Are the consequences of paid links worth the trouble?

It wasn’t so terribly long ago, that webmasters discovered if you purchased paid links with PageRank, you could inflate PR. As the news traveled across the world-wide-web about the paid links exploit, webmasters, quickly jumped on the bandwagon. Fully armed with their PR pumps, they began to purchase do-follow links to inflate PR. For many webmasters, this was the impossible dream that came true!

As time continued, webmasters, saw just how easy it was to inflate PageRank artificially. You could get a site with low PageRank and inflate it into a PR5 or PR6, within a couple of Google updates. Not only did this method inflate PageRank, it also manipulated higher search engine rankings in Google’s search results. Furthermore, for many webmasters, life in general, just does not get much better than this. (I Would Not Bet on That!)

As the bandwagon grew, it created an explosive within the paid link industry. At first, there was more than enough supply to meet the demand, and paid links were extremely affordable. However, as the demands continued to increase, prices hit the ceiling! However, there was a minor setback, you just needed lots of money to obtain and keep the impossible dream.

Little did they know that Google was making plans for their PR pumps to render them totally useless. Google activated their plan and sought out site owners that had purchased links solely for inflating PageRank artificially. The results were quite shocking for many webmasters as their PageRank started to deflate. Some of them just lost a little air, and others experienced a total blowout! Furthermore, some sites lost all of their PageRank all at once, while others lost it gradually over the next couple of Google’s updates.

Many webmasters felt singled out, just to be made an example of by Google. While, other webmasters learned a valuable lesson to play by Google’s rules and rebuilt.

However, there was a small amount that could not accept the fact because they got exposed, and jumped on the defensive end. These individuals tried to cover up what they had done and shifted the blame elsewhere.

Next, many debates took up residence on forums and some ended up into arguments, turning webmaster against each other. Once they turned on each other many of them reported other webmasters to Google seeking revenge. Therefore, Google, could expose other webmasters that purchased do-follow links to inflate PageRank. Thus, making Google’s mission a much easier one to complete!

As Google scrutinized the exploit of paid links, they also discovered much more! Many webmasters and site owners were using sneaky redirects and linking schemes to inflate PageRank as well. It was also discovered that people were purchasing expired Domains with PageRank. These sites were simply redirected to another site and passed the Google PageRank juice. Most of these expired Domains, normally lose their PR within the next Google update. However, there was enough juice left in the expired Domain to be passed on to another site by doing a redirect. The exploit of highly advanced linking schemes between webmasters and site owners, was another method of passing the Google PR juice.

It has been close to a couple of years since all this has taken place, and it’s old news for most of us. However, if you are a new web site owner, you owe it to yourself to read the Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Furthermore, this will enable you to get started on the right foot and avoid such a disaster.

This blog post is not about trying to single out any individual, to make an example out of them. It is to remind us that it is Google’s stadium and that they do not take kindly to people who exploit. Furthermore, most of the paid link issues, were more focused on do-follow text links that included anchor text keywords, which boosted the search engine ranking results.

Not all webmasters and site owners were guilty of being unscrupulous. There were many that had no ideas of the Google Webmaster Guidelines and just followed the instructions of their mentors. Some of them were just guilty, by association. Therefore, some of the webmasters that did not get penalized.

Additional thoughts:

It is my opinion that buying paid links to inflate Pagerank is a waste of time. Furthermore, here are three legitimate reasons why!

#1. Purchasing paid links, are against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
#2. Google has a paid link reporting page that makes it easy for anybody, including your enemies to report you.
#3. Let’s say that you were extremely discreet about making the paid link arrangements, in only takes one person to mess it all up. Furthermore, once that happens, all links from that page you were purchasing the paid links from could deflate to PR0.

Closing thoughts:

It is my opinion that all webmasters and site owners, need to have at least some knowledge of basic SEO. Your title tag, description meta tag, page content, including h1 and h2 tags are of the utmost importance. You should learn to depend on natural links from other sites related to your site niche. Furthermore, learn how to promote your site through forums, social networks, article directories, web directories, email marketing, and blog commenting. Once you get your name out in the public and start to be popular, people will start linking to you naturally.

I also suggest that do your research before you jump into a new project. Taking shortcuts seem to have a way to come back and haunt a person. Therefore, do things correctly the 1st time, it will save you lots of troubles and headaches. However, if you have decided to purchase paid links, make sure that they are no-follow links that will not pass the Google juice.

– If you are interested in reading more about search engine optimization, just click on the topic category. These SEO techniques will increase your rankings in the search engine and also have a positive effect of increasing PageRank without breaking the rules.