I've spoken before about what to avoid when optimizing your website for the search engines on SlingBrain but haven't spoken extensively about buying links before. So I had thought I'd better give those that are unclear about this practice some information on the topic. See if you can spot the SEO mistakes in the information below...
You have a website about gardening. It's not ranking as well as you'd like.
You then decide to visit a few forums, well-known websites on SEO, and so forth.
All of a sudden you come across some information from another website owner that says:
someguyorgal: I went to SomeWebsite.com and bought a link from a high PageRank website. It took awhile but it's really paying off. My rankings have gone through the roof! Great way to boost your website.
What a great tip! you think. Maybe I'll go to that website too and buy myself a link!
And so you go to this website and search for a high PageRank site that relates to your topic of, say, gardening, pay for the link, and the website you chose places your link on their site.
You've got it made right?
Ok, stop here. Did you pick out the mistakes in this scenario?
If not, let me clarify a few things for you.
The first thing you need to do before using this kind of "strategy" is consider where the search engine is coming from. Any search engines goal, especially Google, wants to deliver the best content possible to it's site visitors.
If however, you decide to purchase a link from a high PageRank website for the purpose of manipulating your search engine rankings, how do you think search engines like Google feel about this?
If you were a search engine owner, would you want someone manipulating your listings?
Most likely not.
Why this is such a bad idea - regardless what someguyorgal said, is because:
A) You're manipulating the search engines;
B) When a website links to you because you paid for it, you're gaining a link not because you're website was "worthy" to the site linking to you, but rather how much money you had to spend.
If you take a look at Google's webmaster guidelines, you'll see that this is completely against their rules - with some exceptions.
Google does realize that purchasing links online is a "normal part of the economy", so there are ways to stay within the guidelines and not get penalized.
1. If a rel=nofollow is placed on the link, this is perfectly all right. What this means is that the PageRank of the site linking to you will not be passed on to you. However, sometimes a website owner does purchase advertising on a website. If the rel=nofollow link is included in this ad, the PageRank does not get passed along to the site and you can continue business as usual.
2. Another method is to have the link point to an "intermediate page" that is excluded from the index using the robots.txt file.
Lastly, Google now offers a way for you to report websites that are purchasing links for the benefit of gaining artificial PageRank. You can find this tool by going to https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/paidlinks?pli=1
While this tool can be a benefit, it also opens up a lot of doors for some unscrupulous website owners to report their competition for no good reason whatsoever.
Use the tool with caution and before you do report anyone, be sure that your information is based on facts.
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Contributor's Note
I've spent 7 years in the SEO field helping small businesses gain exposure for their websites. Now, you can learn the same information and tactics that I used to teach my clients most often, for free.
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