Why buying cheap backlinks can hurt you

In this article I’ll go through what you should think about when buying links, how to spot bad links, what is Google’s position on buying links.

What are backlinks?

Backlinks are nothing new, but they have been around for a long time as an important part of SEO for a website. Although Google has made thousands of changes (over 3000 changes in 2022) since backlinks became an important part of SEO, their importance remains.

Contrary to what many people may think, it is a fact that one high quality backlink can be worth more than 1000 of low quality. Simply described, a backlink is a link between your web page and another. A high-quality backlink is a link that comes from a page with high authority ━ that is, a page with high credibility and which ranks high. Such a link is worth its weight in gold. They are hard to get, but they are worth it.

You can get links on almost any website, and these don’t have to come from low quality sites like http://www.uioweru55555.pl/, or putting you links in your profile on some forum.

You can get links on sites like the BBC, Fox News, MSNBC etc, These sites are usually sourced in other articles so this means they have a good domain authority, so Google will see sites like these as trust worthy sources. Getting links on sites like these can often cost alot, but there are opportunities to get very good value links without having to sell your kidney, we know some good methods for getting high quality links that aren’t a part of some massive link building scheme so get in touch.

I know lots of people buying backlinks?

While it’s not illegal to buy links from a seller, as far as Google is concerned it’s obviously against their terms and conditions, you can still buy links and Google won’t find out. In most cases it’s almost impossible for Google to find out unless either you or the other party tell Google this is happening. So yes buy all the links you want just be careful, as I always say it’s only against Google’s terms and conditions if they find out.

I found someone selling high DR backlinks for $5.00 on Fiverr, what now?

While this might be a good deal in most cases this won’t be the case. On the face of it a site with high DR (domain rating) might be a good sign, but DR can be manipulated to show high DR on sites like www.ahrefs.com and other backlinks analysis tools. So that high DR rating might be false, and there will be almost no way to know for sure.

Cheap links look obvious.

For the most part sites that sell cheap backlinks can often have 100 outbound links on a single page. The design on sites like these are usually low quality, they use a wordpress template that you might have seen already. So it’s easy for a competitor to scan your backlinks and figure out if you’re buying links or not. If they find out you are buying links, they can go to Google, fill out a form and report you. Once you’re reported for buying backlinks you’ll get a penalty, which means a drop in rankings for sure. What is more you could lose all rankings altogether depending how Google feels.

100 outbound links on a single page.

Link sellers sometimes will stuff a page with links just to sell them. This brings down the cost for the seller as they may not be writing much content for the links in the first place. The other downfall of buying this kind of link is that, if there are already 100 outbound links on the page and you buy a link on that page, the chances of the sell then selling another 2 3 or 400 more links on this page could be possible. The chances of a site like this getting shut down due to link selling is high. Once a site like this is shut down you lose your link and your lose your money.

Web 2.0 links

Other forms of backlinks come from Web 2.0 sites like a Weebly, Blogger, Facebook etc. These kinds of backlinks won’t offer much value if you already have back links coming from these sites. Most companies will have a social media presence, so getting another link from Facebook won’t do much for your SEO. Plus some sellers might offer you 10,000 backlinks, so it’s always a good idea to look at the seller’s description of the service, these backlinks will most likely be low quality and won’t do anything for your SEO. 

How ever buying links like this are ok to buy for tier 2 links to one of your genuine backlinks as some link juice will be transferred.

There is a guy selling 1 million links on Fiverr.com for literally $5

There are sellers out there that are promising 1 million links. These links will for sure be low quality, a good 50% won’t even stick, and most importantly you most likely end up with a penalty from Google once enough people complain about you. If you don’t get a complaint about a million links all arriving in a day, this link profile looks unnatural when the vast majority of them will be blog comments, forum comments, social media comments and god knows where else these sellers managed to spam your link into.

There is a guy selling 1 million links on Fiverr.com for literally $5

There are sellers out there that are promising 1 million links. These links will for sure be low quality, a good 50% won’t even stick, and most importantly you most likely end up with a penalty from Google once enough people complain about you. If you don’t get a complaint about a million links all arriving in a day, this link profile looks unnatural when the vast majority of them will be blog comments, forum comments, social media comments and god knows where else these sellers managed to spam your link into.

Google does actually allow you to buy links for marketing purposes.

I know I was shocked when I found out as well, but it’s too good to be true. Google says that if you buy links for the express intention of advertising, as this is part of the internet economy, you must write in the HTML re=”nofollow” or rel=”sponsored”. If you buy links in this way, these links pass 0 link juice to your website. These might be worth buying only if you’re getting niche related traffic through the link otherwise a link like this will be expensive and may not give you a good ROI. While it’s a good idea to have some no follow links in your backlink profile, over time you’ll get these anyways so it’s probably not worth buying them in the first place. 

So how does Google know then?

Well they don’t, as they saying goes “what man can do man can undo”, well for the most part anyways, I think if we had a nuclear world war, we probably couldn’t undo the damage done. Google can’t always tell if a site is selling links. Some sites like a directory will obviously have lots of outbound links on a single page, other sites where Google can’t tell if the site is selling links or not will simply ignore the site. Google will often give a site a manual check, even when a human is involved they still might not know if the site is selling links. 

Google does actually allow you to buy links for marketing purposes.

I know I was shocked when I found out as well, but it’s too good to be true. Google says that if you buy links for the express intention of advertising, as this is part of the internet economy, you must write in the HTML re=”nofollow” or rel=”sponsored”. If you buy links in this way, these links pass 0 link juice to your website. These might be worth buying only if you’re getting niche related traffic through the link otherwise a link like this will be expensive and may not give you a good ROI. While it’s a good idea to have some no follow links in your backlink profile, over time you’ll get these anyways so it’s probably not worth buying them in the first place. 

So how does Google know then?

Well they don’t, as they saying goes “what man can do man can undo”, well for the most part anyways, I think if we had a nuclear world war, we probably couldn’t undo the damage done. Google can’t always tell if a site is selling links. Some sites like a directory will obviously have lots of outbound links on a single page, other sites where Google can’t tell if the site is selling links or not will simply ignore the site. Google will often give a site a manual check, even when a human is involved they still might not know if the site is selling links. 

Good news

Google can’t always tell if a site is selling links or not so this means that there are lots of opportunities for selling and buying links, just make sure the links you buy are not cheap and pass link juice.