Since finding quality links are an extremely important factor to the success or failure of an online business, many companies have popped up – promising webmasters 100’s of quality links. Among the companies that assert such claims are: link exchange programs, link purchasing, software programs, article writing systems, blog creation systems (which may include splog systems).

Note: Splog is a blog term– It is a spam blog, which the author uses for the sole purpose of promoting their affiliate websites, to increase page rank, or as a link outlet to get new sites listed. The articles are considered Spam, with no viable content. 


Link Buying – The Concept

Webmasters are always looking for ways in which to increase their page ranking – thus, Link Buying, when it first began – was a pretty simple method for those websites with high rankings to make money from their website. 

The high ranking, high quality website, would open a page where a webmaster could buy a plain text link in hopes of increasing or improving their own page rank. Today, this simple concept has created a business for some webmasters.


Do The Search Engines Condone Link Buying?

The people at Google and Yahoo, both feel that the buying and selling of links lessens the quality, integrity and creditability of the links on the Internet. And they would prefer to have the “no follow” attribute to the link, so that it would not be included in the page ranking. (Doesn’t help you in your linking strategy.)

Why is this important to Google and Yahoo? Both put a high relevance on the meaning of links from one site to another – and thus, the reason why they are steadfast in the pursuit at reducing the tendency toward link purchasing. (Understandable, links are the connecting force to the Internet.)


To Buy Links Or Not To Buy Links

Should you buy links? From my point of view, I would say no. Why? People may be getting away with it now, but in the all too near future the rules could, and probably will change. If the search engine rules become stricter, the links you may have purchased or are thinking of purchasing may affect your website in a negative light, in the eyes of the Search Engines. I don’t know about you, but I certainly do not want to wake up to a website -- after working late hours and a year or two on my site to see it drop in rank or penalized – because of my greed for ranking. Do you? 

But you say, how will they know if the link is natural or bought? Here tell, Google and Yahoo are getting better at determining these links. But sadly, they cannot determine the intent. With that being said, remember – even if your intent is/was innocent, the Search Engines will not know – they will proceed according to the programming rules instituted by human programmers. 

But all is not lost, there is one way in which you can buy links and stay free of the penalties that Google or Yahoo may place on you – you can buy plain text links (these links do bring in traffic to your site). However, Yahoo and Google would like the individual that is selling you the link to incorporate the “no follow” attribute into the link. This way, you will be safe and will not be penalized, because Google and Yahoo will not use it in the ranking of your page. Alas, if the individual incorporates the “no follow” attribute into the link – that defeats the purpose of even buying the link.

Translated, it means that you would find greater success if you do not buy or sell links to increase your page ranking. Always use the natural way of getting one-way links – all based on the quality of your content on your website. 


Reciprocal Links

Reciprocal links is another avenue you can look into as well. However, you're depending upon the honesty of the individual you are linking too. What do I mean? Here are some things that can happen:

1) A request for reciprocal links – when you first exchange the links, your link is placed in a heavy traffic area web page– great exposure. But soon, it is buried in the mass of links in some obscure web page that few, if any visitors visit, or it is deleted. If you are not aware of the transgression, you will have created a one-way link from your site to their site, giving them the ranking-and you-nothing.

2) Your links exists and they are counted by the Search Engines, but the links are not visible or clickable. No value to you.

3) You have created a link with a partner and you did a visual check on the site. Everything looks good. Better check behind the web page at the source. (Right click in the body of the copy, and click on “View Source”. If you see “noindex” in the Meta tags this is telling the Search Engines to ignore the page and the links on the page. If you see “nofollow” in the Meta tags – this tells the Search Engines not to count this page in their Page Ranking. Either case will not help you.

4) The Redirected url - Yes, you put the url they request on your site, and everything is find for a month. Just long enough, where they think you will no longer be checking up on the link. Then they redirect the url to another location.

This can give you an idea of what other webmasters may be doing. So always be aware of your link partners, and be sure to check their site for your url.