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.

Paid Linking is the name given to the process where a webmaster or a person acting on behalf of the website pays for links to be placed on an independent website online; this link will be a link to the website who pays for that specific link. Ethical Link building is an important SEO technique, links play an important role in increasing the page rank and credibility of a website. Although search engines do not like paid linking methods, they prefer links to occur naturally - For instance an article found on the Internet is interesting and relevant therefore the reader links to the article writer on their website. This is the type of natural linking the search engines like to see and credit a site for.

Categorically speaking there are two main methods of paid linking, below I have gone into further detail about the two methods.

1. Paid Link Directories
This is where webmasters or website owners submit their website to a specific paid directory such as Best Of The Web or Yahoo Paid Directory. By submitting their website they are paying for the directory to review their site, if the directory like the site, if it meets certain directory requirements then the site will be displayed within the directory. Paid directories are not a guaranteed link, the website owner is paying for their site to be reviewed - The link may be accepted or it may not be accepted.

2. Paid Linking
Paid linking is where a website owner approaches another website asking for a link to be placed on their site for a fee. This can either be accepted or not by the potential link donor website. A price is agreed between the two sites and a fee paid for the link. This can take place where the website owner approaches another website or the website owner could go through a link broker who will agree a price on their behalf.

Search engines particularly do not like the second method of paid linking detailed above, this is because it presents an unfair advantage to those websites who have more money to spend on linking. The websites that have more money to spend may not be as relevant or content rich as the website that has less to spend on linking; although because they have more money to spend they are more likely to get the link. This distorts the search engine rankings as they may rank a site that is not as relevant or informative higher than the page that is relevant just because the non relevant site has a high Pagerank due to linking purposes. In short paid linking can weaken the search engine results, search engines do not like this. Therefore search engines such as Google are becoming wise to paid linking efforts and will penalise sites found to be taking part in paid linking.