Are paid links safe for SEO?

Direct link building is all about the probability of success and balancing risk - if you do too much of one thing then of course you increase the likelihood that something will be 'detected'. It's important to remember though that no single strategy can ever be defined as this or that, paid links for example - one man's paid link is another man's endorsement.

If they appear in a sidebar surrounded by other paid links then of course it increases the likelihood that the interpretation would be that it's a paid link but remember, 99% of the time you are relying on MECHANICAL interpretation (i.e. algorithmic interpretation); the odds of the links being manually reviewed, and thus spotted, is fairly remote, but also still a possibility.

On the whole link building is always about balancing risk - there are high risk activities (paid linking, over-use of exact match anchor text, PUBLIC blog networks) and there are very low-risk/next to no risk activities i.e. infographics, content marketing etc. Then there are a thousands shades of grey in-between. It's all about the utilisation of the mechanism, rather than the mechanism itself - Eric Enge has even recently came out and said that infographics which are unrelated to the website they are posted on could be targeted in the future, too (which I don't believe).

Balance your risk based upon what you want to achieve.

Is there a risk? Of course.

However the key is to find a low key vendor, one that isn't on everyones radar and that doesn't plan on getting too big.

I prefer smaller private networks, as opposed to traditional link vendors that show all URLs to anyone that signs up for the service.

Paid links can surely get you in a lot of trouble.

I agree with FranksToys - I also truly believe in building natural links through good solid content. This is the BEST way to build a long term solid site with authority. To get started sometimes folks will buy some links to juice their sites. Or later to bump it in the SERPs but you have to find a private network you can trust. One that isn't loading people in by doing a blog post with a list of links in it.

I recently saw a TOP link builder doing this. Most don't understand that after that post gets off the front page the PR is lost in the deeper pages which is probably not as high as the home page.

Limited Private Networks that keep the numbers low and keep building out their network are the best. You can even check the sites beforehand and see how many links are on the homepage before buying.

BTW - this is not a recommended practice for long term growth.

It's not about the links whether its paid or free.

It's about the links whether its of good quality or not (e.g: good quality content & no.of outbound links in the content)

Also it's about where you leave your links (e.g: on a spammy domain or a high quality reviewed blog)

Hope that helps

The thing is to know "how Google is going to know" that it is a paid link.

If you are using paid link and Google is not able to detect it then you are safe.

Short answer: No
Long Answer: Google is starting to haunt down all the website which looks like build/selling backlinks (home/sitewide). Plus you never know all the backlinks that particular site have or how many links is he going to sell. Try to stay again and even if you buy, be intelligent and do a good(!!!) research before handing any $.

According to google updates paid links is not a safe. website who sell link violates google quality guidelines. Read More Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: A reminder about selling links that pass PageRank

There is risk with everything in SEO.

Paid links are usually my first port of call after i throw everything at a site and i'm not #1 yet.

There is nothing call paid and free links. There are only 2 things - low PR spammy link and High PR link. Get the link building done using manual white hat methods from a trusted vendor, you get high quality links and your ranking would increase.

PM me if you need help

Paid links catch up eventually, if you are talking about paid placement like in High PR like yahoo classifieds, its not the same as a paid link-- but if you are paying for something like $9 for 100 links - you will get caught soon enough.

They are not safe. Nothing of the most link building schemes seems to be safe in SEO as we can not predict changes in the search engine algorithms. BUT...

If you build a project which has the only purpose to make money and you know that it will make you xxxx on place one... And you need only one month to get it there with paid links.. It will be just a numbers game. If you invest xxx and get xxxx, you can just rinse and repeat that. Its a business... However, it is better to not use every kind of blackhat links for customers' websites or own good moneymakers.

I think renting links is good. There'll be no way to trace the rented link to your website... lol. It works too

Hi,
On the entire link building is always be harmful for your site. Always try to build contextual links from relevant and high domain authority sites.

Depends on what you mean by paid links.

Buying a membership subscription on WF isn't a bad idea but buying a membership subscription on black hat forum is gambling or short term.

Google's going to get you.

I dont think it does matter what type of link you are getting either its paid or not , but you should get good quality links in order to do good seo