well I’m back from SES New York.. and as the parties still rage on, I had time to think about Text link Ads.
I still see some sites ranking really well by just buying links via Text Link Ads, but more and more I’m seeing death and destruction, while confusion remains supreme and equality seems so far away what do you do?
In New York, for the first time I publicly said that “Buying Links just isn’t worth the risk”, in fact I even went as far to say it’s becoming the new blog spam in the internet world..
Buy expired domain with some Pagerank ( helps when buying links )
Buy 20 - 40 pages or so of quality content, around or near to the target subject.
Buy links, then 301 or cloak 301 to your spam site.
or
Just buy links for your competitor but don’t report them, just report the sites that are selling the Links, so that you keep your industry out of the Loop.
there are so many ways that buying link or selling links can get you busted, but here is the big thing EQUALITY you just don’t now who will take the bullet, from my experience it’s hit and miss..
Take link sellers like :
www.9rules.com
www.nwsource.com
www.infoplease.com
www.phpclasses.org
www.howstuffworks.com
They all seem to be holding their traffic, well most do
you might think I’m outing these guys, well that happened quite a few weeks ago when I had to do a site re-inclusion request, and yes if you have bought links or have bad links going to your site you better be able to prove what was bought and what was not and include them all in the reinclusion report. The difficult thing was that it was links that had been bought months before I was hired so even harder to trace back.
What was odd in my eyes was why didn’t these sites get the same treatment the client did .. he didn’t even rank for his own name ! We were lucky that we could find out what had happened and could fix it, with the help of Google and a lengthy report the site came back, but I see other industries that are still buying links and dominating the top slots.. so do we want to even up the playing field? Do we all log into our Google Webmaster consoles and start reporting. Buying links has never been so cheap and never been so risky…
DaveN
18 Comments
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19th March 2008 @ 16:28
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Patrick I agree it’s a right shit storm at the moment
Dave
19th March 2008 @ 16:31
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[...] Naylor thinks that paid links are more dangerous than ever but if you can get a penalty, clean up your act and be ranking again inside a few months does that [...]
19th March 2008 @ 17:00
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on gocompare : check these, the same company handling linking buying.
http://www.tescofinance.com/personal/finance/insurance/carins/index.jsp
http://www.uswitch.com/Car-Insurance/Index.aspx
http://www.comparethemarket.com/
http://www.endsleigh.co.uk/car-insurance.html
http://www.directline.com19th March 2008 @ 17:37
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I had a few sites get stripped of PR presumably for selling TLA spots. Those sites have not suffered with poorer rankings or traffic, so it appears that the PR stripping is merely to make the sites look less appealing to those looking to buy links.
I have lots of opinion about Google’s control over how we can sell advertising on our sites, but it doesn’t look like they’ll be able to punish sites buying links, only sites selling links, otherwise you could go out and buy links to a competitor’s site to get them penalized.
What did cause me great concern was the chance that my AdSense account could be affected by selling links. So, I have removed TLA from sites where I am using AdSense. I have left TLA up and running on sites that don’t rely so much on Google (yes, I actually have a few of those!)
From the link buying side of things, its obvious that I am not the only one taking down some TLA spots, because the publisher pool at TLA is shrinking quickly. There are fewer and fewer quality sites to buy links on. Add to this TLA’s terrible interface and lackluster support (they often don’t even reply to my emails), plus their focus shift away from link building (their link building blog now forwards to their corporate blog) and I think we’re seeing the end of the line for TLA as a viable business. It was fun while it lasted!
19th March 2008 @ 19:26
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SAM … “but it doesn’t look like they’ll be able to punish sites buying links”
I can confirm that the site I had to get re included was due to buying links and nothing more.
DaveN
19th March 2008 @ 19:39
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I can confirm that the sites I have in TLA are selling better than ever. Please continue to remove sites, as it pays me quite well.
19th March 2008 @ 19:59
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on the car insurance serps : http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/paid-links-more-effective-than-ever/
DaveN
19th March 2008 @ 20:43
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DaveN,
Can you describe the level of link buying by this client? Were they hardcore, or did they have just a few links here and there? And where they all the normal sidebar / footer links or blended in content links?
I have been seeing some crackdowns and at the same time I have old clients who are spending 20K+ a month for links still and ranking in some of the toughest sectors.
19th March 2008 @ 22:49
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they spent 500usd to 1500usd a month over a month period standard tla links, only small % of overall backlinks
19th March 2008 @ 22:51
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[...] Text Link Ads Silver Bullet or Poisoned Chalice, DaveN [...]
20th March 2008 @ 00:31
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It starts to take the piss when the #1 result on a moderately competitive term doesn’t even have a title tag… just lots of links.
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=canvas+prints 20th March 2008 @ 09:54
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And we can add this to box of things that you can do to harm another website.. For a few hundred dollars you could buy enough links to cause some grief.. Add that to the fact you would have to remove and apologize links you know no knowledge about since you didn’t buy them..
Nice..
20th March 2008 @ 15:41
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[...] been exposed for selling links pretty blatantly. Non of them show a (big) decrease in traffic, but buying links has never been so cheap and never been so risky. Besides David, it seems that more and more people are looking at paid links from a different [...]
21st March 2008 @ 07:27
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Links are the backbone of the internet and large factor in (original) creation of PageRank.
I was at SESNYC too this past week and someone compared buying links to smoking pot. Many people do it- it’s not legal. Many people do it behind closed doors and hurt no one- just to benefit themselves. They don’t push it, they don’t sell it (etc. etc.) But they will always do it, and keep it out of the radar enough as to not call attention to themselves.This is link buying.
Otherwise- someone tell me what the new way (majority focus) will be…..
22nd March 2008 @ 04:03
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DaveN, nice post! It is a shitstorm but It won’t take long before this will go from shitstorm to shit-tsunami! Google is playing with fire when it tries to mess with the way things were done before it came on the scene. Their goal it seems is to make the “Link Economy” theirs alone! People will just stop building content because there are less means to monetize it. Those that do will build MFA’s that Google loves and users hate. That is never a winning solution for any SE!
22nd March 2008 @ 20:22
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[...] your competitor’s boat, rather than fixing your own sails. With Dave’s write ups on buying links I see this as a viable option of late. Google is been swinging damn hard for link buyers and [...]
27th March 2008 @ 04:16
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Well this is what happened to germanies biggest Link Merchant.
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/linklift.de
looks not good:)21st April 2008 @ 10:11
Copyright © 2004 - 2009 David Naylor. All rights reserved |
I got a load of crap for even running a poll about whether people should report links so I am sure the “community” is against reporting people. We seem to be stuck in some kind of SEO code of not grassing on people even when they are breaking the “rules”.
As I see it you have to have a pretty massive brand to be able to buy your way to the top of a competitive term and stay there. Sure you can buy your way to the top 10 and escape detection but I can’t see many small sites staying number 1 on paid links.