Paid Links - Good or bad - a UK SEO perspective

August 24th, 2007

There is a lot of debate going on within the industry as regards whether paid links are good or bad following Google’s recent decision to ‘clamp down’ on sites using paid linkage for SEO purposes. Opinions vary greatly in the industry, from Andrew Girdwood (of Bigmouthmedia fame) in the ‘Paid Links are bad‘ corner, and Michael Gray in the ‘Paid Links are good‘ corner who it might be said is not in favour of the nofollow tag.

Impartiality over and I’ll now get of the fence. I have discussed this at length with one of my SEO pals in particular (Will Graham). I personally have to say I agree with Michael’s viewpoint (to a certain degree). In my opinion, Paid linkage merely affects those with sufficient budget to exploit such an opportunity, and I would suggest isn’t likely to affect smaller operations.

Whilst I can see the theory behind this, in practise it doesn’t work in my opinion. If I want to advertise on the Superbowl/FA Cup Final - I have to pay the applicable going rate - same applies for pitch sponsorship/press advertising etc). At the end of the day money talks - always has, and probably always will, and whilst that isnt a good counter argument, it is unfortunately true.

Now, I hear the argument for paid search being countered to the above, however Google is clamping down on such activity because of the attempted exploitation of its algorithm. Why does it have to do this - because people are constantly looking for new ways to get to number one, and in fear of alienating myself in the community, I would suggest it is many smaller SEO’s that are responsible for much of the clamping down. Let me explain that comment further.

• Have you ever seen a multinational organisation exploit open blogs/websites via scripting for extra linkage - in all likelihood - no
• Have you seen a lot of big organisations relying heavily on link farms etc - in all likelihood no.
• Have you seen many big organisations write an automated script merely replace keywords on an ongoing basis to target niche localised terms - in all likelihood no
• How many large organisations have you seen employing large scale cloaking techniques - ok there are some - but not many in my opinion

Whilst many of these have been clamped down on - surely there is still a lot of work here to do, and making a big song and dance about paid linkage merely moves the problem on to another area that search marketeers will try to exploit.

At the end of the day (and this is my esteemed friend Will’s main point which we both agree on) - it comes down to Intent. Surely relevant paid linkage is not bad - it is merely exploiting the fact that search engines like Google, have created a commodity (ie something of value). This isn’t the fault of the advertisers, or the SEO’s and thus what is the point of penalising them for it?

At the end of the day, what is the difference between a paid linkage and a paid directory link - nothing at the end of the day, however it should be suggested they are both treated differently. It is a SEO’s job to build links - surely in aroundabout way thats paid linkage (albeit a stretch of the imagination) - however the point is - its a very grey area)

Using a recent example (and this is based on heresay - rather than fact), a major supermarket chain was rumoured to have bought their way to number 2 for the term ‘car insurance’ via a hardcore link building campaign. This is rumoured to have cost a fair amount of money and was successful in its objectives (albeit short term). However upon picking on the pattern, the result appears to have been ‘dropped’ in the index, and thus the effectiveness of those links dramatically reduced.Now ask yourself. Was this result relevant - yes it was. Was it on topic - Yes. Did it deserve to be there - IMO yes - a lot of work went in to generating that linkage - albeit reliant on paid linkage and personally I would rather such sites were found, than irrelevant sites that place merely based on automated scripting and link development

Wouldn’t providing more interaction with the search marketing community, and accepting that people are always going to try and get to number one and thus use people like SEO’s, be a better way for Google to react to such activity. By accepting it goes on and focussing on relevancy, surely Google can only enhance the relevancy of its results.
I personally would like to see some middle ground in the argument, as surely there is some place for paid linkage in the optimisation mix (PS Google check the site - I’m clean - no paid linkage here or client sites - just my own humble personal opinion)

Entry Filed under: News and Views, SEO