Our own Mike McDonald scored an interview with him out in Las Vegas while attending the PubCon conference. Video of that can be seen below.

As you probably know, Google isn’t very high on people buying links, but there are ways around this without directly "buying" a link. Wall elaborates on this. Three methods highlighted are through:

- Testimonials
– Conferences
– Charity Events

Testimonials will help build credibility (and links). Conferences are good places to network and hand out business cards, which can also lead to links, and charity events will not only reflect a positive image upon your brand, but also drive links (not to mention serve a good cause).

There are actually a number of other methods to "buy" links without being called a spammer. Wall goes into them in this article he wrote a while back.

Stay tuned to WebProNews.com and the WebProNews Video Blog for more coverage of PubCon in Las Vegas.

Of course that comes with an immense caveat, one that makes logical sense for such nofollowed links. If they are coming from a high-traffic site, with the potential of bringing in lots of visitors, some webmasters can live with the lack of link juice.

SERoundtable said a poll it ran earlier this year found responding webmasters split down the middle on their feelings on the topic. “Of the 177 responses, 50% or 89 people said they would buy a link with a nofollow attribute,” Barry Schwartz said.

“While 45% or 80 people said they would not. 5% or 8 people said, it depends.”

The followup conversation at DigitalPoint found that webmasters buying such links coming from sites delivering traffic wouldn’t mind the extra attribute being added to those links.

We’ll ask the question that SERoundtable asked back in May, just pick an answer below and submit it.

Some top SEO people plan to discuss the topic and strategies of acquiring links at next week’s SMX Advanced conference in Seattle. Links literally equal money for webmasters, as anything below a top five placement on Google for a site’s topic likely means little traffic.

The profit potential from a high organic ranking leads webmasters to seek out ways to gain and maintain a top placement. Search engines frown upon some of the more aggressive tactics, like link buying. Google in particular cracks down hard when it suspects a site picked up inbound links in a less than orderly organic fashion.

Link buying still shows up as a strategy promoted by search professionals. “Want to learn the most coveted secrets to “buying” the links the engines would never consider a ‘paid link?’,” reads the copy for one sure to be filled conference session.

But we have to wonder about the potential aftermath of link buying gone wrong. In January 2007, Google’s Matt Cutts dismissed claims that a site can elude detection when it comes to pruchased links.

If a webmaster relies upon advice about link buying, only to have the search engine later discover and drop the site from rankings over this, should the advisor be liable for a loss of traffic?

We live in a society that rests a finger on a hair-trigger when it comes to filing lawsuits. If there’s a reason why a webmaster would not seek satisfaction from a failed link-buying plan, we’re hard-pressed to think of it.

The search companies have no incentive to see a site fast-track its way atop the search results for a given query if the site’s content fails to merit such a gain. A site owner will argue otherwise; some may even think they are “entitled” to a top-three position in the search results.

Eventually, we think someone will suffer from a link buying backlash to the point where they look to assign liability to whoever provided that advice. It will be interesting to see if such a situation ends up in court for resolution.

While on the link buying panel at WebmasterWorld’s Pubcon a few people were pushing that you might need to consider how Google will view your current link buys 5 years down the road, and that they may hurt you then for what you do now. Upon hearing that I said something like "less than 5 years ago I bought spammy links and if I did not I probably wouldn’t be speaking here right now". That got a cheer from the crowd. Who wants to be worried about what Google thinks or does 5 years from now? That is no way to innovate or take marketshare from current market leaders.

Reviewing Result Quality

When engineers view your site they don’t just look at "if you have a few spammy links" but they try to consider the quality of user experience and the ratio of clean links to dirty links. If your site is good and ranks for years then you are going to get many natural links that dwarf any spammy links that were part of your site launch.

Building a Real Business

If your business model is entirely reliant on Google 5 years from now, your user experience is sub-par, and you haven’t built up any brand equity after ranking for 5 years then there was not much effort put into building a legitimate business, and it deserves to fail. But the sites that rank get self reinforcing exposure. If SEO is part of your brand building and site building strategy you simply can not sit around waiting for the rankings to come in.

Inferior Sites Ranking #1

It is easy to lack objectivity when talking of the quality of your site, but in some fields I compete in, many of the top ranked competing sites are ran by people buying a slew of spammy links and pointing them at their (quite obviously) English second language sites. Because they rank, those sites get some number of self reinforcing links. If I did nothing but create great content they would still outrank my site. You have to buy marketshare in one way or another (public relations, AdWords, link buying) if you are trying to gain marketshare and your market is competitive.

Who Buys Links & Uses Push Marketing to Buy Marketshare?

That does not mean that I am an advocate of bad user experience or poor quality content, but if you care about SEO and have a new site in an old market, user experience and content quality are not enough unless you do some push marketing at launch. AOL sent out millions of spammy CDs to market their service.

• Google pushes their logo onto ads they distribute all over the web, has the largest push ad network on the web, has some of the dirtiest domain traffic partners (many cybersquatters), recommend infidelity, and bundle Google Checkout usage with lower ad prices and free links.
• Yahoo! has an in house SEO team and a few years ago Yahoo! was one of the leading link buyers.
• IAC buys a ton of links and aggressively cross links their sites.
• Microsoft has got in trouble for launching new products by bundling them with their old products and steals traffic by sending seobook.om traffic to their live search product.
• Monster.com owns a ton of thin lead generation sites.
• eBay pays affiliates to spam Google.
• One of Google’s large ad distribution partners tried setting up a deal with me to rank their ads in Google’s search results using aggressive black hat spammy techniques, in which I declined to participate in.

We Don’t Write the Algorithms (or Hand Edit Search Results)

As an SEO you simply give the engines what they want. Looking at what they rank and how they market their sites gives you better insights for how to rank than blindly trusting the tips they give you to prevent you from ranking and suggesting you buy their ads. All of the web portals you know and love use push marketing to build their businesses. Why shouldn’t you?

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PubCon: Treading Lightly On Link Buying

WebProNews is at PubCon 2007 in Las Vegas, bringing you the latest in web marketing.

John Lessnau noted several points about purchasing links during the Link Buying session. Webmasters do it for various reasons, but the main idea is to improve one’s search engine ranking and traffic.

Using paid links to do so has become much more difficult through 2007, as Google and other search engines frown upon the practice. Google has been notably cracking down on sites that buy links, but do not provide a useful experience for the visitor.

Lessnau cited reasons why sites buy links in content. They are naturally relevant, and help search engines understand what a site is about.

(The increasingly strident stance Google has taken this year says they understand sites just fine without paid links, so keep that in mind too. – David)

Aaron Wall detailed some alternatives to link buying. Content syndication on other sites builds authority, sends traffic, and helps PageRank flow. Webmasters can buy competing websites in their niche as another option.

But the effort that will help keep a site from the dreaded PR 0 reduction comes from encouraging organic links. There is no shortcut to doing this. A regular editorial voice, community participation, and a quality site design can lead to picking up good links.

And of course, there is also Wall’s recommendation to buy AdWords ads for linkbait articles, which means buying a basket of related keywords.

There are ways to buy links, according to Rand Fishkin, that he thinks search engines can’t catch. Direct one-to-one purchases, and business relationships where links are a secondary part of the services, have worked for him.

Anyone buying links should heed Jim Boykin, who told attendees to stay under the radar and "don’t piss off Google."

WebProNews managing editor Mike McDonald contributed to this report.

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Worried About Google’s Link Snitch Program?

1. Links are valuable because of the Page Rank display in the Google Toolbar. Matt, if Google doesn’t like the way paid links influence search results, then eliminate the scoreboard. It’s hard to take your call-to-action seriously when you have the power to grind serious link buying to a halt all by yourself.

If people had to guess a page rank, most of their motivation for buying links would go away. Of course, Google won’t eliminate the green bar because that is the number one reason the Google search engine is at the top of most web browsers.

2. Most people that post on Digg, or add articles to Wikipedia, or work as editors at DMOZ also send paid link reports to Google to benefit themselves in some way. My point: Anyone taking the time to send complaints to Google about a paid link that hurts no one and may even be relevant, probably has unseen motivations.

One of the problems is that there is no other motivation I can see to report a paid link than to help Google out. It’s not like paid links irritate the end user like poor search results do. Therefore, the detection these reports offer will be of no value to Google.

3. It’s impossible to define a paid link exactly. Paying cash is obviously what you meant, but is that any different than a link to a client or to a buddy who helped you submit your site to 1,000 free web directories?

If I’m right with that assumption, then it’s really about determining motivation. Humans cannot determine motivations any better than the Google algorithm. It’s a virtual coin toss!

4. Payment can be proven only by following the money trail. Otherwise, it is simply a case of ‘he said, she said.’ This creates a heavy burden on Google to be correct in their assumptions.

5. Marketing Pilgrim’s Andy Beal asks: "What business does Google have in dictating the disclosure of any business relationships on others?"

Google, you are just a search engine. You should be reacting to the internet world, not trying to recreate it in your own image. Links are not evil and payment for links is not evil. The Web is based on links, link-trading and advertising, which of course is payment for links.

6. The hypocrisy of being in the business of selling links and then asking others not to sell them is a bit much for many webmasters.

7. Is this just a way to create more spending for Google AdWords? Stopping the selling of links will make AdWords one of the last ways to generate traffic from Google. If the link police can slow this to a crawl, then what will businesses do?

They’ll buy AdWords!

About two years ago, I formed an opinion on buying links that is contradictory to that of search engineers at Google. I obviously have a vested interest in doing so. The above is my disclaimer. I like to make money buying (and sometimes selling) links. Engineers make their employer money by keeping search results relevant. That is two perspectives. The third (4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th) perspective is the Visitor, Owner, Consumer, or Partner. They are what I truly try to justify my biased perspective off of because they are the most important. I think the FUD is really only doing detriment to them in the long run, and creating unwarranted confusion to those who have legitimate needs to purchasing links in various forms.

Maintaining perspective is the important part of the link buying debate. Staying informed, and being able to defend your case should the issue ever arise, and knowing that there are no hats, only goals in this business.

Article link buying

Perspective: SEO

1. Quantity – I write a press release which takes time to write or resources to have written. Hopefully it is worthwhile news. The anchor text linking back to the articles sometimes helps as a link. Submission services take money.

2. Quality – I spend a LOT of time writing a superior article to have it published and have links put in. I send it to someone, and they review it and publish on their site with relevant links. I value my time as money.

Perspective: Engineer

Anyone can publish a crappy article. Some are relevant and well written, but they will get aggregated to higher quality sites if they are high quality press releases that are truly citation worthy. These links probably should be severely dampened in terms of their quality score.

Perspective: Visitor, Owner, Consumer, Partner

It’s probably good to publish any relevant articles I have, but I’m concerned with the value of doing so, because it is difficult and time consuming to write good articles uniquely for a lot of different sites.

Directory link buying

Perspective: SEO

Yea, okay – the engineers are right on this one – it was only for the rankings. Yahoo directory and two or three others is probably as much as we want.

Perspective: Engineer

Muahahaha. We’ve eradicated 99% of directory link popularity since update Florida.

Perspective: Visitor, Owner, Consumer, Partner

I know a bunch of great directories we can get links. I have a list of awesome places we can submit!

Press Release link buying

Perspective: SEO

These aren’t going to help a whole lot, but every little bit helps. We might as well pay the extra money to get our link embedded in the release, as the anchor text could help a bit.

Perspective: Engineer

Any press release sites probably shouldn’t pass a lot of link weight because anyone can buy them.

Perspective: Visitor, Owner, Consumer, Partner

Will the links even count if we put them in a press release?

Partner link buying

Perspective: SEO

I’ll buy some links from their sites, and sell them some from mine in trade if the partner is a good fit through non-reciprocated (or some reciprocated) sites.

Perspective: Engineer

We know all your partners. Have you seen touchgraph? Our data is WAY better.

Perspective: Visitor, Owner, Consumer, Partner

Is this a link scheme that will get me banned? I’d ask someone at google, but all I ever get is canned responses.

Affiliate link buying

Perspective: SEO

I don’t really want to piss off the affiliates, but a few extra links where it doesn’t is kinda nice.

Perspective: Engineer

Not enough people have figured this out yet anyways to tell if 301’s are really working for affiliate urls.

Perspective: Visitor, Owner, Consumer, Partner

Our affiliate program is either really important, or hasn’t yet been started.

Paid link buying

Perspective: SEO

I’ll buy some links for my clients where it is relevant.

Perspective: Engineer

No comment. Send in your spam reports.

Perspective: Visitor, Owner, Consumer, Partner

Is this a link scheme that will get me banned? I’d ask someone at google, but all I ever get is canned responses.

Viral link buying

Perspective: SEO

Good content is expensive – we’d better make sure we can promote it effectively.

Perspective: Engineer

Please send in your linkbaiting reports.

Perspective: Visitor, Owner, Consumer, Partner

Is this a link scheme that will get me banned? I’d ask someone at google, but all I ever get is canned responses.

My question is – if paid links are going to be discounted – where will the link juice come from?

Overall perspective on link purchase:

Perspective: SEO

Links help my rankings. Rankings help my sales, and the sales of my clients. We need to develop strategies for more effective links.

Perspective: Engineer

People are always trying to find the short road to rankings. We frown on our search results being manipulated in any way, and want to stop it wherever possible.

Perspective: Visitor, Owner, Consumer, Partner

We need traffic and sales. We want relevant results when we search.

Conclusion:

Every link has an inherent cost – whether it be time, money, or a combination – most links are sponsored in one fashion or another.

Google can certainly discover your links and discount them, but they hopefully also respect the effort it takes to purchase effective text link advertising. Labeling purchased links as "grey area" makes the job of engineers a bit easier, by buying time until the algorithm is more effective by becoming dependent on other factors. Links has long been a MAJOR factor in rankings – and making the most of links is the job of a good SEO.

You should purchase RELEVANT on-topic links. If you can NEARLY justify the purchase for clickthrough, it’s probably well worth taking a leap of faith on the link passing link popularity. As a visitor, owner, consumer, or partner – your site NEEDS links, and the handful of links from friends and relatives just isn’t going to cut it.

More on the paid link debate:

• Matt stirs the pot on the paid links debate.
• Michael on why Google wants to tell you how to run your website.
• Google want you to report paid links at threadwatch
• Why Google shouldn’t penalize me – SugarRae

Public aside to Matt and the world’s greatest spam fighters:

With all the great things you guys do for webmasters, this is truly a disservice. They look to you for clarification, and having the average webmaster expect they can rank at all without paying in some form for some links is sending them on a fool’s errand. With the highest level of respect, I really think this is a debate/ problem which will work itself out through the marketplace – and NOT with the help of the FTC. I hope you will continue to consider the nature and philosophy behind paid links without resorting to creating this level of fear, uncertainty, and doubt with web publishers.

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Although as a SEO I know buying links means buying some degree of placement on search engines, and Google is the main target.

However, I’m buying for informational sites – communities and blogs – with no real revenue streams.

So instead of trying to link bomb for money keywords, I’m trying to hit longtail search traffic, which may bring in much more targeted traffic – traffic either more likely to join a community or subscribe to a blog feed, or else click out via paid ads.

Overall, I’m trying to increase overall rankings and overall traffic, rather than target a minority of keywords.

Now, here’s my strategy:

1. Search for related topic sites

2. Prioritise the ability to place links with description text

3. Prefer homepage links over sitewides

4. Prioritise links on older and more established sites

5. Avoid sites/pages of PR5+

6. Hit a larger number of PR3-PR4 sites

I’m scouring webmaster forums, and although my first inclination was to buy from advertised link sales, I’m now shunning these in order to approach webmasters I see with related sites more directly.

In fact, here’s my type of links to avoid:

1. High PR – too above the radar, I want the softly softly catchee monkey approach

2. Sites advertising link sales – an invitation to get caught with your pants down

3. Sites linking to anyone who’ll buy a link – pills, porn, casinos – you know the score

4. Sites recently bought from a drop or deletion – plenty of cheap links here, but they are cheap for a reason

5. Unrelated sites – for obvious reasons

Although I’ve targeted buying links directly from websites in related fields, I’ve also made a few mass directory submissions.

The warning with directories is that I personally suspect the biggest, strongest, and highest PR directories – which are also the most expensive – are also probably knee-capped in Google for ranking purposes.

I’ve risked some purchases here, but restricted it to around a half-dozen directories, where they had PR on the targeted categories. PR2 is fine for me – some can’t even reach that.

What I’ve actually been most aggressive with for directory submissions is the lower end established directories – PR4-5 on the homepage, only a year old, but with PR and cached pages for key categories.

My reasoning is that these will deliver a better return on investment (ROI) compared to the larger directories. A link purchase here, another one there

Also, I’ve emailed a couple of the directories to ask about pricing for mass submissions (20+ sites). Most directory owners will jump to discount for mass submissions, so this helps with the whole ROI scenario.

Overall – it may seem as a SEO that rather than simply buying links for clients, I’m currently buying links for my own sites.

However, the bottom line is that if I can leverage my own sites for clients I will – but my own sites felt like they were slowly decaying. A fresh influx of PR may – or may not – help revive them.

The clincher will be seeing how traffic develops over the coming weeks as the links are gradually indexed.

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Perusing Doug’s notes, I was met with this gem on the subject:

“Your choices determine you intent,” said Eric Ward, CEO of EricWard.com.

Ah, yes, I see.

Snatch the link from my server.

What is the sound of one link clicking?

Publicist and link building aficionado Ward had no answer for that. Doug didn’t ask him. But Ward went on to pose questions of his own. Why are you buying the link? Is it for a rank or audience/direct click traffic?

“If you’re going to buy links to try to improve your rank, you’re playing with fire,” he warned.

Ward was referring to the general distaste search engines have for gaming the rankings through link farming. “Getting busted” earns a website a karmic search penalty. He echoed Text Link Ads Inc. president
Patrick Gavin, who began the session with a discussion of neighborhoods.

Ill-reputed websites linking to your site does double damage by busting your site down a few ranks in the search engines and downgrading your overall web-rep.

“It comes back to the neighborhoods and where you want to be put,” said Gavin. “Don’t, for example, mix in with casinos unless that’s your business.”

His advice was to “think natural.” Get relevant sites and blogs with good reputations to link to you and be willing to pay them for it.

“It’s not an exact science,” he cautioned, in reference to budgeting money for this.

Ward suggests yet other routes for link advertising, like email newsletters and press releases.

“But the links most valuable, to buy you cannot,” says Yoda. And the crowd edges forward to hear the rest of the master’s words.

“Don’t do anything to potentially hurt the pristine reputation your site has now,” Ward continued. “If you want to try some black hat tactics, launch a new site. It’s all fair game. It’s all business.”

Debra Mastaler, owner of Alliance-Link.com, gives a few more concrete tactics. Mastaler plugged LinkedIn.com as one place she uses to build links. She also recommends contacting heavy users on eBay and Amazon for links on their sites.

“They’re very open to it,” she says.

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