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Paid Links & SEO – DANGER!!!

Updates

New Clients
We welcomed 2 new clients in February.  Welcome aboard!

Google Universal Search Event

On April 8th, SEMPO Boston is sponsoring an event where a product manager for Google’s Universal Search platform will be speaking.  This is a rare opportunity to hear directly from a Google product manager about one of the hottest topics in SEO!

The event will be held at Google’s offices in Cambridge, MA.

More info & registration on MeetUp.

KoMarketing Associates on Twitter

We recently set up a corporate profile for KoMarketing on Twitter.

Come follow us!

This is in addition to personal profiles for Andy, Derek, & Bill.


Social Media & Professional Services

Andy was recently quoted in a research report, and subsequent article, produced by RainToday.

The research report covers:

Blogging, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Podcasting, Wikis, del.icio.us, Digg, Flickr, YouTube – with all of the social media out there how do you decide which tools are right for you? How can you use social networking to help build, maintain, and enhance relationships? Where should you begin?

The Danger of Paid Links in SEO

Here at KoMarketing we have recently had a number of discussions with clients, and internally, about the value of paid links as an SEO link building tactic.

First, let me say that Google publicly states that it does not value paid links in its PageRank algorithm – you can read all about it right from Google.  Here is an excerpt from Google’s public stance on this issue:


“Many people who work on ranking at search engines think that selling links can lower the quality of links on the web. If you want to buy or sell a link purely for visitors or traffic and not for search engines, a simple method exists to do so (the nofollow attribute). Google’s stance on selling links is pretty clear and we’re pretty accurate at spotting them, both algorithmically and manually. Sites that sell links can lose their trust in search engines.”

In an article published on Forbes.com, Google Purges The Payola, there was discussion about how other search engines also frown on the practice of paid links for SEO:

“Search engines hate this kind of paid-for popularity. Google’s Webmaster guidelines ban buying links just to pump search rankings. Other search engines including Ask, MSN, and Yahoo!, which mimic Google’s link-based search rankings, also discourage buying and selling links.”

You can also read about the differences in how Google and Yahoo interpret paid links.

Second, because this is a stated policy of Google’s, and the other engines, we do NOT recommend paying for links purely for SEO value.

Here are our thoughts on the subject:

1) Don’t engage in mass link-buying campaigns for SEO purposes!

2) Pay for a link only if you think that users (real people) will find that link, follow it, and find value in your website, products, services, etc.  Think of it as advertising!

3) If you pay for any links, make sure that the website you are advertising on is reputable & does not sell links with “SEO intent.”

4) We have seen some companies receiving an SEO benefit from paid links.  They just have not been “caught” yet.

5) Being “caught” for paid links does not necessarily mean that your website will receive a penalty from a search engine.  It is more likely that the links will simply become devalued and the SEO benefit will go away.  However, Google does state that sites that buy or sell paid links will be devalued in terms of PageRank.

6) Any time that you pay for a link, you should absolutely be looking at your Web analytics data to see if people are coming to your site, spending time there, and converting into customers/leads.

7) What about links from banner advertisiements?  I wrote an article about this that you can read – Can Banner Links Help With SEO?

8) If you are frustrated with competitors who appear to be paying for links to boost their keyword rankings, you may want to consider reporting them to Google.

9) Want an example from Matt Cutts (of Google) about why/how paid links affect the quality of search engine results?  This is a very nice example, complete with screenshots – http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/selling-links-that-pass-pagerank/.

There is no getting around the fact that link building takes time, resources, and creativity.  You just have to work smarter and harder than the competition!

 
Best wishes,
Andy
http://twitter.com/akomack