Paid Link Building in SEO?

Digital Marketing
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Despite being a straight-up violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and a tactic that is clearly defined as a link scheme, paid link building is still relatively common in 2021 for the simple reason that it guarantees results.

Earning links is hard work; there is no denying that. And even manual link building and the wealth of quick-win tactics available still require effort to see results. Some things to remember:

  • Using paid links is, in the opinion of many, lazy link building.
  • Paid link building is a clear manipulation of Google’s algorithm and a low effort yet extremely high-risk tactic.
  • Most paid for links end up coming from sites that are not topically aligned, that have a high count of outbound links, and are generally low quality.
  • Aside from this risk, don’t forget that if you can buy links, so can your competitors.

There are, of course, a few exceptions to the rule here — those being when earning links to support your SEO strategy isn’t the primary focus, and you are either looking to land referral traffic or build your brand authority and are doing so with sponsored placements and advertorials on quality sites and have either a rel=“nofollow” or rel=“sponsored” attribute in place to prevent negative impact on your search rankings.

As a general rule though, paid links purely to help increase your rankings should be seen as a no go.