Whiners Stay Broke - Paid Links Continued
April 16th, 2008 by CourtIn his last post (The Risk and Reward of Buying Links: A Case Study), Mark talked about paid links - he analyzed a site that is obviously buying them and talked about the benefits and risks involved in purchasing links.
Guys this topic is one of the more loaded that we could talk about, and I would like to add my thoughts. As most of you know, I stick to fairly conservative tactics when it comes to SEO. For that reason, I would never buy links for CourtneyTuttle.com. Frankly, I would be an idiot to start buying a bunch of links. Why? Because our competitors for our main keyword are some of the most savvy marketing companies out there. It would be very difficult to get away with - these guys could easily report us. Not worth it for us.
Does this mean that we’re trying to act all righteous? No - it simply isn’t worth the risk for us. We can get the results that we want without buying links, so why would we employ a bunch of risky tactics?
Some of the more self-righteous SEO elitists have said stuff like “Google can’t tell me what to do” and other similar comments. Guess what? These people are right! Google can’t tell them what to do. These guys also can’t tell Google what to do. You have to analyze the situation, accept it for what it is, and get some freaking work done! Get mad if you want, but don’t let your anger get in the way of getting the job done.
No matter what you believe, you can’t tell Google what to do with their site. They can do anything they want to it. They can show whatever results they want. They can ban whoever they want - it’s their freaking site people.
Guys, around here we stick to one thing - getting results. If Google acts one way, we will take advantage. If they change, we will take advantage. Frankly guys there are only two other sites I have ever seen that know how to get results from Google and those are ‘Make Money Online with the BloggerUnleashed‘ and ‘How To Make Money for Beginners by Griz‘. Almost all of the other amateurs that everyone is listening to couldn’t even buy Wendy’s with their Adsense checks.
Can you get results buying links? Of course you can. I know plenty of people that do it but choose to use a more conservative strategy. If you choose a more aggressive path, make sure you understand the risk you’re taking. Can you get results without buying links? Of course you can - we do it around here and will continue to do so.
What is your risk if you buy/rent links?
- Getting caught and banned or penalized by Google or another search engine.
Does this happen to sites everyday? Yes, it does. Will it happen to YOU? Maybe.
One of the best comments we’ve ever had on this site was left earlier today by Fiar, check this out:
The problem is buying or selling links that pass PAGE RANK. Buying or selling links to
*Increase targeted traffic
*Direct traffic to a funnel or sales page
*Increase brand recognition
Are all cool with Google. It’s followed links that, essentially, buy SERP ranking that Google doesn’t like, and understandably so.They put a great deal of effort and money into providing listings that are on the front page due to relevance, authority, and quality links. Buying page rank (Followed links) is gaming the system.
It’s NOT the same as advertising. It’s perfectly legitimate for a political candidate to buy advertising, and do campaigning to raise name recognition, and awareness on policy stances. It’s NOT okay for them to buy votes.
But who is the FEC to tell people how to run their election?
What if it was Digg. Is it Okay to buy votes on Digg, or does that violate their TOS? What if I bought my way to the front page of Digg and you knew about it? Would you be a “rat fink” as you put it?
Wouldn’t I sound silly complaining about “who are they to tell me how I run my website” if they were to blacklist me for gaming THEIR site.
Wouldn’t Digg consider that sort of behavior to be spam? Hmm. I wonder if Google has a term for people that game their results. It probably wouldn’t have anything to do with a salty canned meat product though.
You want to have your cake and eat it too. You want to rank in Google, or sell rank in Google, but you don’t want them to have a problem with YOU gaming the results on THEIR site.
You want to live without Google, by all means go ahead. That includes being indexed by them, and that’s where your hypocritical position exposes you. You want it both ways.
Run your website however you want, but Google is THEIR site. THEY get to dictate how you get to use it.
Guys I would like to see everyone get to a point where they can accept the realities we’re facing so that they can start taking advantage. Google is what it is. The same people that are trying to make these moral stands against Google are the ones that won’t even be in business two months from now.
Do you guys think that Vic, Griz, and myself are going to go away? I can tell you right now that it isn’t going to happen! Why? Because we know how to get the organic traffic we need to stay in business!! I want you all to be very careful who you listen to.
You can bend the rules if you want, but if you do you need to be willing to face the consequences. Lots of people do it and make serious money. Other people stay legit and also make serious money. All we’re trying to do is educate you on the risks involved.
{Court gets down off his soapbox and starts thinking of a good piece of bait to build legit links}
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April 16th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
Great insight Court!
I completely agree to with you, after being led astray when I first began blogging to now realizing the “truth” that you, Vic and Griz have been teaching.
I can tell you that I have made more in the last 3 months than I have all of last year since I found you three.
Thanks!
As for the links, if someone reports your site to akismet as they think you are spamming, is there anyway you can get your site out of akismet? I think this has happened to me, and it was a completely legit site, and the comments were completely relevant.
April 16th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
If someone reports you to Akismet, you can contact and ask for reconsideration. I know that Vic was successful at this once, but am not 100% sure how he went about it. I would start by submitting the request here:
http://akismet.com/contact/
April 16th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Great and thanks for the link. I still get BZ trackbacks showing up as spam, so not sure if Vic knows this or not.
I’ll check with Akismet and see what they say.
April 17th, 2008 at 8:13 am
Elliot just fill the form and explain what happened it usually gets taken care in 3 days. AS for Blogging Zoom it has been a bit of a nightmare it has to do the way our script sends the trackback I will get that resolved soon I hope.
April 16th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
I’m on board - I’m afraid to buy links for any “legit” sites. Get on Google’s bad side once and you’re pretty much toast…
Building a successful site without the benefit of Google’s good graces is not a fun thing at all.
April 16th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
I would agree with you 100% Llama. It is possible to do everything legit - it’s harder though.
April 17th, 2008 at 8:58 am
It is easy to screw up without even trying. Why would anyone want to risk getting into trouble by deliberately buying links?
April 16th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
This is a great breakdown of the issue. I have a friend who is wanting to get into niche marketing, and wants to just buy links because it’s quicker than natural link building. He hopes to make tons of money with these niche sites, but i don’t really see him turning a major profit, if one at all, buying the amount of links it would take to get in the top of his niche.
I will have to show this to him and then just let him decide. It’d be one thing if he wanted to compliment regular link building with buying links, but he doesn’t want to do regular link building because it’s too hard.
April 16th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Hey LBB~! Man that’s a risky way to start in the business. If I were him I would probably get my feet wet first, but some people could make it work.
All you can do is educate him on the risks. If he loses the site, that’s a lot of money down the drain. On the other hand…
April 16th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
It’s funny that I should read this post today Court. I’m already well aware of the dangers of paid links, so no worries there. I actually got an email from some unknown saying they were interested in paying me for text links. Deleted.
You, Grizz and Vic are simply awesome. The links I get are legit, and those are the only links I want or will accept.
April 16th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Gosh Lin thanks for your kind words. I can tell you that Vic and Grizz are for real and do whatever they can to help whoever they can.
Usually when I get those emails from people telling me they want to buy links, I tell them that my price for a permanent link on the homepage is $5,000,000 and that they I’ll have my lawyer send them a confidentiality agreement if they’re interested.
April 16th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
I really enjoy your posts, court, but lately i think you’ve been getting arrogant.
I find it tedious to read you telling us how good you are, and how bad your colleagues are.
I’ve rearranged some of your text
“Some of the more self-righteous SEO elitists have said stuff like Guys, around here we stick to one thing - getting results. Frankly guys there are only two other sites I have ever seen that know how to get results from Google and those are ‘Make Money Online with the BloggerUnleashed‘ and ‘How To Make Money for Beginners by Griz‘. Almost all of the other amateurs that everyone is listening to couldn’t even buy Wendy’s with their Adsense checks.”
April 16th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
You’re entitled to your opinion. I would love to find more sites that have the expertise of Grizz and Vic, but frankly I haven’t been able to find any.
If you know of one that can really back up what they say, send it my way.
April 16th, 2008 at 11:40 pm
I like Daniel Scocco and Darren Rowse. Down to earth, easy to read, stacks of subscribers. (which they show in small text)
But you say you think you’re better than them?
April 16th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
Boostranks those guys are brilliant. No, I don’t think I’m better than them. They are better than just about everyone else when it comes to information on blogging. To be clear, I am talking about pure SEO information in this post. Both Vic and Grizzly are better than those guys when it comes to SEO, although Darren and Daniel are obviously spectacular at some of the other aspects of blogging.
I understand how this could have been confusing in the post, and for that I sincerely apologize.
April 17th, 2008 at 9:27 am
Ok, see that’s a completely different statement than the way it reads in the post. If you’re saying that you guys are the best source of information on SEO in the “blogging on blogging” niche, then I’ll actually buy that. While I’m no fan of Vic’s, haven’t read much of Griz’s site, I do enjoy this blog quite a bit.
April 16th, 2008 at 11:54 pm
It’s probably not fair to call someone arrogant after they’ve poured hundreds and hundreds of hours into providing you with incredibly practical information for free.
Boostranks.com…actually a pretty cool domain by the way.
April 17th, 2008 at 12:48 am
want to know how much boostranks cost? $6, it wasn’t taken.
I had no dreams of starting yet another bog about blogging, but I couldn’t walk past boostranks, so thought I’d chuck up some shit and see what sticks
court might recognize the theme
I love learning SEO, it’s like a huge jigsaw puzzle, or figuring out how to break out of jail.
Anyway, I enjoy courts blog. It was one or two posts I didn’t like. I indented to play the ball, not the man.
So I’ll finish by saying I don’t like this post, but court is OK.
April 16th, 2008 at 10:31 pm
Court,
Believe it or not, I agree with you on the premise behind the post, results are what matter.
But I have to ask, do you really think that yours, Vic’s and Griz’s sites are the only ones that
?
April 16th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
I believe that almost the entire group of ‘blog about blogging’ sites is totally lost when it comes to this. I’m sure there are sites that I’m not aware of. As far as Vic and Grizz, I’ve been able to see what they can do. Send me some of the stuff you’ve been able to do and I would be happy to have a look.
April 17th, 2008 at 8:57 am
I think qualifying your statement with “almost” or at least confining it to the niche of “blogging about blogging” or “make money online” or whatever would make your statement seem a lot less arrogant than it cam across. As is, it reads that you think the three of you are the only people that have ever gotten results from Google which is just ludicrous.
Even within that niche, I’d argue that Darren Rowse has gotten plenty of results from Google. His site ranks #3 for the term “blogging” and is all over the place in blogging related SERPs. That’s probably more a result of the incredible number of links he attracts and his authority status in the niche but as you said, it’s the results that matter.
Court, believe it or not I wasn’t talking about myself with that comment. I’ll be happy to email you a couple of sites I’ve SEO’ed but as I said before, I’m certainly not the be-all and end-all when it comes to SEO. The best ranking I achieved with my blog about blogging was for the term “make money blogging” which isn’t all that competitive.
April 17th, 2008 at 9:22 am
Just realized I say “believe it or not” waaaaaaay too much.
April 17th, 2008 at 12:08 am
I actually do believe you agree with the premise of the post. I think you’d agree with the premise behind the vast majority of the posts.
I would only take issue with the fact that on occasion you drop by, scan 2/3 of the post, misinterpret, jump to conclusions, and then basically start hurling insults (or comments that vaguely resemble insults).
Makes you seem like a jackass. You’re probably not a jackass, but you risk seeming like one when you make these sweeping accusatory comments on posts that miss the entire intention of the article and the author.
We’re always up for a good debate, but man, maybe keep the hyperbole to a minimum, okay?
Hang around, be part of the community. Contribute. Just take it easy on violently declaring who’s a pawn of Google and whatever else. If the stuff taught here works, great. Seems like people are responding favorably to it. If it doesn’t work, unsubscribe. We’ll get over it.
And hey, if you’ve got something substantial to say, submit a guest post! Not a bad way to let a few thousand people see what you know.
Include a couple case studies of projects you’ve taken to the top of the SERPs. We’ll all learn something.
April 17th, 2008 at 9:18 am
I am subscribed and do read almost every post. I am just not often motivated to comment unless I strongly agree or disagree. If commenting on posts that I agree with gives me more credibility when arguing points I disagree with I guess I’ll start commenting more often. That’s probably a fair point.
April 17th, 2008 at 3:14 am
Court -
What do you think of the link directory (resource directory) exchanges such as James Brausch’s Relusi and Leger’s 3Way?
April 17th, 2008 at 8:08 am
Court I do not know what to say but I am honored by your mention of me in this post. I can still look back to June of 07 trying to learn this whole blogging thing an every time I did a search on a blogging related term I would consistently get in my first page of results this guy name Court I would read the post and then go back to searching on Google about the 5 time I said wait a minute do I really need to keep searching on Google LMAO!!!!
From starting as a reader today not only I call you my business partner but most importantly I call you my friend.
What was so refreshing the first time I ever read your blog to this day it has not changed god knows no such thing of rehash after rehash post here.
I believe that even though we might not have changed the overall picture of the MMO sector, we have impacted many lives and their real chances of making money online.
Last night I must confessed I felt a bit tired of how most of these so called “MMO bloggers” decide to take on the “let’s ride the Vic train” and as such for the past 3 days it seems I get my daily dose of trackbacks with “Vic is a **** post” The funny thing is none of the post actually debate what I say and instead focus on things like I had a nervous breakdown in 2002 and because of the medication I would even wet myself in bed this applies to most of them including Ben Cook.
So last night I was talking to my wife and telling her my feelings and frustrations and telling her I was considering after the Expo in Sept shutting down Blogger Unleashed as by then I expected a few hundred readers would already be at least making on avg a hundred dollars a day applying what we three teach and they could pay it forward by helping other people.
After listening to my whining for for quite a bit of time and just sitting silent I asked her what she though and this was her reply:
“Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid, for the Lord thy God, he it is that doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.”
And told me to put it in prayer and expect an answer.
How surprising to sit in my computer and do my daily Court trip to find this post.
So my dear friend after reading the following:
“Do you guys think that Vic, Griz, and myself are going to go away? I can tell you right now that it isn’t going to happen! Why? Because we know how to get the organic traffic we need to stay in business!! I want you all to be very careful who you listen to.”
I guess that is my answer!
Bless you dear friend for being the path to light and not darkness.
Vic
April 17th, 2008 at 9:11 am
Vic, if you presented all your content in the manner that you wrote this post, I’d be willing to bet you’d have a hell of a lot more followers to your blog. You go off on people all day long that have never done anything to you and yet you come here and post like a wounded puppy?
If you’re going to dish it out man, you’ve got to be able to take it.
April 17th, 2008 at 9:30 am
This site is not about faking or scamming Court is not a fake or a scammer and as such I treat him with the utmost respect.
Now you are an idiot a fake and a scammer an as such is how are treated.
Now for your idiotic interpretation of my comment. No you idiot I am not worried or hurt by your idiotic comments or post made by other idiots or scammmers like yourself.
My frustration is that it seems only a handful are telling it like it is vs you and your other 5k scammers trying to take advantage of people and give advice on topics you are clueless.
Now I will not respond here anymore to you as again my actions speak more then my words.
As for BU readers to my knowledge the last time I looked our feed count I doubled yours so if we use your theory as a basis no it seems that people want the truth and not some one like you scamming them while at the same time saying how nice they are.
As for BU I ignored you because you have been labeled what you are I have nothing else to say I rather spend time teaching good people who wasted their time reading your blog and other such blogs for months how to actually really make money online. And take care of my site network which is what pays my bills and not selling over priced websites with no value because of the total lack of organic traffic.
Court I am sorry this scum came here because of me. I apologize for taking the space but I will not be back to answer anymore idiotic things by this little kid and take up space in your comments.
April 17th, 2008 at 10:50 am
Court,
You are one of the few blogs that I read and I usually find myself in complete agreement. Not this time though, actually with one particular point in this post.
You say if you buy paid links then you will have to face the consequences.
I have never seen this to be true. Maybe you have and if yes then this is news to me.
Sell yes, then you are in trouble. Google has been punishing and stripping rank for all sites that indulge in selling paid links or postings. Key point here is selling/renting paid links and not the other way around.
In my understanding Google has never gone after the advertiser.
Think about it, if your statement is true do you realize how easy it would be for me to report my competitor and manipulate the rankings.
All I would have to do is buy paid a few hundred links on my competitor’s behalf, let it run for a few months and then act as a good citizen informant and report it to Google.
April 17th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
Google can easily set a filter to exclude the set of links in question. That means if a site uses 100% links that are purchased/rented, Google can take away 100% of the ranking power with this type of a filter. Google can also check to see if there are any legit links pointing at a site.
In that past, Google wouldn’t do anything with the buyers - now they will look at the entire link profile to see if the site has any legit links. If it doesn’t, the site can end up with nothing.
I guess you’re right though, this isn’t technically a penalty, it’s more of a filter that takes away the effectiveness of the links. Banning would only happen in a very, very extreme case.
April 17th, 2008 at 11:43 am
So, it is actually laissez faire, in the blog world. The old businesses went through these phases with robber barons on one end and small individual businessmen on the other and they respected each other’s space and got on with their lives.
In the process, some of the smaller guys got run over and many are getting run over now. It is all part of the new business paradigm.
History however is just repeating itself in a new manner.
April 17th, 2008 at 11:48 am
“Google is what it is.” - Sounds like you’re channeling Vic.
April 17th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Buying links for ranking is really about risk vs. reward. If you like to gamble, have fun — just don’t be surprised if Google catches on. The house doesn’t always win, just usually.
April 17th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Don’t do it. Build for the future! Quick Bank artists comne and go, to stay in this game for the long run, you have to follow the rules! Long term results will be far more promising! Do you ever wonder why one site has an excellent rating and others don’t and you can’t figure out why…well playing the game right is a main component of this game!
April 18th, 2008 at 5:25 am
Thanks for the honorable mention.
April 18th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Court is a stud anyway you slice it. PERIOD! Keep up the great posts.
April 20th, 2008 at 11:40 am
COURT … “there are only two other sites I have ever seen that know how to get results from Google and those are ‘Make Money Online with the BloggerUnleashed‘ and ‘How To Make Money for Beginners by Griz‘.”
GRIZZ… “I have found “only” two other websites that I can honestly recommend sending you to if you want to learn how to make money online.”
VIC …. “Need instant info on SEO Read The Two Blogs Below:
The Grizz The All Powerful Bear Dude
Court”
Mmmmmmmm…. why don’t you guys just get a room? (;)
April 20th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
Another “tough guy” post without a link to your website. These are getting old.
April 27th, 2008 at 8:05 am
“As for the links, if someone reports your site to akismet as they think you are spamming, is there anyway you can get your site out of akismet? I think this has happened to me, and it was a completely legit site, and the comments were completely relevant.”
In following up to the first comment by Niche Blogging, how do you even know if your site was reported to akismet as spam and what is the penalty if that was done?