Paid Links Can Hurt Your Results in Google
Posted by Mike | Filed under Link Building, TrafficIf advertisers are paying for links on your websites you will want to review Google’s policy on paid links on websites with the intent to pass Google PageRank. Google doesn’t mind paid links, but they do mind paid links that are there for passing PageRank only:
… some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links that pass PageRank, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results.
If you are going to have people buy links on your site ensure that you add the “nofollow” tag into your link as Google suggests:
Adding a rel=”nofollow” attribute to the <a> tag
For example, if your link looks like this:
<a href=”http://www.tw3o.com”>tw3o</a>.
Change it to:
<a href=”http://www.tw3o.com” rel=”nofollow“>tw3o</a>.
By using this simple “nofollow” tag you will be telling the search engine spiders not to follow this link thus saving you from the wrath of Google. Don’t think Google is serious? I found these two example of users that were punished by Google for using a text link service:
… my PR [dropped] from 5->3 and lost all my Google Search Traffic, lost of 16 000 visitors/day.
I lost ~10,000 visitors/day
Go back and add the “nofollow” tag to your paid results and add the tag to all future links that you post on your blog/website. If you are going to use paid link services like zmtc.com and text-linkads.com do some research before posting their javascript onto your website.
I have been kicked by google too…not for selling but for buying paid links. That said, I’m not sure I agree with the following:
Quote from post:
“Go back and add the “nofollow” tag to your paid results and add the tag to all future links that you post on your blog/website.”
Good advice but (erring on the side of extreme safety). Adding nofollow tags sponsored links is DEFINITELY good practice, but to every link on your site/blog would hurt google more than help as the spiders would have a difficult crawl through the web…or lack there of. Not to mention they use links to determine the credibility/trust of a site.
I think google accomplished what they set out to do…make a statement, penalize high profile sites (like justsayHI), and get the word out that paid links aren’t always the best approach to marketing.
Make sure you let your advertisers know before adding nofollow. Otherwise I still buy and sell links without any penalties from Google. Its all about using common sense and making the links look natural.
indeed selling links can get you slapped, but the way you have to do it as out friend above apined is to make it look natural.
Another option is to sell the links ‘inside’ the post or camo. them a different way.
Also thinking about it logically all ‘nofollow’ links on a site wold then bring up a redflag if we were to follow this principle. I mean why link then?
Another option is if you do sell links make sure they are niche related and you like them, then you don’t fret about passing PR.
I agree with Don to sell links to site which have related niche…I think this option is the most secure option rather than put nofollow tag to all future links that we post on our blog/website. We must be able to make the links look make sense.
I lost ranking after paying for links and now just do not pay any more. Its unfortunate that few that abused the system caused those that are honestly trying to make a profit from getting advertisers.
SEO blog is very right, you must tell people though as they are paying for the “link”
Personally I think it’s ok if you just wanna advertise your site but not about linking. Why buy when you can build the backlinks by yourself? If you simply don’t have time you can always hire someone to do this (you can find a lot of people offering such services at DP ).
You just have to be careful about it. Google has no right to tell you what you can/cant do.