Buying Links & Avoiding Penalties - Me & Jason Calacanis

[wilreynolds]

Pretty easy you would think, but then again they are a heck of a lot better than MSN and Yahoo right?

[JeffSMills]

I agree. Google sucks at link analysis. How easy would it be for Google to analyze historical linking trends?

[s2ew]

It's refreshing to find an SEO specialist with some actual knowledge. Google is FAR more likely to penalize a seller of links. A buyer of links would have to be very excessive before Google would impose a penalty beyond just discounting the incoming link. Otherwise I could just buy links to my competition and then report the activity to Google. Why on earth would Google impose a penalty to the buyer beyond discounting the value of the link? I could also be buying a link for traffic & not PR.

[breaker787]

Matt Cutts said that who want to buy links for traffic or advertising and not for a PR increase he has to buy nofollowed links, and it's ok for Google then.

[wilreynolds]

s2ew - Thanks, your ending note is one that I need to touch on more frequently...some text links whether they are followed or not, can drive great traffic regardless of the PR boost.

Thanks!

[dannbkk]

You got to give my thumbs up to this guy for having enough guts to tell people the sad truth. Paid links are what drive your site to the top and build authority with of course alot of other natural inks built in with it. Point Blank!

[wilreynolds]

dannbkk, so many people just say build great content, while that is critical, you still need to promote it in every way possible. Iam not talking about massive link buys, I am talking about doing just enough to give you a running start while the great content naturally starts to build inbound links.

[wilreynolds]

Buying links lost doesn't = a bad user experience. If you buy a bunch of links for your iphone skin site and you sell iphone skins, I don't see that as a bad thing entirely, while you are working on higher quality links. Where I do see that as a MAJOR problem is when you start ranking well and targeting words like iPhone cradle when you only offer skins...that has a negative impact on the user experience. Thanks for dropping the comment.

[lostangeles86]

Unfortunately, I have to agree with Wil on buying links. It shouldn't be done, but how do you beat out the competition that is doing it? I know from experience that trying to rank on certain keywords/phrases is impossible unless you buy links. I understand Google's stance on this, as they want a quality experience for the end user. However, what are businesses to do when those paying for links are kicking your ass and need to get to the top to make a living?

[CumbrowskiCom]

Every link is paid for at some point by someone and Google is not willing to clarify what they consider to be a paid lnk that penalizes you. Great, isn't it?! ... and ... Is paying a student money to help him pay for his college education in return for a lnk with the anchor text 'b.u.y v....a' on his (.)edu faternaty page to get a page ranked well for the term 'b.u.y v....a' that actually sells via..a really bad for the relevance of Google SERPs? I don't think so.. Mhhh... :)

[wilreynolds]

Its a fine line...but my take is that your link building efforts should be well crafted enough so that they could LEGITIMATELY stand on their own, so if someone (human) were to take a look, they could say - this looks legit, not just like a spammy link purchase. You know?

[CumbrowskiCom]

I hear you.. Its also not the webmasters, users or marketers that I am worried about, but the hypocrisy of Google in this matter and their double standards. :(

The Legitimately stand on their own is subjective. You and me might consider a link legitimate and perfectly fine, but that does not mean that the SE, especially Google thinks the same. That's what worries me.

[xoxSweetumsxox]

The world is mine!! heheh i'm being silly now ahaha

_PLAY-CAM(.)COM_

[billrowand]

So hierarchy is important in both building one's own site, as well as the placement of links from another site? It seems intuitive, but not obvious...

Also, thanks for the Crawl Test recommendation. I would think that starting clean and building a strong foundation is important.

[wilreynolds]

Foundation is critical - you got it right 100%

[ShinohanDotCom]

I am 100% with you on how youtube does one hell of a job for a website. As a consultant myself I don't really like the diea of link purchases though, but it's true that it has become so fundamentally integrated into SEO that there is no way around it in some cases. Anyway, great vid as always, looking forward to the continuation :)

[wilreynolds]

Thanks so much for dropping the comment - looking forward to putting together more vids! Any issues you'd like me to talk/blog about that you are running into?

[phpzen]

Great session. Nicely handled the tax question too.

[wilreynolds]

Thanks man, just trying to be honest about what works - as for taxes I don't know squat about em, that's why I have a cpa :)