The downside
Building a lot of links through good PR and relationships takes time, but while link buying appears to be a quick remedy, it's actually a rather poisonous pill. For starters, Google reserves the right to remove pages, sections of pages, or even your entire website from the search results if you violate one of their webmaster guidelines, such as buying links. As such, you could drop from the first page of search results all the way into the fifth, sixth, or seventh.
"It's not so much punishment, but maintaining the integrity of the search results," Lasnik says. "It's protecting the user experience and elevating great results. The only reason we take action against websites who want to manipulate Google results is so that users have access to the most relevant information."
Google also frowns upon the practice of link selling. If the search engine identifies a link seller, the purchased links will maintain their PageRank, but it will not be passed along to the pages it links to. There's then no way to tell if these pages are actually passing along their PageRank.
"In a buyer-beware environment, we need to be concerned whether the people selling these one-off contextual ads have already been caught, and therefore, I'm paying for smoke and mirrors," Clay says. "It's snake oil."
Every SEO expert interviewed for this story agreed that the best practice for rising in the search rankings is through building quality content, and each strongly recommends that practice to their clients. However, there is another side to the link-buying argument.
"Paying for links in and by itself is not a Black Hat technique," says Thad Kahlow, a managing partner at Business Online. "You should buy relevant links because you believe that the traffic will provide a positive ROI on the cost of the link, rather than the potential lift the links might provide to your SEO efforts. You get into trouble when you start purchasing links for the sole purpose of increasing your search rankings."
For example, if you're in the manufacturing business, you'll want to list your website on a manufacturing directory like ThomasNet.
"If you're in the business of building and manufacturing ball bearings and you're listed in ThomasNet's directory, you're paying for it," Kahlow says. "In our opinion, that's a good place for you to be, a good place for you to pay, and Google should reward you for it. There is that gray area where it makes sense."
Kahlow added that if it's very relevant and the intent is pure, he's willing to pony up some money to help out a client. "We like to look at linking from a very long-term perspective, and we will supplement that as necessary. If you buy a paid link in a directory or resource, it's relevant, links to your content, and it's a pure path, then Google will often recognize that."
However, Kahlow was quick to point out that link buying should never be the first step of any SEO strategy. "Everyone can justify it, but I would definitely say that link buying should not be the first or last place where you put your chips from a linking perspective," he says.
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