Buying links: Risks, grey areas and better alternatives
Why purchased links are risky, which patterns are problematic and which sustainable ways are more meaningful.
The topic is especially important when rankings, trust or the evaluation of external signals are unclear. In practice, it is almost always worth looking at quality, context and risks instead of pure quantity values.
Why purchased links are risky, which patterns are problematic and which sustainable ways are more meaningful. This wiki page arranges the topic practically and shows, When priority arises, which mistakes are often and how you derive concrete measures from them.
Example: Paid article with unlabeled keyword link
A portal sells an article including a freely selectable search word anchor and promises ranking effect. Before booking, clarify advertising labeling, link qualification and editorial context. A paid placement for reach is different than a hidden link scheme.
Google requires a suitable qualification for paid links, such as rel=sponsored. Therefore, evaluate a sponsorship via relevant readers and comprehensible contacts. The price of a link is not proof of its SEO effect.
What happens when buying a link?
Providers who sell backlinks usually place them in a so-called link farm. This is a collection of websites that contain little to no meaningful content and only send backlinks to customers’ websites. Google and other search engine operators identify such Link farms Very quickly and not only punish them with a Delisting (banishment from the index), but also the customers with a worse ranking.
Thus, the link purchase has proven to be absolutely counterproductive, even if it can lead to very short-term successes (over days or a few weeks). Of course, there are more complicated methods to distribute backlinks, namely by the providers themselves create meaningful content, place it in reputable portals and send backlinks to the customer page from there. But almost no one does this effort, the backlinks would have to be correspondingly expensive.
A webmaster can hardly determine this, which is why he should rather take care of it himself, buy the texts and search the portals himself. However, because there can also be serious methods of link building by professional providers, there is still some discussion about the link purchase in 2021. They revolve around whether it could be a legitimate method for newcomers on the web.
How can Google detect a link purchase?
If the backlinks come from a link farm, the Google algorithms quickly detect. Shortly after 2010, the search engine operator rolled out updates ()penguin and others) who have since then been targeted to track down such dubious methods and Penalties (Penalties) imposed. The Crawlers discover that a page contains nothing but backlinks and otherwise no or only meaningless content. The latter can be determined by the extremely short dwell time of the users and the gigantic bounce rate.
Both can do it. Crawlers Measure and evaluate the algorithms. However, if the purchased backlinks actually come from a page with meaningful content (see above), this can not lead to a penalty. The link purchase would therefore not be the real problem in terms of the algorithms. The question would be whether search engine operators identify companies with advertising offers for the backlink purchase and punish them at some point. After all, such offers are on the net.
Incidentally, the search engine algorithms can also detect the purchase of links on the customer side, namely if their backlinks grow unnaturally quickly.
Discussions about link purchase
As mentioned at the beginning, the link purchase is quite controversially discussed. Although link farms are consistently regarded as frowned upon, the purchase of backlinks from pages with “serious” content is by no means considered illegitimate. Proponents put forward two main arguments:
- #1: Young companies will not achieve a usable ranking in the search engines for years without buying links. They are dependent on this.
- #2: There are companies with very special business models. Too few industry experts link to their websites, because the circle of experts is very small. Their websites should also possibly try with a link purchase – but never from link farms.
If someone buys backlinks, they should take a close look at the provider and let themselves be named pages from which the backlinks originate. Link farms are taboo from the outset, but also backlinks from “link tip boxes” in the sidebar or footerlinks speak from the point of view of Google for a link purchase.
Another indication is the topic relevance of the backlinks: If a page has meaningful content at first glance, but sends backlinks to thematically unrelated or thematically very different pages, this can Googlebots Assess as spam. It is actually not difficult to identify such a thing as a customer. You just have to ask yourself what you would think of a website that sends backlinks to various other pages. If discomfort arises, a link purchase from such sites is never recommended.
Alternative to buying links
Customers who rely on backlinks have two alternatives to the prohibited link purchase:
- #1: You create content yourself or have it created (for example by freelancers, which can be found at text agencies), post it in reputable press portals, blogs, forums and social media portals and carefully link to your website from there. What means cautiously emerges, among other things, from the guidelines of press portals. Open PR, for example, requires a certain text length and allows two links per text.
- #2: The webmasters transfer all this work to an SEO agency
The latter is recommended if neither the resources nor the know-how exist in-house to operate a targeted link building.