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Paid Links and McCarthyism

by byron white
9/8/2007 7:47:00 AM

You’ll find a previous post by me regading the Matt Cutts paid link debate that you may also want to reference.

To pay for links or not pay for links?  That is the question.  Is the future of link buying dead?  Where does the LifeTips Sponsor Link Program stand in this mess?

The SEO community is running scared thanks to Matt’s post, similar to the McCarthy communist scare of the 50’s.  Thousands of posts have been made on blogs all over the world discussing the death of the "paid link strategy" and the uncertain value of paid links in search marketing strategy.  

We need to put a end to this scare, and restore sanity in the search marketing industry with a simple explanation of what is good practice and what is bad practice in buying paid links, and why sites like LifeTips.com are clearly in the good practice camp.

The notion that "all paid links are bad links" is absurd.  Look at directories and news sites and authority sites that offer sponsorships. I do not know of even ONE reputable site that has lost it’s Google Juice as a results of selling paid links.  The key is reputable.  

Each website that sells links as part of a revenue strategy needs to be looked at individually.  Below are questions that might help you determine if a paid link is a whitehat paid link or blackhat paid link:

Is the site reputable?  
Does the site itself have genuine value to readers?
Does the site limit the number of links it sells?
Does the site sell links to “anyone” or only quality, relevant sites?
Does the site have great content or solve problems?

I have a few other questions that I recommend to clients before the purchase a link.  No question that a best practice manaul should be created for paid links, but the elimination of paid links altogether is absurd.  Note that page rank or back link popularity are not really important if I were to write the best practice manual.  Maybe Matt, in his spare time, could create the best practice link buying standard for us.  Come clean on the subject, instead of pushing this scare.

LifeTips.com in my opinion will continue to be labeled as a whitehat link source for many reasons.  We've worked with Matt and other engineers over the years to fine tune our business model and link program and have made many changes along the way with their input.  Below are example of recommendations we received from the Google engineers over the years to remain clean and pure in our mission and business strategy which does include links to our clients site as part of the sponsor package:

> Decrease the links from 50 per topic to 30, as 50 seems to excessive. (Aaron—WebmasterWorld New Orleans)
> Continue to be exclusive with sponsorship of each niche topic to preserve the power of the links.
> Inform the LifeTips readers that the links on the tip sites point to your clients site (For example, add HR Block Tip to all the tips that point to HR Block)
> Clean up new technology that might be hindering the bots from seeing content on your pages. (Thanks Matt--WebmasterWorld Vegas 2006)
> Get rid of the Do Not Follow your developer forgot to remove from your beta version of your site that you launched on a new version of your website (Thanks Aaron)

We have lots of other reasons we feel LifeTips is “safe’ from the paid link scare that may surface from angry competitors of our clients that “submit” LifeTips for review.

> Our sponsor package involves more than just links.
> LifeTips is a great site, offering lots of professionally written content to fans and readers.
> LifeTips has been around since 1999, with a pure mission to make the world, and the web, a better place, one tip at a time.
> We pay the expert writers for their words of wisdom, making our content some of the best on the web... and an authority status for tips and advice.
> In the history of the company, not one of our clients has ever requested their money back or filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau.  We’re proud of that, and we think it matters.
> Our focus on quality content development services is exactly what Google supports.  We believe Google wants companies like LifeTips to not only survive, but thrive.
> Our readership stats are well know by Google.  We’re popular and have fans. 
> We're a publisher, running Google Ads, so why would they want to black list their own clients?

For clients or prospects, I look forward to your comments or thoughts!  Long live whitehat link buying which is simply part of the Google recipe for top listings in the search engines.

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