The initial intent of Larry Page and Sergey Brin was – Links are confidence votes for web pages and they should pass freely.
Link traders and internet-spammers played spoilsports and tried everything possible to manipulate the honest link theory, or you can say a great vision by these 2 legends when they were in Stanford University as undergraduate students in 1996.
In recent years, Google has been investing heavily ($$$) to detect and penalize link traders – both buyers as well as sellers of links.
Google has been spending huge bucks to develop and incorporate signals to its search engine ranking algorithms to discount as well as detect spammy links for punishment.
You must have awareness of the recent news of “Google penalizing a popular UK flower website InterFlora.co.uk for running advertorials with links which were passing the link-juice.” And, reduced the Page Rank of many UK newspapers because they were involved in selling links.
Interestingly, InterFlora was offering attractive gifts to bloggers for publishing advertorials on their blogs. Of course with a do-follow link to their website.
Google thinks – Links should act as an editorial vote and pass freely.
Real life example: Suppose your close friend who runs a blog of a different niche, offered you a beer party in the nearby restaurant and lastly requests you to put a link on your blog.
Is this constitutes selling of links?
Yes, it's link selling. And Google is well equipped to detect your spammy act to promote your friend’s blog, which he doesn’t deserve.
The search giant’s view is “Links should not be given in-exchange of money, commodities or any type of incentives.” It should be casted freely.
The examples are never-ending…
The bottom line is Google always looks for the intention of the link-giver. And don’t think accidental or unknowingly giving a link to another site which passes link-juice is not punishable. Google does punish this type of innocent link seller also.
For any activity of link buying and selling, you will get a spammy love letter in your Google Webmaster Tools (GWT).
The usual penalties are –
Share your views and experience of link exchange, or request, or offering money for links in the comments below.
This post was published on December 1, 2018 9:20 AM
In the digital marketing world, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as a game-changer, reshaping how… Read More
Best tools that manipulate images and videos have become increasingly popular, and face-swapping is one… Read More
What if you could create video content that perfectly aligns with your audience's preferences and… Read More
Hi Friends, Today I am going to share an Secret Strategy that will help you… Read More
Who doesn't love the sweet sound of passive income rolling in? The thought of recommending… Read More
For any digital business, having a reliable payment gateway is crucial for businesses of all… Read More
This website uses cookies.
View Comments
thank you
Hi Anant,
Great Post and nice to go through your author bio. Its great that you do so many things. Coming to the blog on link selling part. You mentioned many techniques how google can find out faulty link sellings and penalize them like the concept of reciprocal links and footer links. My question is what if the lkinks are given to a blog of related niche or rather get a backlink from a related niche through paid guest blogging or seo?
Please advice!!
Thanks in Advance.
Hi Naina,
Great thanks. If you are posting on the same niche. that will be. OK, But always use "canonical tag" to show the official copy of your blog. the backlink is not a bad deal, but if you get a backlink from any penalized sites this will be harmful to your site.