Links: the bane of many Internet marketers’ and SEOs’ existence…amongst other things. Why do we care about links? They connect all the sites in cyberspace - and in case you haven’t noticed, there are quite a few. According to Google, there are over 1 trillion unique and indexed URLs. As many SEOs know, links are one of the most important components used by search engines to rank a website as demonstrated by Google’s emphasis on PageRank technology.
If a website links to your website, the other website is essentially giving yours a “vote” as perceived by search engines. From the ideal perspective, your website receives a link because it has some relevant, unique, and hopefully interesting content another website wishes to share with its audience. The more votes/links you have in the eyes of the search engines, the better rank you will receive. However, unlike democracy, all votes are not equal in the Internet world. A vote from an authority PageRank 7 website has more value than 1000 votes from websites with zero PageRank.
This is why link building is such a crucial part of a search engine optimization campaign. SEO experts rely on a wide range of tactics to obtain links for their clients: e.g., link exchange, buying text link ads, free giveaways to web developers, free tools to attract links, directory submissions, press releases, blog articles, guest posts on other sites, and comments in forums.
The big three search engines, ahem, or two search engines and one “decision engine” – Google, Yahoo and Bing (formerly known as MSN) – have toughened their rules several times over the last couple of years in order to prevent webmasters from excessive and aggressive link building practices. And, Google does not approve of you manipulating its search results by running an artificial link generation campaign.
As people started tampering with Google’s algorithms, Google’s punishment became harsher. You, meaning your website, can even get banned from Google for buying links. You can get thrown it its deep, dark jail if you buy or sell links (rumor is that it’s the small and stinky basement of Google co-founder Sergey Brin’s first apartment in Silicon Valley). You will get excommunicated from the Big G’s search results. And you can get stripped of your PageRank, Google’s infamous index which determines your website’s relevance.
But it’s not easy for Google to determine quickly and simply who engages in link buying practices and then punish those who do purchase links. Otherwise, you would be able to buy links for your competitors’ websites and Google would punish your competition. While Google works to streamline and expedite the process of nailing link buying culprits, we have seen Google become increasingly aggressive in sentencing. There has been a rising assertiveness in how the search engine exercises its authority and ability to penalize a website if the search engine believes a site is manufacturing links via purchase transactions.
Wait a minute. Good, solid link bait, press/media exposure, social networking, quality directory submission, website reviews and citations from relevant websites are some of the organic ways of getting quality links. And…some of those activities considered as appropriate methods of generating quality links would be sponsored content meaning a purchase was involved, e.g. a press release with hyperlinks. You see, this is a fine line we’re dealing with when it comes to link development and the definition of link buying.
With all of this said, it is very important you do not buy links unless you really know what you are doing. Links from a bad neighborhood of websites, site wide links and links from websites completely unrelated to your site can get you penalized by Google. Furthermore, if Google sees a whole horde of links pointing to your website with no gradual evolution making it look like instantaneous link love, you may be on your way to Google jail.
A quality link campaign can give you top rankings in Google, but if it is not executed properly you will end up in Google jail. So, please do not try this at home.