Link buying - ethical or unethical?
A pet peeve among panelists in a recent SEO Thought Leaders Summit was the engines' opposition to the tactic of link buying. Christine Churchill had some wise words to share about link buying:
Search engines like to take the hard line and categorize things as either black or white. In some cases, they are actually grey.
Say you are an artist and have a local frame shop you like to recommend. In turn, the frame shop might give you a small referral fee for sending all your wonderful clients their way. The online version of this is a link from the artist’s website to the frame shop’s website. It makes sense. It’s good marketing. It’s good business and that is what link-building and link buying is all about.
Many times, a link is a great lead generator. Let’s take the artist and the frame shop example again. You might get tons of traffic from that artist’s shop. It is a great business link.
You might buy links for credibility. Taken to the extreme, your link from the local Chamber of Commerce could be considered link buying.
Personally, I think link buying is a perfectly legitimate practice. I don't see the difference between a banner ad and a text link ad, as long as you're not intentionally trying to game the search engines and you expect to get traffic and brand visibility from those ads appearing on the websites you are advertising on, irrespective of the SEO effect.
2 comments, 2 pingbacks
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[...] Following on from yesterday’s post on link buying and how it’s a legitimate practice in many circumstances… [...]
Pingback by » Buying links - Google’s perspective @ Stephan Spencer’s Scatterings [Visitor] — 08/29/05 @ 04:21
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Great post Stephan. I completely agree with your point of view with regard to link buying.
To add to what you wrote, I think link buying can be considered black, white or grey; it all depends on the context you engage in it. For example, purchasing a link on a related site with intent to drive traffic as well as increase popularity would be consider white. However purchasing a link a completely non-related site just for the intent of 'gaming' the search engine, would be considered black. This is similar to regular SEO; there are white hat ways and black hat ways to approach it.
Participants on the buy & sell side of link buying need to be proactive about keeping the bar high and relavancy up. I know that we have built our system at LinkExperts to only permit relevant & high quality link ads on other relavant sites.Comment by Seth Besmertnik [Visitor]
· http://www.linkexperts.com —
01/28/06 @ 10:22
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Reevaluating Page Rank and "Buying Links"
In every industry there are stigmas attached to what are potentially lucrative business evolutions. The greatest hurtle for a business venture that sprang from an older market but breaks new ground is explaining to potential clients the company’s evolu
Pingback by News on LinkExperts, Search Marketing, and the Internet on the LinkExperts Blog [Visitor] — 08/10/06 @ 07:48
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I would have to disagree with those who claim that link buying is legitimate and here is why. Google is a search engine trying it’s best to provide people with unadulterated search results. Google judges your website’s page rank and allots you a rating. Now how can you use a rating allotted to you buy a company to allow others to increase their SERP position? It is the company that allotted you the page rank and they do not want you to use it allow others to get a better Search Engine Rank. Without the page rank you would never have been able to sell links. How many people buy links to a website with a zero page rank?
So you see you are put in the position by Google in the first place. So if they do not want you to use something they have given you – and for a good reason which is to provide unadulterated search results – then how can you complain? I am baffled at why people are complaining. As a webmaster I whole heartedly agree with Google.Comment by Zeeshan Parvez [Visitor]
· http://www.depressr.com —
02/28/07 @ 08:10
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