This post actually may not even come out the way it’s being thought of in my head and it’s just for discussion purposes, I may not be on point on a few things or maybe even just the basic principle of paid links and why Google deems them ‘evil’ almost…right? Do no evil.

I think all SEOs and those who want better rankings (WEBSITE EXPOSURE) should be allowed to buy links if for the right reasons. It seems link buying is always associated with a negative connotation and how it’s all about manipulating the search algorithm for better search rankings.

I guess we have to think about certain things in practical manners. Why would Google punish a company for purchasing links? What about the purpose of buying those links? Besides links helping search rankings, many links that one could buy can and do provide real benefits in regards to traffic which leads to sales and lead referrals.
What about paying for a directory link? Why isn’t that penalized? A directory is a business that is purely made for profit (if they charge for links) and create content of no real substance (not in todays web.) SO, a blogger who consistently works on his/her blog and puts good content will get penalized for selling a link somewhere in their content (or wherever they choose) because a company approached them for a link. They worked hard at building their blog and content…why not let them be rewarded? What about the company buying the link? Besides having a benefit of having a new link placed in a good blog, that company may see a real benefit from that link, more than just POSSIBLE better search rankings.

Google on Paid Links: “…However, some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links that pass PageRank, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results.

Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such. This can be done in several ways, such as:

• Adding a rel=”nofollow” attribute to the tag
• Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file”

So, Business.com or the Yahoo.com directory aren’t directories that people choose to buy for ranking (pagerank) purposes and are do-follow links? It seems that statement is too general to apply to a world wide web. If you’re a website that sells beatles memorabilia, shouldn’t you have the option to buy a link from a website with the intent not only for traffic but to better your search engine exposure as well as having the publisher provide a service (passing authority, pagerank, whatever you want to call it) to an advertiser as a perk. After all, that publisher is creating content that is also serving Google.

The web MADE Google…Google didn’t make the web. They shouldn’t penalize link buying but should have a better method of ‘quality control’ or I guess that’s what Matt Cutts and his team is there for, really trying to make the web a clean place…I just don’t see paid links as spam unless a company like a big department store decides to buy links from something like a network which places links in porn websites, etc…I give this example because I was looking at a backlink profile (don’t remember whose now) and came across a few adult websites with followed links to this big company…I should have saved it.

We all want an anti-spammy web. I just don’t believe companies/websites should be penalized automatically for purchasing links from websites as it’s not only about better rankings but also an economy based on work (content) by many bloggers, website owners who could monetize (and deservingly so) their content.

I guess the argument would be that if all link buying was OK, any company with a lot of cash can come, buy thousands of links and dominate the search result for specific keywords. For the most part, I can tell you that that may already be the case with most big companies that have the money to really promote their website.

Like anything else in this world, theres some good in link buying and some bad. My thoughts on this aren’t finished…I’ll get back to them.

Just a rant…still thinking about this one.

p.s. i dont buy links and i love google. really.

Bruce Clay talks about the dangers of buying links in the SEO community telling us basically, at the end of the day, buying links in the long-term will hurt the SEO community as the businesses with the bigger SEO budgets for link acquisition, will earn top rankings and leave those behind.

“We have a sincere and urgent concern regarding the method of link development involving purchased links and the impact it will certainty have on search rankings. I want to be very clear that we think Google perceives deceptive linking methodologies and the ramifications of these actions as deceptive acts worthy of a penalty.”

Google has been after sites that engage in link buying for years, now they just may want to crack down harder as they combat spam and those who try to manipulate search results. Last september, I wrote a post titled, “Link Buying Penalty By Google That Cost $4 Million Dollars.”

Bruce Clay suggest the following on paid links:

“If the intention of any link-development program using a purchased links strategy is to generate traffic like an ad buy; as long as you include the rel=”nofollow” attribute in the link code then there is no problem in the eyes of Google.

If you are treating this like an ad buy, please request the use of the rel=”nofollow” attribute in the link code to help demonstrate to search engine spiders that your intent is strictly foot traffic and ad space. You would be wise to make sure that your ad contracts and insertion orders clearly state that the sites providing the links will comply with the quality guidelines as specified by Google and not pass PageRank.”

I think there is a thin line in the link buying dilema as it is the right of websites and blogs to monetize their web property by selling a link within their content. As you may request the rel=nofollow tag, link cost could significantly drop. It’ll be interesting to see what happens this year in regards to link buying.

Read the full article at the Bruce Clay blog : Purchased Link Penalties: There’s No Time to Waste

I think for most of us that have been doing SEO for a while, know and understand by now the purpose of a link on a blog comment. If there is actual purpose besides just having a link that really won’t count for anything, you’re just wasting your time.

How can you make blog commenting effective? Easy. If you have something insightful or a comment that will serve useful to the writer or the community, comment. Great comments can really get you involved in the community and that backlink may just turn into a few links from others in the community or some good traffic may come out of it if you’re commenting on a high traffic blog or story.

If you want to comment on 1k blogs saying “thanks for the article,” and leaving anchor text as your name, keep doing it if you’re into wasting time, it’ll only help out your competition that’s focusing on sound seo strategies.

Check out the article: Googles Thoughts on Link Building Through Comment Spamming

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You may have heard or already use these bookmark websites. I haven’t tried most of them, I believe so far I used or I should say tried 3 of these bookmarking websites.

This list and idea came from a post on SearchEngineLand titled, “10 Alternatives to Delicious.com Bookmarking.” If you want to read about each of these bookmarks in detail, definitely check out the post in the link above to get more info about them if you’re too lazy to check them out yourself.

-BlinkList

-Connotea

-Diigo

-Evernote

-Faves.com

-Google Bookmarks

-Historio.us

-Instapaper

-Pinboard.in

-Zootool

If you’re looking for additional link building resources, check out: LIST OF DO FOLLOW WEBSITES You can be cool and share some bookmarking websites you use that may be useful for link building.

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Search Engine Journal, which I wrote and still do just very NOT frequent, had a great post on linking building predictions for 2011. I have to say it was right on the money with what I speak about with others, read from other credible sources, etc.
The 5 that were listed were the following:

1. Less use of keyword-based anchor text, more use of brand name (MONEY)
2. Less focus on quantity, more focus on quality (I think this goes back…)
3. Less emphasis on Pagerank, more emphasis on authority (YES)
4. Less links to the homepage, more links to content (FO SHO)
5. Less concern about rankings, more concern about conversions (Well…)

OK…Let’s start this damn post but don’t like making things long…just because.

As you may have read or heard, Google has been putting more emphasis on BRADS when It comes to ranking websites. Now is this a fact? The truth is Google never really tells us for sure signals in their algorithm except we know they use meta tags and links to rank websites. Now, there is some evidence, (for example read some stuff by Aaron Wall on SEOBOOK) that suggest that Google is in fact favoring brands so instead of using anchor text for links, going back to #1, start using your brand as anchor, I think this is a very important aspect that is changing in link building.

#2- I think many of us who do SEO have understood for a while that it’s not about quantity but quality…this may be in the 10 commandments of seo link building which I will write (in an upcoming post)…RESPECT MY AUTHORITAAYY.

#3- Another one which in my opinion has been talked about by SEOs in regards to how much weight we put on pagerank. Pagerank is definitely a signal of authority but don’t just depend on PageRank to base on a websites authority.

#4- This is something more SEOs and people engaging in SEO will start doing a lot more of which is DEEP LINKING. Don’t just link to the home page! Come on now!

#5- I love this one because the truth is if a client is paying for SEO, they judge their results by rankings, right? For the most part that is. However, it’s important to understand or I should say, make THEM understand that search engine optimization; from their perspective should be about ROI and not just ranking well for a keyword.

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Ryan Abood, founder and owner of GourmetGiftBaskets.com experienced first hand what it is to be hit with a Google penalty and the big cost and impact it can have on your business. As he explains in the latest INC article, a penalty un-indexed his website from the engine and 80% of his traffic was gone from one day to the next resulting in a serious loss of revenue.

Nevertheless, if you read the article, it does have a happy ending. Google does have a re-inclusion forum where as he states, “We call it the Google confessional. We said, “These are the links that were paid; these are the links that weren’t paid. We’ve obviously violated your trust, and we’re taking steps to remedy it.”

Also, from this story as well as many others, we always see the positive side of a mishap such as this.

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For someone who is in the link business (SEO,) this is just a great post in how it describes the breakdown of the links that get acquired towards a full linking portfolio for a website. It is also a great resource for those who work on trying to classify their link portfolio.

{This content is taken from VeritcalMeasures.com and you can get straight to their post on the link above with the title of their post, couldn’t put it in better words)

In each of the mentioned ratings (except for about 2,) there are notes where you’ll see PALATNIKFACTOR VIEWS where it gives my personal opinion and a view on the rating.

Content Distribution

Description: Links from press releases, article marketing, guest blog posts, aggregated links such as RSS feeds
How to Obtain: Write unique SEO optimized content, publish, promote via social networks
Difficulty Score: 1
Quality Score: 3

PALATNIKFACTOR VIEW: This isn’t as easy as it sounds. Article marketing will take a bit of time and the link may not be worth it. Make sure, to be as effective as possible to try and outsource the content creation of that channel. Being a guest post is a great method, make sure you aim towards high authority websites but it may take some real work to get in touch with webmasters. Some are easy…some are hard.
________________________________________
Blog/Forum Comments

Description: Links from forum signatures, posts, profiles, and blog “signing”
How to Obtain: Search relevant blogs & forum topics, register, create profiles, create anchor text signatures for forums
Difficulty Score: 1
Quality Score: 2

PALATNIKFACTOR VIEW: These links are easy to acquire but the work towards some of them can be real tedious. Some forums where a link will actually be worth getting may have a rule where you have to post at least 10-50 post to get a forum signature links and start adding links to threads. I see signs of these type of links devaluing for seo.
________________________________________
Purchased Links

Description: Links obtained through direct exchange of money, includes directories
How to Obtain: Search for keywords + sponsor, advertise, sponsored by, banner ads, submit URL, add URL
Difficulty Score: 1
Quality Score: 2
WARNING: Use caution, understand the risks, and don’t get caught buying links or Google might take your keys away!

PALATNIKFACTOR VIEW: While many may think just because you pay for a link it’ll be easy to get, I have to disagree with the difficulty score. Some very good links will come if you pay for them but they may even be the hardest links to possibly get because the person that really takes care of the website may be hard to get a hold of or you’ll have to do some real work even if you pay for the link as the webmaster may want that link to look at natural as possible and may have you write a review, etc. Not that it’s hard, but won’t be as easy as opening a beer can.
Just a note on what was just said, that is by purchasing links through contacting webmasters. Paying for links through directory, difficult score: 1.
________________________________________
Reciprocal Links

Description: Links from partnerships, exchanges, and trades (use sparingly, stay topically relevant)
How to Obtain: Use only highest authority relevant sites to exchange with, try to do a 3 way instead of reciprocal
Difficulty Score: 2
Quality Score: 1

PALATNIKFACTOR VIEW: This tactic is just as hard OR maybe I’d say takes as much work as purchasing a link. Using highest authority sites to exchange links with is 100% absolutely the best strategy towards acquiring reciprocal links.
________________________________________
Social Media/Bookmarking

Description: Links from various social media profile pages and bookmarking tools
How to Obtain: Find top bookmarking sites based on PageRank, Alexa, dofollow and submit website using good keyword anchored phrases
Difficulty Score: 3
Quality Score: 3

PALATNIKFACTOR VIEW: This tactic may be easier actually, in my opinion, than purchasing a link. The How To Obtain is on point and should be a fairly easy way to acquire links. Try to submit some good stories to the bookmarkingw website before you submit just yours with the anchor text. The best ways to succeed in social media communities is to become a part of one. While most of us don’t have time, try to be as natural (non-spammer =)) as possible.
________________________________________
Embedded Content

Description: Links via widgets, infographics, badges, and other embeddedable content
How to Obtain: Create visually appealing and useful content, promote via social networks
Difficulty Score: 3
Quality Score: 4
________________________________________
Link Reclamation

Description: Links to no longer available resources to re-point at your pages
How to Obtain: Check Google Webmaster Tools for pages not found, contact websites linking to those to change link or redirect on your site
Difficulty Score: 3
Quality Score: 5

PALATNIKFACTOR VIEW: If you can do this and have a good success rate, it’s a must in your seo strategy and part of your monthly process.
________________________________________
Natural Links

Description: Links gained naturally due to link worthy (viral) content, link baiting, etc.
How to Obtain: Create good, informative content and promote through your networks
Difficulty Score: 4
Quality Score: 5

PALATNIKFACTOR VIEW: CONTENT, CONTENT, CONTENT.
________________________________________
Link Requests

Description: Links acquired through manual requests from webmasters, site owners, etc.
How to Obtain: Conduct competitive link analysis, use search operators, keyword searches, manual email requests
Difficulty Score: 5
Quality Score: 5

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From a SearchEngineWatch post, “…This year’s SEOmoz survey of 72 top SEOs concluded that links still represented about 67 percent of what drives rankings:”

When it comes to link building, it is THE process that takes the most amount of time and has to be done effectively and efficiently in order to achieve success these says with SEO. Links still come in the way of requesting links from bloggers, PR releases, forum commenting, social media bookmark submission, and it can go on.

If you look at the chart, 24% (rounded off) of SEOs believe the Googles ranking algorithm puts heavy weight on domain trust and authority. That basically will come from good legitimate link building and rankings will grow from there.

Eric Enge explains in his post some link building ways which I think were just really on point:

Link Building & Public Relations

Some of the PR-like ways of building links include:

1. Submitting articles to social news sites like Digg, Reddit, and Propeller.

4. Direct pursuit of relationships with media.

In contrast, here are some of the business development-like ways of doing link building.

1. Reaching out directly to publishers to request links.

3. Using Facebook or Twitter to directly contact potential linkers as a substitute for e-mail (which might be spam filtered).

Want to read more on related stories about GOOGLES ALGORITHM?

-The Real Deal Behind Googles Alogrithm
-Link Graph Vs. Social Graph- A Look Inside The Future of Google Search
-The Most Important Factors for SEO in Googles Algorithm

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SO? If you think about it in some common terms, let’s think about it for a bit. Google hates spam and yes, just because all your links maybe pointing to your homepage DOESN’T mean it’s spamming BUT what is that signaling to Google? Maybe you have no other important content in your website other than your homepage. Maybe you have absolutely nothing worth linking to in your website other than your homepage. Maybe Google is thinking, “HEY, if this guy doesn’t build any other links (or acquire naturally) to other pages on his website, then why should we care much about it ourselves?”

Deep linking can mean a lot, and the more available linking resources you can use for deep linking while maintaining a good linking strategy to your main page that you want to optimize for, the better off you’ll be in the SEO of your website and overall strategy. SearchEngineLand today had a good titled, “Link Week 5 Reasons To Make Sure You’re Deep Linking,” Julie Joyce points out 5 reasons for deep linking and their importance.

1. Usability
2. Link Profile
3. Traffic
4. Rankings
5. Avoid Penalties

I know most of you reading this right now may be concerned off the bat with #5, AVOID PENALTIES, WHAT? As Joyce states, “Well, this one’s more of an ‘I hope it does” than an actual rule, but it makes sense that if a site ONLY has backlinks coming into the homepage, it looks a bit unnatural.”

The best linking portfolio is that one which looks natural which includes ALL types of links, as she also states, “…homepage links, subpage links, links with missing anchor text, links with “Click Here!” anchor text, links with fantastic anchor text, sitewides, footer links, in-content links, links from site you wouldn’t want to show your mother, etc. Organic link growth truly does happen in a somewhat random fashion, and if you have more than one decent page on your site, you should have links to those pages sprinkled here and there.”

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I’ll give you this example. About a few months ago, I worked on a website that was just starting out and really didnt have much inbound links at all but the client was torn between PPC budget and SEO budget. PPC would mean instant traffic and business, but over the long-haul, we know it is just as critical to get your SEO in place for long-term ROI. We went ahead and launched our PPC campaign for this e-retailer. Sure enough, within 2-3 months, we had a few bloggers that must’ve found the site through PPC blog about the company since they found the company through paid search and blog about the product and price the client had it for.

So, thanks to paid search, the client was able to build links through bloggers finding the website and products that way. The same will go for anyone else doing research or trying to write about something and looking for website that carry specific products, etc. Many people will disregard if the site is organic or paid, but will go check out the first results.

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In any case, promoting your press release online is very important and there are a couple of things you can do to optimize the exposure of your press release in some easy steps.

1) Start by submitting your press releases to free services. Here is a good list to start:
Free Press Release Submission Websites which was a post from last month.

2) Find niche blogs and media outlets that you can email press release. Do not just email press release though, that, for the most part, will not work. Write a subject like attention to a contact if possible and website name. Let them know why the press release is important and how their readership can benefit from it.

3) Comment on VERY related blog post regarding the news and a link to the press release. The other day I dropped a URL on a comment from a popular blog, very related, and got a few hits, and rolls in little by little everyday. Targeted traffic, whatever the amount, is GOOD traffic.

4) If you still need more sources, type in 1-5 keywords in Google News. See what your competition or WHERE your competition is submitting their press release and try to submit there as well.

5) DONT BE CHEAP. With much understanding, if you’re working with no budget, do whatever and everything you can to get free exposure for your press release, but if you have some money you can play with to get some exposure, websites like PRWeb and other PR wire services is definitely worth the money. Not only will give you some good link juice to your page granted you purchase a plan that will suffice giving you a link with anchor text but will also get you the exposure your PR needs.

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On this video, Matt Cutts discusses these factors and linking in regards to the two social media giants of the moment, Facebook and Twitter.

Tip 1: Diversity, Balance of Links are Key

Tip 2: Use Alert Services

Tip 3: Create a "Link to us" Page

Bonus Tip: Fix Crawl Errors

READ A LOT MORE ON LINK BUILDING NOW.

Read the Whole Article at Search Engine Watch ----> Link Building Basics: 3 Great Tips
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>>WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THIS TOPIC? COMMENT AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST<<

Add press release submission sites to the comments if you know of one so others can see some you use as well. Hope this helps with your online press release submissions.

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“Bing’s position on link building is straightforward – we are less concerned about the link building techniques used than we are about the intentions behind the effort. That said, techniques used are often quite revealing of intent. Allow me to explain.

The webmasters who create end user value within their websites, based on the needs of people, are the ones who will see their page rank improve. So where does that value come from? Content. Good, original, text-based content.”

We’ve heard this from SEOs for a long time, which is a very simple rule at the end of the day, OPTIMIZE FOR THE USER, NOT THE SEARCH ENGINE. Let’s understand that as much as we place importance on our SEO on-site optimization, our ultimate goal, I believe, SHOULD BE making sure our page is not only built for the search engine, but to have the user ultimately convert. That being said, you must have the user in mind as much, if not MORE than the bot in mind.

Another super part of the post (which really goes for SEO in general, not just BING):

Examples of potentially conspiratorial hocus-pocus that might be perceived as unnatural and warrant a closer review by search engine staff include but are not limited to:

* The number of inbound links suddenly increases by orders of magnitude in a short period of time
* Many inbound links coming from irrelevant blog comments and/or from unrelated sites
* Using hidden links in your pages
* Receiving inbound links from paid link farms, link exchanges, or known “bad neighborhoods” on the Web
* Linking out to known web spam sites