There is so much hype out there about “to buy” or “not to buy” when it comes to buying links. Here are my 2 cents.

Lets first state this simple fact, Buying links can actually get you in trouble with the search engines.

You shouldn’t buy links from website’s that openly sell links and you should not buy links from link brokers.  Eventually the search engines will improve on their ability to detect these link purchases.  If you choose to buy links, this should only be a small part of your overall online marketing campaign.

On the flip side, it is amazing how many high quality links you can grab on high page rank sites by simply offering to toss the website owner $25 through paypal or if you want to take a more personable approach and offer them beer money. All jokes aside, try to be creative and only buy links from sites that don’t actively sell links.  Make sure the link is coming from a well rounded and established site without any links or sponsors sections on their main pages. So if you are buying links, make sure that your link isn’t grouped with a large number of other outbound links.

Google employee Matt Cutts has made an open statement that you should not buy links. You can see his video opinion below

Google is trying hard to provide quality search engine results, and Google does not want their search engine results altered.

Something I noticed that Google did in the somewhat recent past was de-valuing link directories.

Since some types of paid links come from directories full of numerous link pages; I believe Google determined that those pages should not hold much relevance, therefore we saw decreased trust on these directory pages.  Even Yahoo’s expensive directories lost a large amount of their Google Trust, or Page Rank.

In conclusion, be proactive about contacting webmasters that are not in the business of buying and selling links and attempt to create a relationship with the webmaster. Then ask if you can have or buy a link.

Some of the best links you could purchase would be by asking for a website to review your website, and then link to it. Or something of that nature, it’s common sense that the search engines could never manage to create their algorithm with that type of complexity.  Plus I love having reviews done about my company, because then I get one page dedicated to promoting my website and therefore you won’t get other junk links potentially de-valuing yours on that same page.

If that doesn’t work, go for a reciprocal link. I still believe in reciprocal links wholeheartedly from some in-house case studies we performed.

Joel McLaughlin
Phoenix Search Engine Optimization SEO