SEO Blog

Back in February, I wrote a post in which I discussed my belief that paid backlinks are a waste of money.

I’ve had a few comments & questions – so I just wanted to qualify & further explain exactly what I meant when I said paid backlinks.

[By the way - check out Brad Callen's FREE Directory Submitter - I've not used it personally, but I've used most of Brad's products in the past, and they're usually worth checking out, he knows his stuff so I wouldn't expect him to create something which isn't worth using]

I was not talking about paid backlinking services….. Although many paid backlinking services are a waste of money too!

When I discussed paid backlinks being a waste of time & money – I was referring to paid backlinks  in a traditional sense, paid for inclusion directories, blogs which charge for links & reviews, basically websites which have a paid backlinking trail, which in many cases – Google will prevent any link juice flowing from that site due to selling backlinks & not using the NoFollow attribute as per the Google guidelines.

And – I was talking about it being a waste of money for SEO purposes. That is, if you’re paying money for these kinds of backlinks hoping it’ll help you with your offpage SEO, then it’ll be a waste of money in that regard – but this isn’t to say that paid backlinks aren’t valuable in other ways – in some circumstances (more on that in a minute).

I do agree, there are exceptions to the rule, there are some directories which charge for inclusion which Google do trust, therefore there are some directories that probably are worth the fee, but it is my belief – from experience, and from the experience of other good SEO consultants, and from those REALLY in the know, such as Matt Cutts – that most paid links directories & other paid backlinking opportunities, which carry a paid backlinking trail – i.e. which Google can easily algorithmically tell is selling backlinks – are money down the toilet when it comes to helping to build link popularity.

As I touched on above however, just because paid backlinks of these kind will normally not help you in terms of SEO, it doesn’t mean they have no value.

If there is a directory or website which is topic relevant, and which you know has a lot of traffic – and could directly refer a lot of visitors to your site – then you should weigh up the value of that backlink based on the direct value  – i.e. how many potential clients will be directed to your site via the link – regardless of any SEO benefit.

So – if there is a directory, or a blog – or whatever – which you know is very busy with traffic, and is bang on target for your niche, and they’re offering to sell you a decent backlink (one in a location where someone is likely to actually click on it – that is) then it’s going to valuable to you regardless of whether or not Google are allowing the link juice to flow, or whether or not the NoFollow attribute is being used.

What really annoys me though is when directory  sales people sell directory links  & SEO benefits as a major part of the selling features for the advertising / backlink offer, either knowing full well that they’re diddling the client – or just down to ignorance – or supervisors wrongly training sales staff fully in the knowledge that they’re training people to lie to clients often without the sales persons knowledge.

I can name (but I won’t….) a least two VERY large & well known directories who’re guilty of this. Part of their sales pitch is that advertising in their directory will also help with SEO as it’ll give them a powerful backlink as the directly is trusted by google – but what they fail to tell the customer, is that the NoFollow attribute is used, so it actually has no SEO impact whatsoever. Not long ago, a client told me he was about to sign up to a well known directory, based mainly on this promise – so when I checked & showed him evidence that the directory used the Nofollow attribute on all client backlinks – when he phoned the directory back & told them why he was cancelling, the sales person apparently had no idea what NoFollow meant….

So – When you’re considering buying an ad, or a backlink, in a directory, or a blog which offers a review service – only invest in this if you believe that you’ll gain a return on your investment directly via visitors clicking the link & visiting your website – ignore any promise of SEO impact.

Also – as I mentioned earlier in this post, I wasn’t talking about backlinking services – although actually the vast majority of these are pretty pointless too!

Backlining services are offered by companies or individuals who will offer to gain backlinks to your site via a range of activities, for a fee.  I wasn’t saying in the previous backlinking post that backlinking services are a waste of money – in fact, good backlinking services are well worth the investment. Problem is, there are a lot more bad backlinking services than there are god ones.

Many of the backlinking services operate via link wheeling systems, and produce backlinks on website purpose built for backlinking only, which contain very high numbers of outbound links per page, therefore regardless of the apparent toolbar pagerank of the linking sites, the majority of these kinds of backlinks are just pointless. Apart from anything else, any available link to flow, is shared out amongst the number of outbound links on the page, so many of these kinds of backlinks are actually passing such a trickle of link juice that it’s really not worth the money.

To expand on this slightly – many of these kinds of backlinking services value the backlinks based on the Google pagerank of the linking site – so $5 per PR1 backlink, $7 per PR2 backlink, $10 per PR3, $15 per PR4 – and so on. But – this kind of valuation would only work if the number of outbound links on each linking site is fixed. It could well be that the PR5 backlinks are actually passing less linkjuice than a PR1, due to the amount of outbound links on the PR5 (that’s if they’re passing any at all, I would imagine than many of these kinds of sites stick out to Google like a sore thumb, and are stopped from passing linkjuice anyway).

So – personally I would avoid any backlinking services of this kind, and look for freelancers / companies who’re charging for activity which is conducive to building a range of good natural backlinks – services such as article writing & submitting, manual social bookmarking & directory submissions, PR writing & submitting, and so on.

If you’re looking for a UK SEO consultant to manage the whole process of optimising your website for increased targeted search engine traffic – then email me , I’m not the only SEO consultant in the UK, or the only search engine optimisation consultant in Manchester / Cheshire for that matter – but I’ve been doing SEO for some time, I know what works – and I don’t mess about cutting corners.

Another option for backlinking is to manage the process yourself – write articles yourself or find decent article writers to produce them for you, hire freelancers to do the labourious directory & social bookmarking, etc – just be aware though, like someone managing their own house build, if you’re not used to doing this, you can expect quite a learning curve, it’s unlikely things will go smoothly straight away, but if you have the time, the energy & the nerve to do it yourself – go for it.

If you’re managing your own SEO, one thing you’ll come across is opportunities to buy backlinks in a way that does not leave a paid  backlinking trail for Google to follow. For instance, you  might contact someone with a highly relevant & well established website which you suspect has a lot of linkjuice to pass to your site – and the webmaster of that site may reply offering to link a certain phrase within a page / post / article, to your website – in return for a one off or monthly / yearly fee, or some kind of a trade / contra deal.

This isn’t a paid backlink in the same light as the other kind of paid backlinking I’ve been talking about. If the site isn’t advertising anywhere that they’re selling backlinks, and if the site isn’t doing anything in a very obvious manner which makes it seem that backlinks are being sold – then there’s a strong likelihood that the backlink sales the website owner is offering, will not be causing Google to stop the flow of link juice.

Some people will call this “under the table” paid backlinking, and I’ve heard people saying they think it’s underhand, sneaky – and that Google wouldn’t like it. Personally, I don’t think Google would be that bothered by it.

Google don’t expect people not to make money from their websites, what they don’t like is that their whole system of ranking websites was being underminded by people using toolbar PR as a commodity, and selling backlinks to anyone who will pay the money regardless of the quality & the relevance of the sites.

Someone with a high PR website who gets regular backlink requests, is likely to only want to offer to link to a site – whether charging for that link or not -  that is relevant to their website, and which offers value to their clients, as they will not want to lose loyal visitors & dilute the quality of their site by linking to spammy, crappy sites just for a backlinking fee. For this reason, I don’t think Google really care if money – or payment in kind – has changed hands, if there’s no backlinking trail, and if the sites being linked to are relevant & quality sites – I don’t think Google will worry about it.

I’d advise caution though, don’t just chuck money at any webmaster who offers to sell you a backlink – have a look at other outbound links on their site, make sure that there are not lots of them on each page – and check the quality of the sites they’re linking to – if they appear to be linking to anyone who pays regardless of topic relevance & quality, then Google may pick this up as a paid backlinking trail, which means that the juice may not be flowing.

So there you go, I hope I’ve cleared things up a bit & explained further what I meant in the previous post.

Happy Backlinking….