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Google's Matt Cutts talks about
buying links
Top Google software engineer Matt
Cutts recently wrote about paid links in his blog. Being
one of the main software engineers on Google, Matt Cutts knows
best about Google indexing and quality control issues. Matt
Cutts suggested that it was better not to use paid links.
What are paid links?
A paid link is a link from one web site to another for
which a webmaster has paid. Paid links have nothing to do
with the sponsored search results on Google, Overture and
other pay per click (PPC) search engines. If a webmaster
pays another web site to place a permanent text link to
his site, this is considered a paid link.
What does Google think about paid links?
Google engineer Matt Cutts confirmed that links are important
to Google in his blog post: "Google (and pretty much
every other major search engine) uses hyperlinks to help
determine reputation. Links are usually editorial votes
given by choice, and link-based analysis has greatly improved
the quality of web search."
However, he also stated that "Google does consider
buying text links for PageRank purposes to be outside our
quality guidelines" and that he "wouldn't be surprised
if search engines began to take stronger action against
link buying in the near future".
He also revealed further information about what can happen
to web sites that sell links: "Reputable sites that
sell links won't have their search engine rankings or PageRank
penalized–a search for [daily cal] would still return
dailycal.org. However, link-selling sites can lose their
ability to give reputation".
What does this mean to your web site?
If possible, you should avoid purchasing links from other
sites. As Matt Cutts puts it: "The best links are not
paid". Search engines want to find web sites to which
other web sites link naturally.
Natural links are links from other web sites that makes
sense from a web surfer's point of view. If a link to another
web site leads to further information about a topic and
if the link is useful for the web surfer then it is a good
link.
For that reason, it is important that your web site gets
these natural links.
How can you get natural links for your site?
The best way to get natural links is to build a web site
with great content. The better the content of your web site,
the more web sites will link to your site without asking.
Our software program ARELIS can also help you to build
natural links to your web site. ARELIS helps you to find
out which web sites link to your competitors. Sites that
link to your competitors could link to your web site as
well.
In addition, ARELIS finds web sites that offer content
that is related to your web site. For example, if a web
page contains an article about the topic of your site, it
would make sense if that page links to you. ARELIS helps
you to locate these web pages and to contact the webmasters.
Apparent quick-fix solutions such as buying links or participating
in link farms don't lead to long-term results. Sometimes they
can actually harm your web site rankings. You have to find
the right web sites that link to your site.
ARELIS
makes the hard way of building links as easy as possible for
you (further information in the recommended resources below).
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