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SEOs who buy links, have you noticed any penalties from the link scheme/spam updates?
I’ll do paid guest posting from time to time but haven’t seen any major red flags. Also, there’s just so much volatility these days it’s hard to pinpoint what could be causing a dip.
I’m just curious if any SEOs are like “Oh this client is definitely hurting from the link scheme update”?
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4 Replies
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So I didn’t buy the links, but we had a seo consultant who bought a TON of links for us 4-5 years ago – since then I have done the seo for my business myself. Looking at our search console, there doesn’t seem to be any direct negative effect(manual actions etc) so I have been reluctant to disavow anything – that said, I can’t help but think that the ratio of shit links to good links negatively effects us.
I’ve also built around 40-50 good links in the past year and hustled hard on a few keywords with really good results.
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Same rules apply. Is the website good, how is their link profile, and can that link bring in relevant traffic.
It doesn’t matter if you pay for links or not.
Many reputed directories ask for payment to list a business. -
No, and neither did any of my clients. If you have a good budget, you can afford good links. I recently got a link from a site getting 600k+ traffic for great keywords in a competitive niche for $1500. Worth it? I think so!
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I’m no longer in an SEO-focused role necessarily (went from head of an SEO department to head of a general in-house marketing department) but in past experience I worked for an agency that insisted the only surefire way to build links was to buy them with a linkbuilding service like the Hoth.
FWIW — Complete fucking waste of money.
There weren’t any penalties, but the links would generally drop off of backlink reports within 6 months so any momentum you’d built up died down fairly quickly.
Ultimately though, Google doesn’t *really* have any way of knowing whether or not you paid directly to have a link on another site, and I really don’t think they care because there are so many “premium” directories out there (think WebMD, PsychologyToday, Angie’s List, etc). So unless you’re buying really shitty links from spammy domains, I wouldn’t expect any penalties because you paid a Mommy Blogger $100 to feature a link to your site in one of her articles.
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