In this entry to the SEO Manual (Search Engine Optimisation) we will be discussing the advantages of rented linking. Building links into a website is the main off-page optimisation techniques and there are many ways to achieve this. One of these ways of building or gaining links to to rent links off a particular website.

So what are the advantages of renting links?

There are a few different advantages of renting links but for different purposes. Firstly, if using rented links for a marketing purpose i.e. advertisement, then the traffic generated from that particular link could be very beneficial indeed. Especially when renting a link from a very high quality website that is relevant to your site that it is linking to. The amount of people who may need or want your services or products can far outweigh the cost of renting the link on a monthly or yearly basis.

It’s where you start to use the rented links for other reasons which can be damaging to a website. For example, if you’re renting links purely for their PageRank to boost you up the SERP’s you may well get caught by the search engines and get your website assigned a penalty which means you’ll achieve the exact opposite of what you set out to do. Google outlines this and a rented link is no more better, nor worse than a paid link.

I have rented links; what should I do?

Make sure your links have the NoFollow attribute or are directed to a webpage which is excluded out of the index of the search engines via common methods (i.e. robots.txt file). If a vast number of paid links are found then there is a high risk of the website getting penalised.

Rented links can bring in additional sales from other relevant websites and therefore are useful in the right hands. I suggest if you have paid for or rented links then you get a comprehensive list and check which are relevant and which ones you can afford to drop to avoid paying for something that is useless.

In the entry to the SEO Manual (Search Engine Optimisation) we will be discussing the disadvantages of paid linking to a website. As linking goes; not all links are good links. Depending on who you talk to depends what opinions you’re going to get.

So what’s the disadvantages involved with paid linking?

Firstly, Google is the most widely used search engine in the world today. If you want to rank the chances are you want to rank highly within Google SERP’s first as a basis to any SEO that may be occurring.

Google have webmaster guidelines located here:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66356

It clearly states within these guidelines that any links that are intended to manipulate the search results will, and i quote, “negatively impact your site’s ranking in search results”. This is basically a penalty applied to a website which will make it drop positions within the SERP’s.

Manipulating search results basically means that the links could be highly inaccurate, and can be bought by companies with larger funds than others. Thus, this means a website that could potentially rank higher than another won’t purely because of the paid links.

Other disadvantages include missing simple lines of code or text files costing a website vital positions. Paid linking is great for advertising websites etc as long as you use the ‘NoFollow’ attribute or a link to a page that has been excluded from the search engine index (via robots.txt etc).

What do I do if I have paid for links?

For the links that you have paid for make sure that they have the NoFollow attribute or you have excluded the page they are going to using a relevant method (e.g. robots.txt file). This then ensures you will receive no penalties and that everything you are doing is suitable in the search engines eyes.

Summary

Avoid paid links if using them to manipulate the SERP’s and boost your rankings. If you’re using them for advertising purposes then that’s fine. Always keep an eye on all links you have inbound to the website so you never get caught out; as it;s much harder to climb rankings than it is to lose them.