Kevin W. Phelps

Paid links have been a hot topic now for a while, but more so this week now that JC Penney’s rankings were destroyed because of a whistle blower at the New York Times. Do I believe that paid links are effective? Yes, clearly. Do I support them for the use of manipulating keyword rankings? No, but while Google has taken a clear stance on paid links, it appears that the line they have drawn might not be so obvious or enforced across the board.

In the paid links section of Google’s Webmaster Central, they acknowledge that buying and selling links is “a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results”. Additionally, if you are buying links, you should include a nofollow tag or a redirect to an intermediate page that is blocked with a robots.txt file. One might set up an intermediate page for tracking and analytical purposes.

The reason why I bring this up is because there are a couple websites off the top of my head that (to me) are clearly in violation of Google’s rule: Best of the Web and the Yahoo Directory. Both sites charge hefty fees for including your link into their directory, and its well known in the SEO world that shelling out the $300 per link will give you additional authority and PageRank for the purpose of increasing your keyword rankings, aka manipulating search results.

In another fantastic GoogleWebmasterHelp video from back in June 2009, this question was answered by Matt Cutts. He stated that the Yahoo Directory is not considered a paid link source because there is an actual review process that takes place, that you cannot request whatever anchor text that you want and that they reject sites on occasion. It appears as though he is classifying paid link sources as those who charge a fee and don’t require any sort of editorial review process whether it be of your requested anchor text or of the site that it’s being placed on.

As opposed to what Matt said in his video, I would assume that Google would classify a paid link as an anchor text link on a site, that is paid and that purposefully affects and manipulates keyword rankings. I’d assume that Google’s real concern is people trying to manipulate the search engines and not whether there is any sort of editorial review process. That is why they want paid links to have one of the two prevention measures that I mentioned above. In addition, aiding your trust with Google and improving your rankings is the only reason why people purchase links on the two mentioned sites, therefore, people are using these two popular sites to their advantage because Google clearly likes them.

If the definition that Matt gave is accurate, then any website that will take your money and place your link on their website after giving it some consideration is fair game. Yahoo Directory and BOTW are just doing it on a larger scale.

It seems as though BOTW and Yahoo Directory are direct offenders for offering these services because their well-known purpose is to aid your search engine rankings. I would seriously doubt Google cares more about whether there is an editorial review process rather than if the purchased links are actually affecting somebody’s rankings and ultimately, the searchers user experience. Also, this is similar to the services TNX.net and Mark Stevens (from a secret link selling company mentioned in the New York Times article) were selling because I’m sure they were providing some level of review and relevant website placement.

I know, there are extremes with this topic. Some might think, “I hired an SEO company to build links for me, wouldn’t that be considered as paid links?” No, I’m talking about giving a website money, to list your link for the purpose of bettering your trust and rankings regardless of whether they have any sort of useless, irrelevant screening process.

I have a feeling I may make a few enemies in this post considering the thousands of companies who’ve purchased links on the mentioned sites. I’m just looking for some discussion on this topic because some of the biggest and most obvious black-hat link sellers are making a fortune.

I’m very interested what some people might think about this. Is the Yahoo Directory and BOTW more legit than I make them out to be? Am I completely wrong? Let me know below.