Paid links are closely related to page rank and other google ranking penalty. That is why some bloggers and webmaster are still caution to sell or buy links. This post is confirm that google allows paid links participation. Any blogs or website can sell their links without getting penalty from google. All you need to do is add “rel=”nofollow” tag on your paid links. Here is the guide on how to write paid post without losing page rank. ( ) You can also use robot.txt file to avoid paid links from crawled by google spider.
Unlike paid links which is beneficial, link exchanges can negatively impact our site ranking in google. If you engage in any link exchange methods like “You link, I link”, it is time to re-consider it. I’m not a fan of link exchanges and I strongly believe that links should be gathered from our hard work. If you have received proposal on link exchanges, maybe you can ask them to check this google post.
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thanks for your information. that is a good aricle!!!..
I will becaefull if I have PR!!!…
Yes. Good luck with your PR.
I am not into LE too. Two way links does benefit someone but not both. If one of them have a stronger reputation than the other one (high PR) then the lower PR is much benefited from the exchange. I still prefer one-way links.
I agree with what you’re saying, but its also important to provide your visitors with Useful Content. When I only allow link swaps with other non-cheesy Wedding DJs in the United States, this is benefiting the customers in all those various states, should one of these readers not live in my area. Do you understand the distinction? Google’s main objective is to provide RELEVANT CONTENT when people search for “Non-Cheesy Wedding DJ”. Should one of those visitors NOT live in Northern California (Sacramento, San Francisco, etc) but in other states in America (New York, for example) — they will find a competent professional exactly like me!
Relevant link exchanges will always be a good idea when the KW match and its providing a valuable service to your readers.
I agree with you too. But, we can view in different point of view here. Both will get benefits but only one will get more benefit compared the other one. Those with higher PR is on higher benefit side.
Link exchanges between RELEVANT sites will never be penalized by Google! For example, I have a links page that links out to several dozen DJ services across the US. They in turn have been linking back to my site. Both sites have “DJ” and “Wedding” and “Music” and other similar Key Words. Result, there is a good relevant exchange of anchor text, which produces EQUAL benefit to each side of the link exchange!
Well, everything is good until google gets a report from some of our competitors. The dofollow link exchange is not google favored and it might get us penalty. Maybe, the rules is not so strict there for now.
I think this is both good and wrong at the same time. For a simple reason: sometimes link exchanges, especially between teenagers blogs, are a way to make new friends, and not to gain more pagerank. I do that myself on my personal blog, and the reason has always been only the making friends one. Reciprocal links in this case mean “showing people that we are friends”. It would be sad to see young people’s blogs get PR0 only because they reciprocate links with friends
Then yes, one the business side, I think Google is right to ban link exchanges as a method of increasing pagerank, since it’s artificially inflated and not natural.
As for the reciprocate-equals-friendship I mentioned above… do you think that adding the rel=friend tag would help making it clear so that personal blogs are not penalized?
NOTE: I just asked Google forum about this last night, and it seems that natural social exchanges of links won’t be penalized
And tags from http://gmpg.org/xfn/intro will also help with this.
Thanks for the tips on rel tag. Great information to share with all.
How does Google know whether a link is paid or not? Or are you just cautioning against too much linking in general?
Usually, paid link buyers will buy massive links. I don’t know google finds out a lik is paid or not. But, any sudden increase in backlink could trigger link farm. I guess this can be a technique but it is always good to follow the rules.
A really well explained point, thanks for sharing.
You’re welcome. Hope you enjoy my new posts too.
what an informative post here. Now I know the reason why my PR turned to 0. How long will it take again to increase my PR?
The next PR update would be in June I believe.
It is now updated (June 1st 09). Next update will be September 09. The estimated time for new update is January, March, June, September and December each year.
So paid links need to be nofollow if you want to avoid penalty? But then what good do they do anyone? nofollow links don’t impact anything afterall.
In terms of google, nofollow link don’t give any impact. But, yahoo and other search engine still recognize nofollow links and it gives some value too. So, nofollow link is not entirely ignored.
link exchanges is what we do since day one but now for the sake of page ranking, its no more
Many blog experts advice us to do link exchange with our grandma’s blog. I guess, it is time to re-think about link exchanges.
thanks for the info. Great info sharing. Before this, I’m little bit confused about the paid link stuff but now, it is clear that’s nothing wrong with paid links.
Good to hear that you are clear about paid links rules from google. Just add rel=”nofollow” on all paid links.