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.

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

Create your own high quality backlinks or buy too

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.

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

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

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*

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?

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, who's selling good backlinks?

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

it is very common, buy backlinks save time.

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...

You guys are complaining about someone who is better at SEO than you? Do you think this business is only for broke bums who can't afford to play the game? Smart people understand it takes money to make money, and you have to figure out how the game is played and make an investment.

The whole "paid links" thing is really a shady definition. Is it a paid link if I join Yahoo Directory for $299? What about a local business that joins the BBB and gets links from them? I think if a business is willing to buy links then they probably have something worthwhile to offer people otherwise it would be a waste of money.