But the reason SEOs are still recommending paid li...

2007-10-09T09:35:00.000+01:00

But the reason SEOs are still recommending paid links is because they work! Google are right to be penalising sites that sell just any link to any site, whatever the context or relevance, as it is a fairly sure sign of a low quality site and can also be pretty distracting for the user. However, I won't be putting money on sites like E-Consultancy being penalised in spite of plenty of obviously paid links with no nofollow tags, including one to a certain SEO agency (though I'm aware you placed your own sort of nofollow on that one, very clever), as the links are on topic and promote services which may well be of some use to the end user. Surely you see the difference? Google certainly can.

Besides, there's NO evidence so far to suggest that sites are being penalised for carefully buying links (unless they're sitewides or from particularly spammy domains, in which case the penalty would apply whether the link was paid for or not), only for selling them. With this in mind, surely the only thing you're risking is the client's money (or your agency's profits) which, given the relative potential returns, I guess most SEOs find to be worth it.

Comments on Andrew R H Girdwood: Selling Links Can Harm Your Site

But the reason SEOs are still recommending paid li...