Are All Paid Links and Submissions Bad?
-
My company was recently approached by a website dedicated to delivering information and insights about our industry. They asked us if we wanted to pay for a "company profile" where they would summarize our company, add a followed link to our site, and promote a giveaway for us. This website is very authoritative and definitely provides helpful use to its audience.
How can this website get away with paid submissions like this? Doesn't that go against everything Google preaches? If I were to pay for a profile with them, would I request for a "nofollow" link back to my site?
-
That is the predicament I find myself in. One of my competitors who are outranking me on short-tail terms have a bunch of paid advertisements (and followed links) on authoritative sites that I am currently not on. I have a sneaking suspicion these links are a major reason for their success.
Curious, did you pay up to join your competition?
-
Great. Thanks for the feedback, Erica!
-
You are correct that our tools will report the link and the link equity from it. We don't discard or discount paid links. Google has taken major effort to do this -- much of it very manual, human reviewed -- and we don't have that kind of bandwidth.
That said, we do have something exciting in the works, hopefully, releasing no later than early Q1 to more comprehensively look at the quality of that link. Stay tuned.
-
Exactly right.
Wonder why your small business can't compete with the big name brands? That's why. If you're not buying links to some degree, you're probably not ranking very well.
-
There's really no way for them to enforce that policy unless a lot of people squeal about it.
I know here at Moz, it's really something like a Taboo, but it's really not. Big companies do this daily and they do it in bunches.
I would suggest though (since you mentioned that it's just a bitly link) that you just go for it IF the price is right and if it's targeted enough.
Look at it at the standpoint of getting traffic. You mentioned that it's a good site then it probably has a good spot for your link so it can bring in leads. If you can optimize to capture these leads or just get them to your sales funnel, then it'll be worth it. You'll get more links down the line.
It's pretty much like guest posting or paying for a best of the web spot.
-
Yes, google is saying that all paid links should be no-follow, They are saying paid links are a plague. And I believe they mean it. But I am not sure they are able to enforce that policy.
By my experience paid links are so widespread google is going to find that battle hard to fight. They code their algo, and they are google, but the rest of the world is selling do-follow links.
In all backlink profiles I analyzed, all of them, paid links are probably 80/90% of the total. And I am not talking about spammy blog networks. I can give you a list of hundreds of sites with DA50-60 and PR5/6, including major worldwide news agency and leading national newspaper in all G7 countries... who sell sponsored content with do-follow links.
You may be big, strong, motivated and just, but when everyone else is doing the opposite of what you want I think it's tough to impose your will. And to date seems google is very far from reaching his objective of exterminating that plague.
Am I suggesting to buy a do-follow link from a website with (let's say) DA20 and PR2? No, stay away.
Am I suggesting you should go on a buying spree? No.
Am I telling if you buy links you take no risk? No, rap genius or bmw are good example of big names being it by google axe (but not for paid links). But I don't see google starting tomorrow to penalize 90% of the web. As for all things maybe in few years paid links will be a thing of the past, but today they are not.
I am saying everybody is doing it, and as far as you buy the links from reputable websites, so far, seems you are going to get juice without running much risk.
And yes everybody will tell you should not do it.
-
It's a grey area to be sure. Lots of the things that Google states can contradict one another, such as in your case: They want you to have authoritative backlinks from reliable sources, but they dont want you to pay for it. (Might get in their way of getting your Adwords dollars, lol)
In this case, look closely at what you are getting. Sites like YP, Chamber of Commerce all offer paid profile creations, with the paid profile links being of a higher visibility within their website. If you are getting a full profile page, with lots of ways for you to support your business or company then it could be beneficial. If you are getting a small, otherwise unfindable profile page with a anchor text optimized link directly to your site, I would stay away.
Think of the benefits of having the link. Is your link going to be placed somewhere it can be found, and when found, does the page that will be linking offer the user anything. How does the profile page help build upon your brand?
"If I were to pay for a profile with them, would I request for a "nofollow" link back to my site? "
Again, it depends on how they set up the profile, and how they set up their profiles for all the other businesses on that site. If Google sees the site as just a way to milk money out of people for paid backlinks, they will get hit and eventually so will you. I would do some investigating into the other businesses that have profiles on there, and see how they do in search results. Either way, one link will most likely not do a ton of damage to your reputation, but is that a risk you would be willing to take? Just boils down to what you feel comfortable with. -
Google should still be able to see the webpage the links originated from.
Like Anthony said, it's a grey area. To the best of my knowledge Google has been consistent in saying all paid links should be no followed, but in the real world this isn't what happens. I know of many sites in my niche paying a lot of money to advertise on a site that grants them followed links. The question becomes do you join them, or do you do what Google tells you to do?
That's up to you, just know there are risks, and you never know what Google is going to decide to do next.
-
I just realized that the links are actually bitly shortlinks. That wouldn't matter would it?
-
Any paid link though? The site in question is a very legitimate, authoritative site. Google must know that all these "company profiles" they list must be paid. Why wouldn't Google penalize the site by now?
I have a feeling that when Moz crawls this site, it finds the followed links, and reports them to have link equity. But perhaps when Google crawls the same site it will simply take away the link equity (but not penalize the website or company who has the backlink). At that point, no link juice would be passed, and it would just serve as a referral source. Is that feasible?
-
As Mick said, Google's policy is that ALL paid for links need to be no followed.
Here is a Matt Cutts video where he explains their philosophy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zupIbMyMfBI
-
Paid links are always a gray area. Yahoo Directory and other authoritative directories have always been out there over the years as a recommended spot to get a link, despite costing money.
My recommendation: Go for the link if you think it's a good site and may send some traffic your way.
One or two obviously paid links that all your competitors also have, isn't likely to cause an issue for you. If this is a tactic you are intentionally abusing and have a lot of paid links-- then you are going to be at high risk.
I'm sure others might disagree with my response...
-
If you play with fire you'll get your fingers burnt. Any paid for link must be no-followed and the guys who don't do that are playing a waiting game for Google to catch on.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Inbound Linking
Hello, I manage a company that owns a bunch of schools (20) websites. They would like to create on each website a page which shows their schools in all the locations. Will this be ok as far as white hat practices and inbound linking?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | brightvessel0 -
How to remove this type of external link from Google
Hello, My website has been hacked few days Before, But after resolved it It is generating bad links, So i am Dis-vowing it , But as it is generating links like this,
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | innovativekrishna1
http://domain.com/a></p><h1>DIXCEL HS-typeスリットディ
i am Not able to disavow it As it generating Spacing between. So my question is : Is there any Way to remove this Type of link from google???
If any body know Please Let me know, I need Do remove this As soon as possible,
please Help, Thank you0 -
Thousands of links - Am I being sabatoged?!
It seems that I am being sabatoged. I have been disavowing links every month because there seems to be more and more spam links that are popping up on my site and I'm not doing ANYTHING to allow that to happen. Does anyone have any insight? A. do you think I am being sabatoged? B. Is there a way to find out who is doing it?!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Veebs0 -
Ajax Pagination on Ecommerce category pages - Good or Bad?
We have an ecommerce site. We installed an AJAX feature that when you scroll down to say, the end of 6 rows of products, it loads another page below the seam. Question is, is this good or bad for SEO? Any tests you can suggest? Thanks Ben
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | bjs20100 -
Being Link Attacked - Should I worry?
Hey, Hope everyone is well. Just a quick question. I hope to get an answer from Google officially (I've asked in their webmaster forums area) but any experience or opinions from the community here would be great. I noticed recently that our site started to get thousands of links from comments in random blogs from all across the web. This is nothing to do with us as we don't "build links". I can only assume it is a competitor trying to get our site hit by the algorithm for a particular search term, as all the anchor text (I estimate about 1,800 links with this anchor text) point to one page on our site that is ranking for that term. I recently removed the website from webmaster tools and re added, due to an unrelated issue about the a video rich snippet not updating, and all the links have just popped up today on there. Is this something I need to worry about? and should I start collecting all these domains and using the disavow tool to block the whole domain of these sites with the comments (some of them seem like genuine sites). There seem to be new ones everyday and it looks to be an ongoing attack as well. Thanks in advance!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JonathanRolande0 -
Using an auto directory submission
Has anyone used easysubmits.com and what's your experience with it? Any other directory submission or link building tools that help automate and manage the process like easysubmits.com says they can do? I'm just looking at it currenlty and wanted to hear others thoughts before I get taken in by some black hat method that hurts my websites instead.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Twinbytes0 -
Opinions Wanted: Links Can Get Your Site Penalized?
I'm sure by now a lot of you have had a chance to read the Let's Kill the "Bad Inbound Links Can Get Your Site Penalized" Myth over at SearchEngineJournal. When I initially read this article, I was happy. It was confirming something that I believed, and supporting a stance that SEOmoz has taken time and time again. The idea that bad links can only hurt via loss of link juice when they get devalued, but not from any sort of penalization, is indeed located in many articles across SEOmoz. Then I perused the comments section, and I was shocked and unsettled to see some industry names that I recognized were taking the opposite side of the issue. There seems to be a few different opinions: The SEOmoz opinion that bad links can't hurt except for when they get devalued. The idea that you wouldn't be penalized algorithmically, but a manual penalty is within the realm of possibility. The idea that both manual and algorithmic penalties were a factor. Now, I know that SEOmoz preaches a link building strategy that targets high quality back links, and so if you completely prescribe to the Moz method, you've got nothing to worry about. I don't want to hear those answers here - they're right, but they're missing the point. It would still be prudent to have a correct stance on this issue, and I'm wondering if we have that. What do you guys think? Does anybody have an opinion one way or the other? Does anyone have evidence of it being one way or another? Can we setup some kind of test, rank a keyword for an arbitrary term, and go to town blasting low quality links at it as a proof of concept? I'm curious to hear your responses.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AnthonyMangia0 -
Too many links... OOPS
So I made a big mistake. I know it was dumb. I took a chance and got screwed. I've been researching one of my competitions back links and found that about 7000 of their 12000 links came from one site. Upon further investigation that site is a page rank 7 and the link looked bought. My competitions page rank is 6 which I thought was largely because of this one link. I e-mailed the linking sites webmaster and they bought the link pretty cheap. So I thought... Hey!? Why not! About two weeks later, today, google webmaster tools finally found the link and my links went from 100 to 7100. Now that I really think about it, I know it was a stupid move. I just figured if they got away with it, I could. I'm a white hat seo'er from now on. I've learned my lesson. Wake up today and find that all 400 keywords I am attempting to rank for, which 60% used to be in the top 3, are now not in the top 100. Luckily I am still indexed in Google though, I'm just not ranking for anything significant. Now I e-mailed the linking sites webmaster and had him remove the links. He was pretty quick about putting them up, so I figure they'll be down today. Is it just a matter of Google realizing that they're gone until I'm back in the SERPS? Or am I screwed for good? This is a little scary, I depend on Google for my entire livelihood. Yeah, I know not something I should be gambling with then. I only spent $125 on the links, but every month of traffic is worth about $3k to me. Ouch. If I lose a few months I'm at least looking at a $10k hit. Please give me some good news 😞
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | bjenkins240