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Google, Buying Links and “SED” (Search Engine De-optimization)

By Shalom | July 24, 2007

To buy or not to buy that is the question! Is it wrong to buy links? Should Google penalize your site if you buy links?

Firstly, Google is the largest link seller of them all – so it makes sense that they penalize other sites for the same practice that makes them as successful as they are. Buying links is not unethical. Google wants publishers to use “no follow” scripts on their sold links to help them clean the “muddy waters”. But does Google have the right to dictate how publishers code their pages?

The best links of course are natural links, but usually your great web content or application will be so far down in the SERPs that you will never be found by the sites who clearly would link to yours naturally simply because after page 2 of the search engines you might as well not exist. Unless of course you do some traditional SEO which might include link building.

As far as Google penalizing advertisers for buying links – Bring it! I am waiting for the day that Google starts to penalize advertisers for buying links. All chaos will break loose. Think about the budgets companies will devote to buying links for their competitors just so that their competitors will be hit with a penalty. The game of “SED” (Search Engine De-optimization) will take over the current trend in link buying. The phrase “SED” which I have invented to describe what I see as the future of internet marketing if Google goes forward with developing some system to penalize sites that buy links. Currently Google will hand out penalties to sites that partake in “Black Hat” tactics like keyword stuffing and clocking. That’s fine – those are on page conditions controlled by the publisher. Link buying is off page – meaning it can be controlled by anyone. The moment Google decides that its appropriate to penalize sites for off page factors – links sellers will quickly change their sales pitch from “increase you rankings – buy links” to “hurt your competitors – but them links”. The waters will go from being muddy to being completely toxic.

See Matt Cutts blog on link buying and related comments http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/text-links-and-pagerank/

Topics: Internet Marketing, Israel, Link Popularity, On-Page Optimization, Optimized Web Content, SEO, WebTov | No Comments »