Our SEO company has suggested that we buy links to improve our website's popularity. So our question is, should we get paid links?
The short answer is no. Never buy links! We've taken this information from Google webmaster's site and this is what Google says:
*************************
Google and most other search engines use links to determine reputation. A site's ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to it. Link-based analysis is an extremely useful way of measuring a site's value, and has greatly improved the quality of web search. Both the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of links count towards this rating.
However, some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links that pass PageRank, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google's webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results.
*************************
NB Buying links for advertising is different - for the full story see http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66736
Labels: buying links, google, paid links