COMMENTS
Hi Mike,
I think your header for this post is a little misleading. At initial glance, it looks like you're saying that paid links is "SEO on steroids" (implying a good thing). I think a better header would've been: "Baseball is to Steroids as Paid Links are to SEO" or something along those lines.
That said, this is a very interesting subject category. I know alot of people who "rent" inbound links to boost their natural rankings.
There is a GREAT post about this issue found on Jonathan Leger's blog (Jon Leger is an internet marketer I follow and respect):
What is a paid link anyway? In it, he discusses the possible concerns Google could (should?) have for penalizing link-renters. He argues that link renting/buying is not as black and white as it may seem.
The idea behind link renting/buying is to artificially increase organic rankings, right? So, shouldn't all forms of artificial manipulation be penalized?
For example, many many people distribute articles to article directories purely for SEO purposes. And in fact, many of those people pay others to create those articles and distribute them. So, Jonathan argues, shouldn't those be considered paid links? He gives many other examples and I would recommend reading the post further if you're interested.
The link from Torque Screwdriver didn't work for me. This did:
http://www.jonathanleger.com/what-is-really-a-paid-link-anyway/
Yes, I realized I mis-entered that after I submitted the comment. thanks for the correction ;0)
I use paid links on some other websites and it's seemed to work very well. Don't forget that while Google is god, there are other search engines out there. My paid links tend to work VERY well in yahoo and for some of my sites, yahoo is my biggest traffic generator. And it's not like I'm not getting any love from Google. I get good rankings from Google for several words for one site in particular and the only thing I did was buy links. As long as you understand the risks associated with it (ie, Google could devalue it overnight). It's probably a good idea to mix several sources of inbound links to be safe.
report paid links with Webmaster tools ....
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/paidlinks?hl=en
Now I believe that why must you pay for links if you can get them free. There are so many ways to get quality links that a person would be really dumb to buy them. Contrary to what others believe I do believe that reciprocal linking is still alive. Obviously eccessive use of the method may lead to penalties, but go to
new age linkexchange and download a free ebook. This clearly show you how to get quality links withou having to pay for them.
I use paid links on some other websites and it's seemed to work very well. Don't forget that while Google is god, there are other search engines out there. My paid links tend to work VERY well in yahoo and for some of my sites, yahoo is my biggest traffic generator. And it's not like I'm not getting any love from Google. I get good rankings from Google for several words for one site in particular and the only thing I did was buy links. As long as you understand the risks associated with it (ie, Google could devalue it overnight). It's probably a good idea to mix several sources of inbound links to be safe.