Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
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
-
Spam Score & Redirecting Inbound Links
Hi, I recently downloaded a spreadsheet of inbound links to my client sites and am trying to 301 redirect the ones that are formatted incorrectly or just bad links in general (they all link to the site domain, but they used to have differently formatted urls on their old site, or the link URL in general has strange stuff on it). My question is, should I even bother redirecting these links if their spam score is a little high (i.e. 20-40%)? it already links to the existing domain, just with a differently formatted URL. I just want to make sure it goes to a valid URL on the site, but I don't want to redirect to a valid URL if it's going to harm the client's SEO. Also not sure what to do about the links with the --% spam score. I really appreciate any input as I don't have a lot of experience with how to deal with spammy links.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AliMac260 -
New Flurry of thousands of bad links from 3 Spammy websites. Disavow?
I also discovered that a website www.prlog.ru put 32 links to my website. It is a russian site. It has a 32% spam score. Is that high? I think I need to disavow. Another spammy website link has spam score of 16% with with several thousand links. I added one link to the site medexplorer.com 6 years ago and it was fine. Now it has thousands of links. Should I disavow all three?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Boodreaux0 -
How many links can you have on sitemap.html
we have a lot of pages that we want to create crawlable paths to. How many links are able to be crawled on 1 page for sitemap.html
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | imjonny0 -
Site Footer Links Used for Keyword Spam
I was on the phone with a proposed web relaunch firm for one of my clients listening to them talk about their deep SEO knowledge. I cannot believe that this wouldn’t be considered black-hat or at least very Spammy in which case a client could be in trouble. On this vendor’s site I notice that they stack the footer site map with about 50 links that are basically keywords they are trying to rank for. But here’s the kicker shown by way of example from one of the themes in the footer: 9 footer links:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RosemaryB
Top PR Firms
Best PR Firms
Leading PR Firms
CyberSecurity PR Firms
Cyber Security PR Firms
Technology PR Firms
PR Firm
Government PR Firms
Public Sector PR Firms Each link goes to a unique URL that is basically a knock-off of the homepage with a few words or at the most one sentences swapped out to include this footer link keyword phrase, sometimes there is a different title attribute but generally they are a close match to each other. The canonical for each page links back to itself. I simply can’t believe Google doesn’t consider this Spammy. Interested in your view.
Rosemary0 -
Bad for SEO to have two very similar websites on the same server?
Is it bad for SEO to have two very similar sites on the same server? What's the best way to set this up?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
Are link directories still effective? is there a risk?
We've contracted a traditional SEO firm, mostly for link building. As part of their plan they want to submit our site to a large list of link directories, and we're not sure if that's a good option. As far as we know, those directories have been ineffective for a long time now, and we're wondering if there is the chance of getting penalized by google. When I asked the agency their opinion about that, they gave me the following answer - Updated and optimized by us - We are partnered with these sites and control quality of these sites. Unique Class C IP address - Links from unique Referring Class C IP plays a very important role in SEO. Powered by high PR backlinks Domain Authority (DA) Score of over 20 These directories are well categorized. So they actually control those directories themselves, which we think is even worse. I'm wondering what does the Moz community think about link directory submission - is there still something to be gained there, is there any risk involved, etc. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | binpress0 -
Noindexing Thin Content Pages: Good or Bad?
If you have massive pages with super thin content (such as pagination pages) and you noindex them, once they are removed from googles index (and if these pages aren't viewable to the user and/or don't get any traffic) is it smart to completely remove them (404?) or is there any valid reason that they should be kept? If you noindex them, should you keep all URLs in the sitemap so that google will recrawl and notice the noindex tag? If you noindex them, and then remove the sitemap, can Google still recrawl and recognize the noindex tag on their own?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
Cross linking websites of the same company, is it a good idea
As a user I think it is beneficial because those websites are segmented to answer to each customer needs, so I wonder if I should continue to do it or avoid it as much as possible if it damages rankings...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mcany0