I don’t out individuals for seo tactics, and I don’t out the myriad of purveyors of link prospects who contact me every day, non-stop.
This one takes some beating, from a MIDDLE EASTERN NEWSPAPER:
Hello,
The (A MIDDLE EASTERN NATIONAL NEWSPAPER) is currently offering outside companies to purchase links from within our articles.
To place a bid, simply send a document with the keywords you would like to purchase, and your price bid. Feel free to search the site for yourself, to find the perfect article for you.
Since we are just starting this venture, we have no fixed price, thus you can choose the amount of links, period of time, and so on. We are allowing the first 1000 S.E.O. companies to send in their bids, without the limitation of a starting price.
We will accept lucrative offers.
Mind you, we also sell conventional links, such as:
* Link on “sites of xxxxxxxx” (footer of master page) priced @ $500 per month (6 months minimum).
* Text link on the home page priced @ $1,300 per month.
* Text link on the inner pages priced @ $1,000 per month.Once a bid is accepted, you will be contacted by a sales representative, to process the campaign’s details.
Have a good day,
(REMOVED).
Hmmm… I looked at where some of the links are featured, and sure enough, a list of totally unrelated sites. Paid links.
Now say I see one of my competitors in there? I could just report the site for selling links and my competitors for buying them (not that I personally bother with that). Or I could out them on a public blog. Lucky then I don’t out SEO tactics is because I think outing seo tactics themselves is a little self serving, and slimey, these days.
Everybody knows selling links is against Google TOS whether you listen or not.
AND if I did buy links in footers like this (which I don’t), I wouldn’t be happy there was an email to 1000 seo companies telling THEM my clients was buying links.
Would a rival newspaper use this information against you too if they new, especially given the polarising nature of the content (again, not that it bothers me)?
If you are buying or selling links that are search engine friendly you better be doing it more covertly than this….. you need to build relationships to get decent links, even like the ones above. Start, for instance, with a private email address, and open up a conversation before you show folks what you have got?
I sent the email back with a link to this post to see what they say…..
DOH!
[...] How Not To Sell Links On Your Newspaper Site, Hobo [...]
So, any word back? What did they say?
Hi Shaun, I said the same thing to my colleagues…as soon as they start going out with emails en masse to pick-up more sales, it kills any chance of them doing just that! lol Ben
I recently bought a link (for testing) on a big german newspaper. It was not that obvious, but the result was that I got penalized with all keywords for the whole domain. I’m lucky it was just a test – other people “test” it on their really good domains. If you buy a very strong link and Google finds out, your site definately gets a penalty at the moment. No matter what Google says, bad links DO harm your website.
Fascinating insight. The parallel between this and paid adverts is what strikes me. The difference being a) the links are covert adverts (i.e. the reader can’t see they are paid for), and b) they are designed to obtain traffic through deception (by manipulating search engine result positions). Otherwise it would seem legitimate, or at least equivalent to paid ads (which I think have a similar division between legitimate – i.e. informing the consumer – and illegitimate – i.e. manipulating the consumer). In the advertising world the boundaries are only weakly policed with bland codes that portend to be “legal, decent, honest and truthful”. In SERP we have Google doing serious enforcement because to not do so undermines their offer to the consumer – they don’t want to be purveyors of spam to visitors, or they will lost them, and so lost ad revenue. I feel happier about this dynamic (Google having such an interest in enforcement) than that for conventional advertising, which is more influential and more widely ‘black-hat’, but ignored because we’re so used to it and it seems there’s so little that can be done to improve it! A fascinating insight as I said. Thanks Sean. Great blog as always. BTW, I recently completed my first very small SEO job. Helped no small amount by the resources and tips you shared, so thanks again. And I have two more orders :-), so am currently looking at SEO software to buy, thinking about parts of the SEO PowerSuite. Can you say anything about the packages you tend to use for different SEO tasks (offline/off the record if you prefer)? Any recommendations for a very small SEO biz appreciated. Mark
Haha Shaun this made my day! I guess people are trying to get “less” obvious on selling links a bit more and more every day :D
Great post, simply put newspapers are perpetuating an unsustainable model and need revenue from somewhere. I also agree with your comment on outing SEO tactics, it seems the industry still has a little bit of the small boy about it who can’t wait to snitch on his mate for doing something wrong. Is this all these people have to do all day.
You have to update this with their reply (if one comes) Im guessing they either won’t understand what your on about or (hopefully) have broken out in a cold sweat :P
Ive seen this one before myself, to me the prospect of paid links is just too potentially damaging to even contemplate, and it cant be ever really considered white hat. Theres no need to take shortcuts like this when there are so many decent and legitimate links out there to be had. Sure its tempting sometimes when you see a relevant page with massive alexa rank and PR6, and a quick inquisative link request mail reveals they can give you a homepage link for £xxx but the potential consequences just dont bear thinking about. And on the flipside of the coin, I have never ever had to explain to a client why their site had dissapeared form Google, (well not because of my actions anyway).
First, I believe Google’s postion against webmasters selling links is a violation of the Sherman Anti-trust act and a violation of Fair-trade lawsand they will be penalized harshly EVENTUALLY but that doesn’t help anyone now. But all that Google has done with this policy is to add a new feature to their product offering albeit a negative one. I built my website with the belief that getting ranked by Google is practically out of reach for 99.9999% of the websites out there anyway. If my site was on page four I might should be concerned with playing by their rules but with most search terms that people use bringing back results numbering in the millions then Googles policies are relatively irrelevant to the sites not on the first three pages. I mean, really, so what if Google penalizes you if your site is down at the 1000th listing? And when your site is one of those what is your only recourse? Pay per Click of course. Well, lets ask Google if they will stop taking your PPC payment if they find out you are selling links to the traffic they send? :-)
LOL nice comment Robert :)
[...] Check out this…unbelievable Tagged: Adrian Leaman, PPC Posted in: PPC, Random ← [...]
Ha, Robert, great point well made. To be honest like so many people have mentioned I dont see why you would pay for links with so many alternatives out there.
One thing that troubles me a bit on this. We see them penalizing sites for buying and selling links. But on a news site. What happens when they do an article that is legit and they link to one of your sites? Is Google recognizing the difference between the paid links and links that are part of the article? I would really hate to get any press from them for fear of getting penalized.
Great comment Robert! Just out of curiosity – are people “really” being penalised? Has anyone let their tests settle to see if it’s a see saw effect where it drops off then reappears better? Markus also hits on a very pertinent point – how does the Google Hypocrisy Engine recognise the difference?
HI Sandy / Robert I don’t think the Google Master Of Disaster filters are looking at those in position 1000 much. I’d imagine if you pass a sniff test, you go into the top set of results where there are bigger, badder filters just waiting to analyse everything about your site. I’ve never thought Google uses all its processes to analyse all pages all the time. I would think they save money and resources looking at the top results, and I think the new Google of the last month or so is GETTING A LOT BETTER at doing this A LOT FASTER. Theory of course, but just something that crossed my mind when I used to watch particluar sites bounce about in the rankings. That could just be different DC, but also, different filters for different DC. Who knows.
Few of our sites have seen an increased page rank and surely we have started getting mails asking for links. If buying links are bad, I think selling links is also a no-no.
That is crazy I didn’t even know people would sell links in newspaper ads I thought that was what the Internet was for. I hear offline marketing is big business as well as online. A lot of skilled Internet marketers are taking their online skills offline and cashing in. Anyways, good article I enjoyed it!