paid links

While Google has been repeatedly warning, penalizing and even banning websites which does Link Exchanges, it is quite strange to see Skip, Senior Product Manager for Office Live Small Business promote link exchange openly.

On the MS Office Live blog, Skip openly propagates to go for link exchanges. He states, “If you want lots of visitors to your Web site, it helps to have lots of links to your Web site. Link exchanges — sometimes called reciprocal linking or link swaps — are a popular way to generate more links.”

While Google, Yahoo and MSN guidelines severely warn webmasters not to indulge in any such activities, it is quite surprising to see a senior product manager recommend one of the most familiar black hat methods.

Going on further, Skip also recommends to even use link-management software and join automated link-exchange programs. Jeess.. That’s hypocrisy! That’s blasphemy against search engines!!

He recommends several ways to do link exchange.

1. Do it manually
2. Use link-management Software
3. Join an automated link-exchange program
4. Pay someone else to create your links

Well the article does not end with that. He even recommends third-party tools to effectively increase links. I wonder if he works for Microsoft or it looks like these third-parties have paid him hands full to have their products promoted.

It might not be a clever decision to make money out of your high page rank. It looks like Google is penalizing websites who place paid links on pages with good Page Rank.

Google seems to be not taking websites with less than 4 page rank seriously. However, pages with 5 or more page rank are being scanned by Google continuously. If you have a paid link on your PR 7 page and you find your PR drop to two or three do not be surprised. You have just been penalized.

Following Bob Massa of Search King who first started the “PR Ad Network” selling text links openly, Robin Good of Master New Media was also penalized after Google found out that paid text links were placed on their high PR pages.

Google reduced and also removed the page rank on most of the Massa’s network of websites. This was followed by Massa filling a law suit against Google which was won finally by Google.

Google is becoming smarter day by day as SEO strategies get smarter. If you have paid text links on your home page with high PR, it is time you rethink on whether to keep them or remove it. If you are already penalized, remove all the advertisements and try to submit your site again to Google.

One way paid links with nofollow tag would not be successful if your site does not drive enough traffic. Recent discussions, polls and surveys by websites reveal that website owners would not be interested in having a link on your site with a nofollow tag if they would not yield much benefit.

There are three main reasons one would like to link to your website:
1. The traffic/visibility they would obtain by having a link on your website
2. A link on a high PR page can help increase SERP to a certain extent
3. Increasing external links

If you would be placing a nofollow tag to the link that you sell, then two of the three main reasons become invalid.

The largest search engine Google has created the nofollow tag and we need to follow it. Most of the sites get 50% – 70% of the traffic from Google. With a nofollow tag, you would be stopping the PR from passing on to the linked page and also prevent Google from recognizing it as an external link.

With just one reason remaining, an interested visitor would now look at the amount of traffic your site receives. Many blog and forum owners make a mistake here. They quote huge prices for an ad which is no where related to the number of hits the website receives every month. A advertiser would be at least aware that he/she has to check how productive that link would be before they pay you.

The best strategy would be to give out paid links with nofollow only on top performing pages.. You need to have some convincing figures on Alexa or a popular traffic analyzing tool before you ever plan to provide the service.