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.
Is there such a thing as buying white hat backlinks? (example)
-
Hi, would you guys recommend using a backlink service like this?
https://www.peopleperhour.com/hourlie/gain-30-links-from-30-top-newspaper-sites-in-the-uk/396519Or is this the kind of thing that leads to being penalised?Over the years, I've always been told this is black hat and dodgy. Is that always the case?
-
When I started my website, https://webylinks.com/, intiallyI was heavily invested in purchasing hundreds of backlinks. However, instead of rank improvement, it dropped from 16 to 15 DA. So, I shifted my strategy to earning quality backlinks through white hat methods. I have also shared my experience on this journey here https://webylinks.com/how-to-create-quality-backlinks/. I strongly recommend to earn them through proper content, make strategies and engage with niche relevent websites.
-
We believe that the only way to get backlinks is to earn them.
What we mean by this, is to write high-quality content marketing, such as well-written blog posts, then other businesses may want to link to you.
Make sure the blog posts are written in a white-hat way.
-
Yes there is, especially for local SEO. Chamber of Commerce for cities are awesome links. The cities usually require a yearly fee to obtain these do-follow links.
-
Hi there,
I'd agree with the other replies in the thread in that these links are likely to be risky. They may well work, but they're not the kind of links that Google necessarily value, so the amount of time they work for could be pretty limited.
Reading the description of the ad, it sounds like they are submitting to the business directory section of UK newspapers which is actually not a bad tactic. But paying someone to do it for you without knowing fully what you'll get in return is where the risk lies really.
More broadly, I think that buying links is always going to be risky and therefore moves it into the grey hat area of tactics. It can still work and in some niches, it's almost necessary, but I still wouldn't advise it for most people.
Hope that helps!
Paddy
-
I agree with Skye AP. There's no lasting value to paid links, just increased risk. I know it's cliche, but your best investment is in creating and publishing truly original, sought-after, high-quality content and then promoting the heck out of it on sites where your best prospects, customers, peers, and influencers like to hang out.
-
I've personally used services like this one and others just to test the efficiency of it vs natural link building techniques and the conclusion I came to is that even if it was legal, it would still be a waste of time. These types of bought links fall away eventually as they make space for the next person wanting to buy it and I think that a certain aspect of those sites are focused on automated / generated content which will get flagged later on turning those high DA links into spammy links that bring over penalties and spam score anyways. The links you can buy that are "safe" would be costing you around $400 per link so unless if you have a huge piggy bank ~ that's not an option either. Advice would be to forget about paid links completely and focus on the guidlines the search engines give you and just go the natural route.
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
-
Backlinks from local businesses
Hello, I need to make sure I understand this correctly. Will it help my SEO if I: find local businesses with a good DA & low spam score select businesses that are somehow related to mine (Insurance Agency) offer to guest post and include a backlink on their blog ( ask them if they'd like to reciprocate) For example, businesses such as
Link Building | | laurentjb
Roofing companies
Contractors
moving companies
etc Please let me know if there's anything I'm missing? Many thanks1 -
Footer backlink for/to Web Design Agency
I read some old (10+ years) information on whether footer backlinks from the websites that design agencies build are seen as spammy and potentially cause a negative effect. We have over 150 websites that we have built over the last few years, all with sitewide footer backlinks back to our homepage (designed and managed by COMPANY NAME). Semrush flags some of the links as potential spammy links. What are the current thoughts on this type of footer backlink? Are we better to have 1 dofollow backlink and the rest of the website nofollow from each domain?
Link Building | | MultiAdE1 -
How much time does it takes for a backlink to get registered in Google? My basketball anime website has been live since start of this week and Google has not registered any backlink.
So my website https://www.animedhfa.com/basketball-anime/ about basketball Anime has shown no changes in DA or backlinks. It has been 5 days perhaps since it went live.
Link Building | | ahmad74750 -
Backlinks through dofollow commenting
I'm interested in building backlinks to my photography business site by leaving good, engaging comments on other photographers' DoFollow blogs. Is this a good idea? Is it worth the effort? Through a little research, I've managed to locate more than 40 dofollow photographer blogs that have a domain authority of 35+. The idea is to take an hour or so a week to leave 10-20 comments on their blog posts. Would you consider this a good strategy? I rank on the first and second page of most of my keywords that I'm working on, but I want to rank 1st or 2nd on them. I used the keyword finder tool on google adwords to find the keywords that are the most searched for in my area. Surprisingly the competition is not large, so I'm fairly comfident I can get there. I've already optimized my site substantially and I'm looking into link building. Thoughts?
Link Building | | studio35design0 -
Hidden Backlinks
Hi, I hope someone can help me with this. We have a competitor who appears to be ranking No1 for a competitive search term with a very lame site and above some authoritative sites. He has been here for some time as well. When we check out his back link profile through OSE, Majestic and Ahrefs they show as only 3 backlinks from no PR sites. However, someone pointed out that they could be using a link network that is blocking every crawler apart from Google, Yahoo and BIng. I would like to know if there is a way to confirm this. For instance I know that we can use screaming frog to mimic Googlebot, however, if there a way to reveal the real backlinks to a site like this using any tools. Thanks
Link Building | | kirstyseo0 -
Quick question : Is it ok to get 300 quality backlinks ...
Is it ok to get 300 quality backlinks ... from different authoritative domains in one month...I think google might find it strange and I might get penalized...
Link Building | | ksbnok0 -
How to remove backlinks?
Hey guys, With all this anti over optimization movement going around with Google, I decided to do a link building profile audit. I see some pages with PR 0 and some pages that expired. My websites are not penalized at this moment, however I do want to avoid this at all costs. What can I do? Could a backlink from an expired domain penalize my site?
Link Building | | nrv0 -
Backlink booster - boosts and helps to index links?
Hello all, We are using a tool called backlink booster that works in the following way: you view a page with a backlink to your site click on a boost link saved in favourites the link is pinged to rss directories and web 2.0 sites The idea is to get your links indexed faster. Has anyone used this or something like this and had any benefit from it? Thanks Shehzad.
Link Building | | Gareth_Cartman0