Buying links to boost search engine rankings has long been considered black magic. But the problem isn’t paying big bucks for links, it’s being unfaithful about them.
Google addresses this practice in its documentation.
Google continues, As long as the tag contains the rel=’nofollow’ or rel=’sponsored’ attribute value, posting such links is not a policy violation. “
link spam
What search engines like Google don’t like is what some people call link spamming: buying links to artificially inflate your search rankings. Link spam is always a paid scheme. There is no other reason to do it.
Here are some examples of what Google and other search engines call link spam:
- Buy links on low-quality directory sites.
- Paid links in widgets distributed across the web.
- Pay to include links added to blog comments.
- Text ads that don’t block ranking credits.
- Advertorial or Guest Posts.
personal experience
The final category of this link spam, advertising or guest posting, seems to be on the rise.
First, Google Trends reports an increase in searches for “buying backlinks”. Google Trends displays search volume using a relative scale of 0 to 100. Therefore, 100 on the Google Trends chart shows the most proportional search volume for a given time period.
From January 2004 to the present, interest in “buying backlinks” peaked in July 2004. Since then, queries for this phrase have been relatively low as a percentage of overall related searches. The term’s Google Trends volume was just 9 in September 2019. On the relative scale, it rose to 16 in September 2021 and 47 in September 2022. To find more relative interest, we need to go back to July 2008.
Slight increase in percentage of Google searches for “buy backlinks”.
The September increase could be a temporary increase or an improvement in Google’s tracking capabilities (which happened in January 2022).
Second, as a contributor to popular online publications, I seem to be receiving more and more emails about paid guest posts. In January 2022 he had one, and in October 2022 he had about 50.
An email asking about paid guest posts after October 2022.
I have to be careful. These investigations may have been legitimate. Those who contacted me may have expected or planned to use proper link attribute values. rel=”no follow” Also rel=”sponsor”
However, I’ve come to believe that phrases such as “How much can I charge for guest posting and link placement” in emails are passing link equity from the guest posting to the target site.
There is another meaning here. Many of the paid emails I receive come from agencies who buy backlinks on behalf of their clients.
These agencies almost certainly understand that link equity should not be passed through paid links. But that seems to be exactly what they do.
but it’s okay?
I’ve painted a pretty tough picture about buying backlinks in the past because of the many email pitches I’ve received. I pointed out that it might make sense rel=”sponsorshipSo it’s not link spam.
Introduced by Google rel=”sponsor” September 2019 coincidentally saw an increase in searches for “buying backlinks”.
Google uses it as a “hint” about the quality of the target page. So, in theory, it’s possible to provide valuable content and create sponsored links that are meaningful to Google’s search engine algorithms.
On the Developers Search blog, Google employees Danny Sullivan and Gary Illyes wrote:
why [do we] don’t ignore such things completely [sponsored] Links, like nofollow? [Because] Links contain valuable information that can help improve searches, such as how the words in the link describe the content they link to. You can also better understand unnatural link patterns by looking at all the links you encounter. By moving to the hint model, this important information is no longer lost, but site owners can indicate that some links should not be given first-party approval.
Therefore, the purchased link and patronage Attributes are different than unattributed links, but they still provide information to Google.
Moreover, it is a link that can direct visitors to your website.
Buying backlinks isn’t necessarily an SEO practice, it’s a marketing practice.be honest about it patronage attributes, and you practice ethical marketing. But trying to evade search engines is black magic.
