Paid Links and SEO : Will Your Website Be Penalized?

Paid links are considered as the easiest way to get your website quickly ranked in SEPRs; but only if you have good funds with you to spend on your SEO campaign. However, it is against the natural SEO which affects organic search results. And, it’s unfair with other website owners who either don’t have that much SEO budget or believe in natural SEO.

Paid links SEO impact
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Google launched Penguin update, which penalizes webmasters who build backlinks by buying backlinks. This includes buying low-quality or high-quality links. Once Google figures out a link is un-natural, your website is more likely to get un-natural link warning notice (If you have added your site in Google Webmaster tool), and you will notice a significant drop in traffic and keyword ranking. Let’s see what Google think about paid links and how it is going to affect your website ranking.

Paid Links : Good or bad for SEO?

Paid link violates Google’s Policies –

Why Google rules out about 75% of search results on internet? Because of their credibility and obviously, such links manipulates the natural search results; pushing undeserving sites up in search results. And since, it’s putting a question mark on Google’s credibility they are really concerned about it. Of, course Google tries to serve the best relevant and informative websites to its users.

Purchased Links passes Page rank –

Of course, by buying backlinks is just like passing Page rank of one high ranked site to another site which doesn’t deserve it well. Well, the PR of such sites may be affected which are selling paid links. In fact, selling links hurts the credibility of a particular site since they are promoting another site through unfair ways. If you are purchasing links to improve your Page rank, I would recommend to stop doing it, and follow this handy guide to improve page rank.

Is Google Interfering Webmaster’s Rights?

As per Google, they aren’t interfering anyone’s right. Each webmaster is free what he/she wants to do with his/her site. But, if they wish to have favor from Google then they should abide the policies established by them. Manipulating search engine results is against their policies and therefore such websites will be penalized.

  • 6 reasons why Google will penalize you
  • How to check Google Webmaster penalty for a domain

How to Reinstate the PR of the sites which are downgraded?

Google officials say that you should remove all such links immediately. Or else, you should disavow those paid links. Afterwards, affected webmasters are required to file a reconsideration application. They will review the application and your website. If you still don’t get proper response they you should work from zero again.

  • Read: Why page rank goes down and how to get back lost PR

Isn’t it the killing of other advertising mediums? They say that they aren’t going to penalize advertising mediums but unfair promotion mediums only. Yes, as a webmaster you are free to offer advertisement on your site. But it should be for targeted traffic purpose. They are just trying to convey you how an ad is different from a backlink which is purchased.

Why Google doesn’t penalize Advertisements but a paid link-

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The prime purpose of a paid link is to affect the SERPs however, Advertisements are for generating awareness, getting more targeted traffic and increasing the reach.

  • How Google bot finds such links – If Google bot finds a dofollow backlink on any irrelevant niche on your site, Google bots will consider it as a paid back link.
  • General Visitors can also report paid links – Google is open for feedback from internet users; if you come to know that some site is involved in link trading then you can report it using this link.

Read: Why you should never buy backlinks – An experiment

Now if you need to build links, and you want to spend money on it, plan out a guest blogging strategy. Hire a freelance writer, who can guest blog on behalf of your brand, and build quality relevant links. Well, if you are interested on this topic and wish to find out more then you can take the help of Webmasters help forum. Also, you can visit Matt Cutt’s website where he has described it in detail.

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I am a search engine expert by profession. I have a fun time blogging about success, motivational and Internet Marketing. I help small business grow with internet media and also give SEO Training. Check out my site Senior Dropout For more details.

3 thoughts on “Paid Links and SEO : Will Your Website Be Penalized?”

  1. kunal

    i think you are saying right but i see many websites that buy paid link i do not want to tell their names, but if you are interested then you can see on google search results by typing seo services, keywords you will get many sites or seo company that buy link but their ranking is too good from a long time so my question is why Google is giving priority to them.
    thanks & regards
    waiting for early reply

  2. Tarun Kumar

    I don’t think anyone using paid links to speed up their seo process, while it is easy to get backlinks in a quik time. I do forum posting, blog directory submission and blog commenting.

  3. Phanindra

    I have seen many people selling links on digitalforum and other sites. Natural link building is the best way but what I think is paid links with very low OBL and from a relevant niche sites do not cause any harm.

    The issue arises only when there are huge number OBL from the very same page to different niches.

    Regards
    Phanindra

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