In the vertical I watch, which is intense, avoid it like the plague. Most folks that relied on heavy linking are gone except brands.

Smaller sites in other ecommerce niches are holding with a few paid links - but they hardly need to link to rank. So perhaps better off building without I'd say.

IMHO - Most people that talk about buying links, do it all wrong. The easier it is to buy the link, the easier it is for that paid link to turn into trouble, and the harder it will be to clean up the mess.

I regularly provide compensation in exchange for gaining links from relevant websites. I only target websites that my research leads me to think there is a good chance of generating click-through traffic that will lead to a conversion on my site. Sometimes I offer them content, prizes, gifts, monetary donations and similar items. All of these items cost me something, so I guess you could say I buy alot of paid links. I just stay away from public networks or websites that will sell links to anyone - they tend to be poor long term investments.

@goodroi - thanks for focusing the mindset. Good post.

@goodroi - That's what I was gonna say.

The problem with Goodroi's method is that competition soon follows and that site owner will be begged, asked, coerced or bribed to add another link from someone else.
The site owner will of course comply because the prior deal worked so well.
Then another will ask and then another...and before you know it, its flagged as a site selling links.

Savvy link buyers will pay more for exclusive deals, or on terms of the amount of outbound links a page has.
Paying links on monthly terms is another option though that also comes at a premium price with good link sellers.


A good link seller needs to be just as discerning as the link buyer.
A good link seller will only accept sites relevant to their own and obviously of good original content.
The good link seller will choose their own anchor text and own place of placement on the page.
They also need to have terms of their own.
Such as the right to terminate any link to a url that has been penalised in any way, or changes content, or acquires links from other sites in a unnatural context.


Let me add to that by saying that there are still plenty of serps dominated by bad link buyers from bad link sellers. ;)

I don't think paid links or buing backlinks are good.google gives more importance to natural links.so avoid buing backlinks and start build backlinks manually.:)

Does buying links still help in Google?
....
....
What do you see in your sector and is it still working?

Yes, buying links still work and it works in ALL sectors despite rumors to the contrary. You just have to know where to buy links from, what kind of links to buy and how much to pay for them.

Does Buying Links Still Help You in Google?

Like all other things it'll work until you get caught so I'd avoid anything that looks too obvious because the more people are there buying links the more likely everyone is to get nailed IMO.

All things in moderation, blah.

Be careful blindly following your competition. Some sites rank despite having bad paid links.

I had a client spending thousands of dollars each month on paid links. The client refused to believe me that most of their paid links were worthless. So we slowly cancelled them one by one and their rankings never dropped. I didn't kill all paid links, just the ones that my analysis found to be not worthy. I also have first hand experience with good paid links boosting rankings.

You just need to be careful and know the difference between good and bad. If you can't tell the difference then don't go into the forest and eat just any mushroom you happen to find - because you are likely to have a bad day.

Bad day? I was thinking final day.

Buying links is so 2009

Buying links is still the best way to rank well for competitive phrases. The trick is to avoid the known link sellers. SEO hasn't changed much from the first Pubcon... so much is still about networking.

Sometimes you only need a few quality links, or one quality link to get from where you are to the top of the SERPs. Quantity and quality are not the same when it comes to links and you can buy bad links all day but you still won't get into the top.

I always recommend looking for sites that don't compete with you exactly, maybe a review site or some hobby site that ranks really well as an example, same topic area but not a threat. Ask them real nice if they'll sell you some "advertising" with a raw link on it because you don't like those banner ad trackers because if they fail due to internet errors you lose the customer vs. the raw link.

FYI, I toss all form letters but something written by someone that has actually visited my site and knows what it's about might be entertained :)

<ot>What I said about trackers is true too because any time you put a 3td party in the loop you could lose easily 10% of the traffic as I used to track clicks leaving my site before they went to a 3rd party ad tracking run by the ad sellers and often those clicks didn't get there. We're talking well paying campaigns run directly for companies like Apple, HP, etc. and we got into some real heated arguments because customers couldn't get to their site wasn't my problem because if I ran them raw like normal without redirecting to their shoddy connection all ads were delivered. They paid up the first time but the second time I just added 10% fudge factor and it worked.</ot>

I agree incrediBILL, it only takes a few good links, especially if your internal link structure is flat or built in such a way that spreads rank to internal pages efficiently.

Even if you pick up a horrible rotten festering link of doom it will take weeks before negative effects take hold and in that time any link will help, paid or not, so long as the page giving the link isn't already banned. I don't recommend link buying, and don't buy links myself, but link buying isn't as evil as Google would have you believe. There are good reasons for reaching out and offering compensation for a mention, just stay out of the common places people go to get links and do the legwork yourself where it makes sense.

It definitely only takes a few good links--or actually one link from a highly authoritative, trusted site.

Any links that I buy nowadays are links that lead to traffic--not just the "SEO value".

You can now buy Google Authorship. Is that going to be the next big thing? Same or better (worse) than a paid link? Perhaps.

Hi guys, I would agree with most of the comments here as well.

My question to you - in your opinions, what are some of the fastest places on those target websites to "procure" links for advertising.

Donations pages?
Top list pages?
General content pages (as resource / citation)
Others?

CainIV, I would look for quality first. Then if you have to pay to get the link, then fine. But look for sites that will bring traffic to your site because of the link.

I think the link sellers are always a step ahead of Google and will always be. Google plays whack a mole all the time and their algorithm constantly changes as we all know. The sad part is that when Google changes their algorithm it can have unintended consequences to the sites that do not buy links. I think recent changes might also explain why big brands have been rising to the top of the results.

Guys, I am in a similar position. I have been spammed with some bad links (not bought or exchanged) and now I want to disavow those links. When I add the links to the disavow list, do I only add the top level domain of the linked site or all links coming from that site?

Does Buying Links Still Help You in Google?

that is the best laugh I have had in a long time... you made my day, thanks :-)

Buying relevant links is the best strategy to rank. Do you think the top sites wait for a nice visitor to link to their site in case (important) in case he/she has a blog, no, they are forced to act (buy) because everyone is buying or spamming. How about those without a blog, a site... well they are not important. Your opinion matters only if you have a blog where you can link to the prefered site otherwise your opinion as visitor is not important, it's not an important factor in ranking.

Rank manipulation is terrible, you have 2 options these days:
1) Be one in a million
2) Invest "a million" to be one of them (Top 10)

See, After A long series of Google Penguin And Panda Google focus only at quality and I like to share that User Generated Content(UGC) have a high value in this time. And You may get not only Google Ranking but visitors also put trust on you.

Buying link is not so bad even today but it must be quality links. Write unique review and rating for your products or services. Try to be generate natural reviews by the people. This will be most beneficial factor for you.