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
-
Low quality links
Hi I have found a lot of links from a majestic report (not found on moz open site explorer). inwhich I have found lots of links from 2010 and possibly earlier which either I can't get hold of the webmaster. Is a disavow the right way to go if I can't get them removed myself? Also I have noticed that there are a lot of free directories listing new pages from our site and I am concerned Google are going to find these. I surpose there is nothing I can do about this, does anyone have any recommendations.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
Pharma Hack/Grey hat SEO. Cannot get site to rank, tons of incoming bad links
I have been working on a website trying to get it to show up in the SERPs again. It is being indexed which is great, it has some errors that I'm fixing now. But for the most part it should be ranking. It don't show any penalties going on, but when I did a backlink search we keep getting the cialis, viagra etc inbound links. First thought was Pharma Hack. But it's not a WP site and I recently rebuilt it. So whatever bad code could have been there it's not anymore. It doesn't show up in google either for the search site:www.mysite.com viagra cialis etc... So I'm wondering if anyone has any insight in a direction to point me? I don't understand what would be causing this to still not rank. Only thing it ranks for is it's name. Any suggestions would be very appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WeBuyCars.com0 -
Suggest me a best plan for linking building chart for small static website.
Hi Everyone, Can any one suggest me a clear idea for off page link building chart i.e) Our page is a 24 page website we like to plan for off page activity like bookmarking, classifieds, directory bla bla bla. So how many links we are supposed to post and in how much day time gap example: 15 Links in bookmarking, 10 links in classified, weekly one article submission, after one week the same cycle goes on.....
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | dineshmap0 -
Link building - BBB, high quality associations and also botw.org
Hello, We would like to gain some quality links to compete with the competition. We already have about 70 backlinks. We are an eCommerce site. We are thinking of adding the following links: BBB online 2 high quality PR5 associations in our niche (one is $500 and the other is $200) A couple of less expensive but still quality partner listings, probably in the $40-100 range botw.org For current and future Google standards, do you think these will improve things? Do you see anything wrong with adding these? We want a clean link profile for as far into the future as possible. Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Can links from an old site raise DA for other site? Or just unethical?
So this may be an odd question. So a competing company went out of business. Their domain name is now available. So just for research purposes, would you ever or would it be unethical for a person to buy an expired competing domain name, and point it to another site to collect their link juice? The site was only a DA of 10, but not sure if one - its bad to buy a competing companies expired domain - and two - even though in the same industry, this would be bad to point it to another site or create a site from it. Just curious your thoughts.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | asbchris0 -
Many Regional Pages: Bad for SEO?
Hello Moz-folks We are relatively well listed for "Edmonton web design." - the city we work out of. As an effort to reach out new clients, we created about 15 new pages targeting other cites in Alberta, BC and Saskatchewan. Although we began to show up quite well in some of these regions, we have recently seen our rankings in Edmonton drop by a few spots. I'm wondering if setting up regional pages that have lots of keywords for that region can be detrimental to our overall rankings.Here is one example of a regional page: http://www.web3.ca/red-deer-web-design Thanks, Anton TWeb3 Marketing Inc.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Web3Marketing870 -
Competitor using "unatural inbound links" not penalized??!
Since Google's latest updates, I think it would be safe to say that building links is harder. But i also read that Google applies their latest guidelines retro-actively. In other words, if you have built your ilnking profile on a lot of unnatural links, with spammy anchor text, you will get noticed and penalized. In the past, I used to use SEO friendly directories and "suggest URL's" to build back links, with keyword/phrase anchor text. But I thought that this technique was frowned upon by Google these days. So, what is safe to do? Why is Google not penalizing the competitor? And bottom line what is considered to be "unnatural link building" ?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | bjs20101 -
Any e-commerce users recommend an SEO company for link building?
I manage an e-commerce site. I wanted to know if anyone has worked with an SEO company for link-building that they would recommend. I DO NOT want articled directories, bookmarks, etc.. I want real link-building from credible/related sites. If you would give me an idea of the results or the general process they use I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you in advance.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | inhouseseo0