Why is Google not punishing paid links as it says it will?
-
I've recently started working with a travel company - and finding the general link building side of the business quite difficult.
I had a call from an SEO firm the other day offering their services, and stating that they had worked with a competitor of ours and delivered some very good results. I checked the competitors rankings, PR, link profile, and indeed, the results were quite impressive.
However, the link profile pointed to one thing, that was incredibly obvious. They had purchased a large amount of sidebar text links from powerful blogs in the travel sector.
Its painfully obvious what has happened, yet they still rank very highly for a lot of key terms.
Why don't Google do something about this? They aren't the only company in this sector doing this, but it just seems pointless for white hats trying to do things properly, then those with the dollar in their pockets just buy success in the SERPS.
Thanks
-
Keep in mind that the goal here is usually not to "punish" the paid link, but instead to ignore it. If Google punished sites for paid links, then that competitor would still buy the links, but would just have them point to your site so you get punished!
Ultimately some links that are instantly obvious to humans as artificial and paid are very hard for computers to algorithmically detect without also throwing out tons of valid links. Over the long haul (years, not months) Google does steadily get better at it.
-
Neil,
In my prediction those black hat techiniques will be punished sooner or later by Google in 2012. Just keep your SEO clean and you will the results that you are looking for.
-
I had a call from an SEO firm the other day offering their services, and stating that they had worked with a competitor of ours and delivered some very good results. I checked the competitors rankings, PR, link profile, and indeed, the results were quite impressive.
I don't think that I would buy his service because you will be his next demonstration site. Pretty soon he will have a ton of people participating in this link scheme and the bigger it gets the brighter it will be on the Google radar screen. I'd stay away from this salesperson and his methods.
-
I have to say that I know exactly how you feel. I have a new client in the suplement industry, and while I'm doing everything white hat our competition is doing everything black hat, including buying links....a lot of links. I don't know how they're getting away with it, but they are spending a small fortune getting links within blogs on random, low PR, spammy blogs. It's completely black hat through a company called Sponsored Reviews, and while it sounds respectible it's nto so much. So while I work strictly white hat, seeing small movement, they work strictly black hat and remain on the first page. It can be insanely frustrating for the SEO and the client. But, hang in there, eventually your white hat techniques will pay off.
-
One good advice: don't let the frustration make you take decisions
Work hard and you will benefit from it and over rank them.
Good luck!
Istvan
-
Hi Bryan,
Thanks for that. I've just been reading a thread from 2009 on which Rand posted some views on the difference between Paid Links and text Link Ads.
I suppose its hard to distinguish the difference between the two, but its clear in this particular case that the links have been bought, and aren't really for advertising purposes!
Its incredibly frustrating, but I suppose maybe in the long term they'll get punished. Who knows?!
Thanks anyway
-
Hi Neil,
Google fights against paid links as much as they can. The thing is that big companies are working hard to "practice what they preach", but it takes a lot of time, energy and "brain power" to deliver that.
Obviously Google team is constantly working on this.
Gr.,
Istvan
-
Google takes a while to catch these things and believe me, white hat SEO if much harder than black hat so I understand your frustration.
The best thing you can do is locate the site and then submit a paid link report then hope that Google gets around to penalizing them, the competition will soon gain no value from the links and the link-juice may be reversed. The Google part is that a Google Quality Expert will likely follow the trail and treat your competitor according to how much they violated Google's TOS
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Buying links - where is the line drawn?
I apologise in advance if this has been discussed before, but I'm a bit confused by this whole buying links/outreach scenario. Example.. High ranking PR site (PR 85) has people advertising they can get you links from that site in exchange for money.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | nick-name123
You would give them an article and it would look natural and a link - branded or keyword - links back to you. This is not new to people here who know of this. Obviously there is a difference between a link farm (crap site just selling links) and one of these highly recognised sites where you can obtain a link from. I'm sure a goody 2 shoes will now tell me 'i should do everything natural not be tempted', but I actually dont know where the line is drawn between the same site giving a natural link to me and someone selling a link from the same site. Google isnt going to downgrade the site I'm sure but how do they combat this or even do they combat it? Do we have to accept that buying links is still a normal process and if done in moderation and discretely, you can get away with it?1 -
Footer images links, good or bad?
Hi everybody! I have a very serius question because i have a problem with this. We run a website of voucher codes and we are looking that our rivals are putting their logos on footers of online stores with images, sometimes link to home, sometimes link to store within webpage. Should i ask for the same to online stores? I have scary to get a penalty by Google. Please help me with this and recommend me something because we are doing fair play but rivals are doing this and they get best results in SERPS. Thanks very much! Best regards!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | pompero990 -
Why Link Spamming Website Coming on First Page Google?
As we all already know about link spamming. As per Google Guidelines Link building, Exact Keywords Anchor Link Building is dead now but i am looking most of the website coming on first page in Google doing same exact keywords linking. I think directory, article, social bookmarking, press release and other link building activity is also dead now. Matt always saying content is more important but if we will not put any keywords link in content part then how website rank in first page in Google. Can anybody explain why is website coming on first page because when i am doing same activity for quality links with higher domain authority website then we are affected in Google update.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | dotlineseo0 -
How to gain links to this site
Hello, How would you suggest I gain backlinks for bobweikel.com in light of all present and future Google updates? Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Link Building Plan Need some tips
Okay so I want to start focusing on SEO for my Web design company and I have been reading and reading and am now working on my off-page optimization and have some questions. My words are competitive words and a few of them are finally increasing to top 500 and a few in top 100. My current MozRank for my domain is 2.28, but my mozbar shows my homepage to be MozRank to be 3.35 Link Building Plan -Around 50 Directory submissions to high PR directories and high MozRank domains Free listings Paid Listings -3-5 articles written for guest posts Around 25 Local Business directories such as brownbook.net, whitepages, etc -Around 20 dofollow forum profile creation and backlinks from signatures -Squidioo Lens Creation( I will be creating high quality content related my website which would be web design, internet marketing, seo services.) -Hubpages Creation My question is should the content used on squidioo be 100% original, like can I post the content to other directories as well? -Article Directories Okay so from what I've read this is method doesn't really give much benefit with the recent updates, is this true or should I still at least submit some articles to article directories. I am also confused wouldn't distributing your articles to article directories be considered duplicate content? 20-25 Blog Comments on related blogs that support dofollow blog commenting, also will build some nofollow blog comment links for link diversity
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | azokaei0 -
Penguin link removal what would you do?
Hi Over the last 4 months I have been trying to remove as many poor quality links as possible in the hope this will help us recover. I have come across some site's that the page our back-link is on has been de-indexed, goggle shows this when I look at the cached page... 404. <ins>That’s an error.</ins> The requested URL /search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGNI_enGB482GB482&q=cache:http%3A%2F%2Fforom.eovirtual.com%2Fviewtopic.php%3Ff%3D4%26t%3D84 was not found on this server. <ins>That’s all we know.</ins> If goggle is showing this message do I have to still try to remove the link, or is it a case goggle has already dismissed the link?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | wcuk0 -
Someone COPIED my entire site on Google- what should I do?
I purchased a very high ranked and old site a year or so ago. Now it appears that the people I purchased from completely copied the site all graphics and content. They have now built that site up high in rankings and I dont want it to compromise my site. These sites look like mirror images of each other What can I do?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TBKO0 -
Link Building using Badges
In light of penguin update, is link building using badges(like "I love SEOMOZ" badge) still considered a white hat tactic? I have read old posts on SEOMOZ blog about this topic and wondering if this method is still effective. Look forward to feedback from MOZers.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Amjath0