Buying links for SEO does it work?

The short answer to this question is yes. The long answer is yes if you buy the right links and Google really doesn’t like it.
Firstly I have to say in my opinion, and it is just my opinion you should only ever buy links that will bring traffic to your site, don’t just buy them for SEO.
Why you ask? This is because if you buy a link that will bring you in traffic whatever and it ends up making no odds to the search engines at least you haven’t wasted your money. Also if you buy a link that will bring you traffic you can pretty much be sure the link is more relevant to your web site and more likely to be of use to people on the website selling the link than one that would never bring you traffic.

What do the search engines think about buying links?

Well Google hate it with a passion; cynical people might say that this is because they want every one to have Adsene on their sites rather than selling adverts themselves. This means Google can take a cut of all the money. The less cynical would say Google hates buying and selling links because it leads to inaccurate search results. Personally I think it is probably a little of both, Google’s guidelines on paid links are that web masters selling these links should add a no follow tag to links which prevents a search engine from following the link. This means that any paid links will not affect the search results. My opinion on Google’s stance is that it is good for them, they can recommend no follow tags on paid links to help their search results and if people want to follow the guidelines its up to them. In my opinion Google does not own the Internet and you can do whatever the hell you like with buying and selling links. It’s their job to provide accurate search results and its up to them if you want to help them. I would also argue that if you buy relevant links then it would help them create good search results. I should also point out that Google is always trying to find ways to detect paid links so it can exclude them including providing a facility for people to tell on site providing paid links. Google also recently reduced the visible page rank on a number of high profile sites known to be selling links.

MSN on the other hand does not take anything like such a strong stance on paid links describes paid links as a bit of a grey area.

What does Yahoo say? Well I am not really sure but being as how Yahoo charges a considerable amount for links from its directory I think it would be fairly safe to say that wont clamp down too hard on paid links.

I want to buy links how do I do it?

So in spite of the fact Google hates them you have decided to buy some links. I guess now you want to know the best way to do, well ok but be warned Google really hates paid links. Right now there are several ways you can buy paid links, these are:

1) Pay for directory listings. You can pay for listings in web directories that give you links, you should chose these wisely though check that the links don’t have a no follow tag on them and that the page where the link appears has page rank attached to it. The most obvious and probably best-paid directory is the Yahoo directory.
2) Buy links from text link brokers such as text link ads. These sites are fairly easy to find in the search engines, just type in buy text link ads. Sites like this allow you to search for relevant sites and pay to place links on them. I am always a little wary of buying links from sites like this as you cant see the full site where your link will appear so its hard to tell if the site as relevant or of sufficient quality. Most text links brokers give you the Alexa rank and Page rank of the site where your link will be placed. Just remember that if you found the text link brokers through Google then Google knows about them and Google really hates paid links so this could be a risky way of buying links
3) The third and in my opinion best way to buy links is to buy them from the individual web masters personally. Find web sites that are relevant to yours and approach the web masters to buy links. This way you have far less chance of search engines finding out and can be more selective of what sites you buy links off.

I hope this post has been useful to those of you that are looking to boost your search engine position through buying links. As always all comments and questions are welcomed and appreciated. It is my intention to follow this post up with a post on how to chose the best-paid links so if you’re interested watch this space.