How To Make Money | The Definitive Don’ts

Google’s Vendetta Against Paid Links

Jennifer Laycock over at Search Engine Guide made a great post yesterday about Google’s war against paid links. If you haven’t glanced over it yet, let me be the first to suggest that you do so.

The post goes into Google’s behavior in dealing with paid links. If you’ve been in the SEO game for a while, you know that Google has been very tight-lipped about what exact punishment site owners face. SEO experts including Aaron Wall and Michael Gray have accused Google of utilizing the “FUD” marketing tactic to discourage site owners from buying and/or selling paid links.

A part of the post that quickly caught my eye was the story of David Airey, a graphic designer who willingly removed text link ads from his site that were supposedly jeopardizing his SERP rankings. Airey even went as far as emailing his blog visitors and asking them to remove links that were remenants of a contest he had hosted. It is still unknown whether Airey’s site was penalized by Google, but one person familiar with the situation suggested that a 302-redirect might have been the cause of his SERP ranking woes.

What are you to do amidst all this paid link drama? For now, continue on your current course. If that course consists an aggressive link-building campaign (such as the one John Chow employed, and subsequently got peanlized for), I would suggest you stop. Build links at a reasonable and steady pace. This will keep both you and Google happy.

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