and article marketing to get links. Also reading blogs and leaving comments, etc. Thanks for your input; and it is appreciated. Your newbie warrior, Tony.

[honed]

Originally Posted by bigcat1967

J.C. Pennys got busted on that - paid links (at least part)

They did. I remember coming across a linkfarm page the first time and I couldn't figure out what it's purpose was, as there was no content, or none that made sense.

I can see how they got busted. If the linkfarms they used were as bad as I saw, then they had to know it was a matter of time.

[jaycar]

Google will catch on to any method they consider as being 'black hat' or 'grey hat' or whatever colour you wish to label it. Paid links are a big no no and any legit seo'er who does such things should be fired! :-)

[John Alves]

Google will say anything to protect their algorithm and prevent people from trying to manipulate the search engines. The reality is that it doesn't matter what they say. Backlinks will always be a major part of moving up search engine rankings. It is difficult to get backlinks naturally. However, I will say that it does not require a lot of backlinks to get high rankings for a lot of keywords. There are ways to make them look more natural, if that's the route you want to take. You can do this through article syndication.

[nerik]

I think it depends on the package you buy...

For example, 20.000 or 30.000 profiles blast package (or a large comments blast package) for a new site it could be valued as souspicious by the Big "G"...and also considered as a "gray-hat" method by SEO purists...

But what about link-wheel, article writing+spinning+submission, few EDU links, etc, packages?!? I think buying these kind of packages is just a shortcut for getting "white-hat" backlinks faster...and they can't be considered "black-hat" method!!

[thebitbotdotcom]

Yes, buying links with the intention of "manipulating" search results thereby is BH.

[Chris Sorrell]

All backlinking is arguably black hat cos at the end of the day it's not something you do for fun, it's something you do to manipulate a ranking system for your own gain.

[Mike Anthony]

Yes buying backlinks of any sort is considered BlueFart. I've never worried much about labels. to me the guiding principle is am I violating other people's sites.

Spamming to death other people'e property violates their property and is wrong. Somebody wants to give a link and get paid for it on their own site? Does IBM have links to Microsoft when they have a partnership going that has a financial connection? yes. Thats business.

[dburk]

Originally Posted by Mike81

So the big G tells us not to ever, under any circumstances, pay for links.

Hi Mike81,

I have never heard anyone from Google make such a statement.

To quote Google exactly:

Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such. This can be done in several ways, such as:

• Adding a rel="nofollow" attribute to the <a> tag
• Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file

Source: Paid links - Webmaster Tools Help

Links purchased for the purposes of advertising should be considered white hat as long as they do not violate any ethical boundaries.

[markowe]

Just to sort of clarify, "buying link packages" isn't about buying 'paid links' on someone's site, it's paying some guy to spray your links all over the place Two different things, the latter I am pretty sure Google doesn't like But they created this reality, so they have to deal with it, and one suspects that somewhere down the line they would love to reduce the value of backlinks in favour of other, harder-to-manipulate ranking factors (some kind of social aspect, most probably) but I think we're a long way from that still...

[Mike81]

Originally Posted by dburk

Hi Mike81,

I have never heard anyone from Google make such a statement.

To quote Google exactly:


Source: Paid links - Webmaster Tools Help

Links purchased for the purposes of advertising should be considered white hat as long as they do not violate any ethical boundaries.

This I don't get. So google is effectively saying, "you can buy links, but they won't count. You can have other links, but they can't be intended to 'manipulate' serps. To rank higher in the serps, you need backlinks" If the purpose of getting links is to rank higher in the serps, isn't then linking inherently about 'manipulating' the serps? Seems amost like a catch 22...

[markowe]

Originally Posted by Mike81

This I don't get. So google is effectively saying, "you can buy links, but they won't count. You can have other links, but they can't be intended to 'manipulate' serps. To rank higher in the serps, you need backlinks" If the purpose of getting links is to rank higher in the serps, isn't then linking inherently about 'manipulating' the serps? Seems amost like a catch 22...

I am not sure if I follow what you were saying, but it seems you might have forgotten the age-old traditional purpose of links, that being to be clicked on by people

They are saying you can have paid links (how could they stop you? That's what Adsense is, anyway!), but only in the sense of ads, not links bought for SEO purposes.

[Mike81]

Originally Posted by markowe

I am not sure if I follow what you were saying, but it seems you might have forgotten the age-old traditional purpose of links, that being to be clicked on by people

They are saying you can have paid links (how could they stop you? That's what Adsense is, anyway!), but only in the sense of ads, not links bought for SEO purposes.

How can they differenciate between advertising links and seo manipulation links? And if backlinks affect serps, then aren't all links in their nature manipulative?

[markowe]

Originally Posted by Mike81

How can they differenciate between advertising links and seo manipulation links? And if backlinks affect serps, then aren't all links in their nature manipulative?

Ahhhhh!!! That's the question!

Actually, Google's policy is that you should nofollow advertising links. But you mean, how do they distinguish between paid links and natural links? The answer is, someone rats you out - no other way, especially not for small-timers who aren't creating some massive footprint.

And yes, all deliberately created backlinks are manipulative by definition! But Google created that reality, so now they are going to have to fix it!

[William King]

Originally Posted by CDarklock

And then they suggest you join their AdWords program, where you bid against others for clicks on your links instead of paying directly for the links themselves.

Hmm.

Now you are mixing up different things here. Dofollow backlinks helps to increase ranking because if a website owner has given your link on the website by his own will than it means he is referring your site to his visitors as a trust worthy source of information that's why Google counts backlink in the ranking factors more backlinks a site have more it will be trust worthy.

Adsense is something different it they are not counted as a backlink more over with you will always see sponsored ads or ads by google with the adsense links which are informing user that these are advertisements and nobody can give guarantee of ads.

I am not an employee of Google

[dburk]

Originally Posted by bag

any sort of PAID backlink is black-hat.period.

Hi bag,

I'm sorry to say that is pure hogwash!

The only backlink that is "black-hat" is one that violates some sort of ethical boundary. If a webmaster pays for a backlink that does not violate any ethical boundary then how could you call it black hat?

[Zeb]

Google only wants natural links. So that means any link you buy, be it from blog networks (such as seolv, ama etc) or getting links (sbookmarks, web2.0) to try to manipulate the serps is frowned upon google. So basically google is telling you to not build links at all and let other link to you naturally.

Yea right, that would take years to get ranked in the serps.

So do what google wants you to do or be slightly naughty, which all us IM'ers are (according to google's rules).

[dburk]

Originally Posted by Zeb

So basically google is telling you to not build links at all and let other link to you naturally.

Hi Zeb,

I disagree with your assertion, they don't want you building backlinks for the express purpose of manipulating their PageRank algorithm. You can build links for other purposes like promoting your website for targeted traffic. There is also a category of link building that is often referred to as meritorious link building that is generally condoned by Google as well.