Apparently, Google doesn’t really care about penalizing sites in their index, whether that is by the page level, or flat out kicking you out of Google, no matter how legit your site is you have a giant target on your back if you are not careful. Over the last year there has been a lot of talk from M.Cutts about the “problems” with buying links. He has been pretty persistent with telling webmasters that they do not condone it.

I don’t really care much for the idea Google can tell you where you can and cannot buy advertising. However, it is their index and they can do what they want.

From what I have seen so far, as far as the penalizations go they are not across the board. I still feel like it is a manual handcheck and perhaps with some level of algorithmic manipulation.

The following are 9 reasons you should be worried if you are buying links:

1. You are buying links through a network

2. You are buying links in chunks, 3-5 at a time on one page.

3. You are buying all your links on sidebar, footer locations.

4. Your entire niche buys links.

5. Your site sucks, as in no one in there right mind would naturally link to you.

6. All of your links have perfectly, articulated anchor text that simply looks fake.

7. You are not a 300+ Million dollar brand name.

8. You are doing really, really well in the SERPS, and rank in the top spot for a majority of the money terms.

9. 70+ % of your sites traffic comes from Google organic results

The bottom line is if you are buying links you really have to be under the radar. I know this has been said for a while but more so then ever. If your entire niche is buying links then there is a much greater chance your site is going to get checked out in my opinion.

Don’t go overboard, actually buy links that will get you traffic and conversions.

PS. If your link profile is made up of 1/2 to 3/4 paid links you might as well stop now, and start building defensible traffic.

UPDATE:

After further notice it appears to be somewhat algorithmic in nature, and somewhat manual. Some sites I have noticed have gotten completely docked, and some sites have only had penalizations at the page level. Will keep an eye on this as it unfolds.

I talked to Matt Cutts, and he explained that if you are trying to recoup some of your lost rankings, then the best course of action is to get the paid links removed by contacting the site owners and telling them to take them down. Once you have made a good faith effort of removing the links then they might consider the reconsideration request.

Not sure how feasible it is to get this done, but this is what he said none the less.

It looks like Google has finally started pushing, what appears to be in typical “scalable” fashion, a paid link algorithm that is completely knocking out pages (not entire sites) that it feels have been heavily gamed via paid links.

This is going to open up a whole new can of worms, and will be interesting to watch how it unfolds in the coming weeks and months. Competitor sabotage here we come?

In case you have wondered why I do not post many topics on links, it is pretty simple, it’s the bread winner. Link building is the most time consuming part of any optimization campaign and simply spilling all the beans just isn’t an option. However, with that said, I am feeling rather nice today and thought I would share a little with you.

If you are thinking about buying links then I would highly suggest following these best practices. I am not going to get into all the hoopla of is it ethical and will my site get penalized drama that has been going on since early last year, a lot of other people cover it pretty well.

DO NOT: Buy links in groups or blocks.
DO NOT: Buy links in footers
DO NOT: Buy links on irrelevant sites
DO NOT: Buy all your links on Blog platforms
DO NOT: Buy all your links from forum signatures
DO NOT: Buy all your links from .edu sites
DO NOT: Buy all your links from .gov sites
DO NOT: Buy all your links from link farms
DO NOT: Buy links from large networks all sitting on the same C Block IP
DO NOT: Go through a broker to buy your links
DO NOT: Buy links on sites that have a bunch of your competitors on them
DO NOT: Buy links and use the same exact keyphrase too much in the anchor text
DO NOT: Buy links that all point to your homepage
DO NOT: Buy links that are located on the right sidebar or left sidebar
DO NOT: Fret over the Toolbar Pagerank
DO NOT: Purchase links around stop words such as advertisement, paid, partners, etc.
DO NOT: Email Matt Cutts after a link buy indicating where your links are

DO: Buy links in middle of the page content
DO: Buy links on pages that rank, simple as that, if they rank they more then likely will help (thanks for catching that Gab)
DO: Buy links on pages that have recent cache dates
DO: Buy Links on pages that are similar in theme to your site
DO: Buy links on old, established pages that have a lot of trust and authority
DO: Buy links and keep them there, the longer the better. Links are a long term investment.
DO: Contact site owners directly and negotiate accordingly
DO: Buy links that point to interior pages
DO: Buy links from time to time and let them link to your site how they would want to, so it is natural.
DO: Buy some links that have the entire URL as the link, this occurs naturally so it helps.
DO: Buy links on brand new content that has never been crawled before
DO: Buy links in places that get lots of clicks, the more traffic a site gets the better.
DO: Buy links around content on a page that is highly similar in theme to yours
DO: Vary everything, key terms, acquisition rate, placement etc.

If the links can pass a human review then they will more then likely do the job. Google is catching on (finally) and it is getting harder to make movement up the boards. However, purchasing links is still a very cost effective practice to see quantifiable results with.

Here is a quick link to discover the links your site might have on Wikipedia. Not that they really matter for search engine benefits, now that they are nofollowed, but still a cool little tool none the less.

Hat tip to David Naylor on that one.

Well as we all know, Google likes to play around with serious algorithm changes during the slow summer months. The competitor I mentioned several months back has appeared to have been hit by the link devaluation filter again. Has
Google tuned up their filter after receiving paid links via its snitch report; subsequently reinstating it with the new changes?

I watch a niche every single day. I have been following a competitor’s ranking for close to 2 years now. We know Google is proactively devaluing links that they feel are solely there to manipulate the engines. From what I see if you purchase links the right way you are ok, I mean you have to be really dumb about your tactics if you keep the links purchases to only relevant sites.

I find it very interesting because this competitor partakes in methods which inevitably gives them hundreds of links across hundreds of different authoritative, relevant sites. Keep in mind this is a very old site that has hundreds of thousands of backlinks, they are about as authoritative as you can get. You practically have to murder something to get devalued like they are. The site used to dominate, it used to be #1 for tons of terms. Recently they came back into the picture, dominating like usual, then bam, de-valuation as I call it and they drop 6-7 spots on every single term they used to sit at #1 for. To me its very interesting to see them come back into the picture and then jump back down. I have noticed this happening since early this year and it has happened a couple of times now where it looked like they were back to dominate, only to get hammered several weeks later. Their optimizer is surely having a ulcer by now.