About Paid Links

There is an interesting post by Gab Goldenberg on Search Engine Journal that looks at 101 tips for buying text link ads. I know many web owners have considered buying links as part of link building strategies but have steered away for fear of possible search penalties. It does raise a question as to whether they are worth the time and effort that goes into acquiring and managing these links.

The post calls them text link ads and they are - they are also simply paid links, a practice that Google frowns heavily upon. However, there is one statement that is worth thinking about:

One thing I tried to demonstrate in this article is that you can take virtually every organic link building technique and achieve the same thing with money.

It is a very true statement. I won’t go into the rights and wrongs of paid links, you can make your own mind up about that issue. Creating an organic link is not difficult. For the site creating the link, it’s a moment’s work. The difficult part is in finding those who have the pages that you need links from. In the past, link farms have worked on the basis of link quantity over quality - these days quality is more important than quantity although they both have their places.

Let’s look at one example of an organic link that could be bought. One of the best links you can obtain is through a quote. This is where a portion of text is reprinted with a link back to the originating site (as I have done above). The question now is how much are you willing to pay to have someone quote you? Twenty pounds, thirty, forty? Of course it depends on the site linking to you but even at “20 for a PR4 or PR5 site, are you getting value for money? The second question is how many of these links do you need - 30,40,50? If you were to buy 50 of these links the total cost is “1000. Could that money be better spent elsewhere?

I think it can. For “1000 you could probably buy 50-100 well written articles which could be submitted to article directories or used as guest posts. I am sure with that sort of strategy you could end up with far more than just 50 inbound links - and they are all legitimate links! What are your thoughts, are paid links value for money?

Fero Alenc know most of the best SEO tips, because he has been practising SEO for four years. For more information check Fero Alenc’s great SEO tips.