Never Buy Backlinks
The Old Days
So back in the day, like about 20 years ago, the way you got your website indexed was to submit it to a directory website like Yahoo. There were lots of them.
Yahoo is one of the few that have survived. There were plenty of others. They were big at the time. They've all disappeared.
It was like a bricks and mortar business submitting its details to the Yellow Pages, An exact online analogy.
New Kid on the Block
Then along came Google.
A totally new paradigm.
In two major respects. And although it's evolved through many changes, both of these remain.
1. You don't have to submit your website. Googlebot continually crawls the web and will, sooner or later, find your website and index it. You can use GSC (Google Search Console) to speed up this process but whether you do or not, it will happen.
2. This was the real paradigm shift. Google ranked sites according to how "popular" they were. Where "popularity" was gauged according to how many backlinks they had. The more other sites were linked to them, the more authority they had, right?
Along Came the Scammers
It didn't take long to game the system.
But it still remains an important factor. Google has recently stated that the two most important factors for Google ranking are Content and Backlinks.
So naturally there are services offering backlinks, the easier of the two.
Don't fall for them!
This is how they work.
Cheap Backlinks
They register a heap of domain names, You can get a starter domain name for as little as $1.99 so it's no big expense. They get them hosted for next to nothing too,
Then they create one decent blog post (probably pay someone from Fiverr to do it for $5) and then spin it.
If you don't know what spinning is, it's software that takes an article and by substituting synonyms and rearranging the text, produces a new article that passes the duplicate content test. Some software claims that it can produce 1,000 unique articles from one.
Spinning Crap
But here's the problem. Each one of these articles reads like crap. They add literally no value.
So what a service offering backlinks does is post this spun article to all of these otherwise empty websites and then backlink to yours. If they are linking to many other websites, they can even get a temporary reasonable ranking.
It can even work for a while. You can get a spike in traffic, and think it was a good investment.
BUT...
The fact is Google absolutely hates this. It's gaming everything Google stands for.
And it will eventually discover it. Either through manual intervention or simply by Googlebot getting better at recognizing this situation.
Don't Buy Backlinks
BOTTOM LINE
Don't do it. Once you're discovered, Google will kill your website and no matter what you try, you will never rank again.
Recent Comments
137
Interesting to learn all that is going on in “website world “
Most of website building and ranking is beyond my comprehension, I keep doing the training here and heeding advice from the more experienced such as yourself.
Have yourself a good day Phil
Louise and Alan
Thank you, Louise and Alan. Yes, it can be a steep learning curve and, of course people can have different experiences and different opinions as a result.
The WA training helps keep you grounded.
Where do you even buy backlinks from? Or where and how are these promoters selling them to the unsuspecting?
If you get on a few mailing lists in the IM space, you'll get plenty of shortcut offers, including backlinks.
Just search Bing or Google for "buy backlinks" and you'll see plenty come up.
Thanks Phil, the more I read into increasing your Domain Authority, the importance of Backlinks comes up. Do you have any other tips on building up Domain Authority (Moz). Thanks!
Nothing beyond what's already being taught in WA, John. Good content posted frequently and some natural backlinks from good sites in related niches.
OK now I can rest easy had my daily “WA New Learning experience” for the day.
Phil thanks for sharing did not really understand backlinks but now I can even explain it.
Barry
That's great, Barry. Buying backlinks can be very tempting but once you understand how they are structured, you'd never do it.
Yes, Rose it's a minefield. Be guided by those who've made all the mistakes so that you don't have to :-)
I am new at this and so this is all new to me BUT it is great information which I thank you for sharing.
Mike
Thanks, Mike. Yes, there are a lot of traps for young players in the wonderful world of internet marketing.
See more comments
Thanks for sharing, but I don't agree with everything in this post.
There are always dangers associated with anything that attempts to work off of Google's algorithm, but backlinks are still Google's #1 way of getting people ranked aside from traffic/interaction.
If Google is penalizing you for buying backlinks, then you aren't doing it right.
If you suddenly get hundreds of backlinks all at once, of course google is going to penalize you, it's not possible. That is why you get a service that "drips them" over a period of time.
Also, you are making a blanket statement about "content spinners". A spinner does not generate content, it merely removes references to any sources of the "fetched" or "generated" content, and it changes parts of the content to be original. Usually it does this before it even publishes.
If you are fetching or generating content that is "crap", that is related to whatever source or software configuration you have in place, not the spinner.
Also, I don't think this is accurate:
"Google will kill your website and no matter what you try, you will never rank again."
Google is not God. It wants you on it's search Engine, and it wants you to use it's PPC.
If a site is getting banned from Google, you are not internet marketing right. Backlinks are not the problem.
Oh, and before I start hearing that, "I don't know what I'm talking about", I've been here for over year, been an internet marketer since I was a teenager, active in the WA community, finished 98% of every training in WA, and I am actively making money with my website online.
Regards,
Jacob
Thanks for your insight, Jacob.