Paid Links a Trap in SEO
Posted The: 02/01/2009 At: 23:58
Last Edited: 15/06/2009 At: 20:07
Contents:
Many websites and directories are selling links, with the intention to pass PageRank. And some webmasters and SEOs are buying those links with the intention of gaining "reputation" with SEs search engines, perhaps better known as PageRank.
This type of paid links is a trap to earn quick money, Brugbart recommends that you stay away from those links.
When not to Buy Links
Stay away from paid directories, links from such are risking to get devalued.
Directories who claims that you will get traffic from them, are either faking the traffic, or mostly lieing, and you don't want to buy links purely for their SEO value.
Your link may be seen by many webmasters looking to submit their own sites. But that doesn't mean those seeing it are interested in your site or services. People generally don't use directories, there are few exceptions to this. So if you must buy your links, do at least stick to relevant sites, of high quality. Paying for directory listings is however usually a waste of your money, including the yahoo directory.
You can easily get high quality backlinks without paying for Directory Inclusions. And often you wont need that many, given a carefully chosen anchor text, and that they are coming from relevant sources.
Those who get Penalized
Buying links most likely wont get you penalized, but selling links puts your site at risk. That may or may not include getting your pages removed entirely from the serps, likely google will just devalue links from your site, if they find out you are selling links. Such links are usually worthless, unless they provide some sort of other benefits to the webmasters who brought them.
Directories generally don't have any other value then SEO, despite what their owners may claim. The quality traffic you gain from directories is likely to be minimal. The limited traffic you get, is more likely to be webmasters who are looking to optimize their own websites.
Advertising and Text Links
This doesn't mean you can't buy or sell links, you should just make sure that the links provide more then just SEO value. And you shouldn't over-do it, like the directories are doing.
A few well sold and placed ads is however fine, and can even help to cover your hosting expenses.
Consider using rel nofollow
If you want to be sure, then consider using the nofollow attribute on the links that you are selling. Directories wont consider this, because the only value of the links they sell, usually comes down to SEO. An example of how to use the nofollow attribute value is shown below.
<a href="http://brugbart.com/" rel="nofollow">Brugbart.com</a>
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