2. Many webmasters who have been following the
discussions about Google's dislike of paid links have
been confused about what constitutes bad links and
good links, in the eyes of the search engine companies.
In this article, I will seek to answer many of the
questions people have on this topic.
3. There are two kinds of links that you can pay to have
made for you: rented or paid links, and permanent links.
5. With Rented links, you can generally make your
purchase decision based on the PageRank of a page.
6. The downside with rented links is that Google has stated
that they do not like links that are sold on the basis of
PageRank, and they are trying to create systems to
identify links rented for PageRank, for the purpose of
discounting those links. While they may eventually be
able to target and negate links developed by systems like
Text-Link-Ads or TextLinkBrokers, they will never be able
to completely identify and discount all links that are sold
for the purposes of PageRank .
7. In the end, I suppose Google is not going to penalize the
Source or Target websites for those links, but they will
nullify the value of the individual links in the Google
algorithms. Cutts suggested and implemented the
"rel=nofollow" a while back as a tool webmasters could
use for the purpose of identifying links for which the
webmaster did not want to pass PageRank. The only
thing that Google's algorithm will actually do to links
identified as rented or paid links is that it will treat those
links as "rel=nofollow's". If Google succeeds in their
quest, the webmaster buying the links will be throwing
away his or her money, if they are buying placement on
a webpage solely for the purpose of
10. The second kind of link is the permanent link.
Permanent links come in many formats, and in most
cases should generally be viewed as non-rental links.
With rental links, you pay a fee for placement once a
month, quarter or year.
11. Of course, the Yahoo directory is not viewed as a paid
link by the Google engineers, because although you
"pay" to get the link, Yahoo does not guarantee
placement of your link in their directory. Instead, Yahoo
says that we are paying them to "review our link." This is
why Google is not discounting links from the Yahoo
directory. Those Yahoo links are nice to have, but they
still do require a yearly review for commercial websites,
which must be paid for on a yearly basis.
12. Permanent in all cases is in the eye of the beholder.
Permanent as a rule in the Internet world means that
you will not have to pay another fee later to keep that
link on the page, where it will reside. In the context of
links on the Internet, permanent actually means that the
link will live at that location, until the webmaster who
owns the website changes his or her website's direction
OR goes out of business.
13. In my experience, perhaps 10% of the website's where
we get links placed will go under within one year.
Towards the end of the second year, webmasters will
look at their Profit/Loss and make a determination
whether their income level will justify shooting for a
third year of operation. Another 20% will close their
website at the end of the second year run. So, 30% will
drop out of business, within their first two years. Of the
remaining 70%, many of those websites will survive to
the fifth year and beyond. I don't know how long one
will be able to count on a permanent link just yet, but
links that I built for myself in 1999 continue to produce
traffic for my websites today, and those links
16. Many permanent one-way links can be acquired on
pages that currently have PageRank on them. In those
cases, it may simply be a matter of your link being added
to a list of links already on someone's web page.
17. However, any link created through a content
development method, such as pay-per-post or article
marketing, will be posted on a new page on the Internet.
All new pages on the Internet begin life at PageRank
Zero. It is like the birth of a baby. The baby begins small,
but grows into a child, then a teen, and finally an adult.
All article pages begin their lives at PageRank Zero, and
most of those new pages will increase in PageRank as
they age. Some web pages will never mature beyond
PR1, but others can grow into pages that are as high as
PR6 (at least that is the highest I have seen an article
page to date).
18. If you trust Matt Cutts of Google, he has indicated that
all new pages begin life at PageRank Zero and in the
Supplemental Results. He also said that Supplementals
are not the end of the road. Cutts stated that the only
thing required to bring a web page out of the
Supplemental Results is to have that web page gain
PageRank. (For those curious why a page went from the
Primary Results to Supplemental Results, the answer is
that either Google began counting links differently OR
the links that gave a web page PageRank no longer
exist.)
20. My conclusion from this information, and I might be
biased, is that the use of article marketing for link
building is a positive in the Google algorithms.
21. * I conclude this because links developed through article
marketing begin on pages that have a PR Zero. So, we
are obviously not getting links placed on websites for
the sole purpose of acquiring PageRank, not directly
anyway. We are placing links for the sake of having links,
but with good luck, many of those links will gain
PageRank over the long haul.
22. * By the very nature of article marketing, we can ensure
that the links we develop for our websites reside on web
pages that are tightly focused and targeted to the
content of our websites.
23. * Most websites that post articles do so through a
process of moderation, meaning that all article
placements have been human reviewed. That human
review process at the other end of the transaction puts
most article websites on par with Yahoo's human-
reviewed directory.
24. When we can get our keywords embedded into the link
pointing to our websites, then that is always a much
better deal. But, that outcome will be affected by the
webmaster at the other end of the process. Each
webmaster has his or her own rules for article
placement, and some of those folks simply do not
permit embedded keywords in our links, either in the
body of the article or in the about the author
information. A plain text link is better than no link at all,
although we always strive to get embedded keywords in
our links.
26. When you write a great article people will link to it, no
matter where it may reside. So in time, the pages that
house your article will gain PageRank.
27. As the article's author, you will are in total control of the
relevance of the web page linking to your website.
28. Just as you are in control of relevance, you are also in
control of whether people will choose to reprint your
article. Write a good article, and people will use it.