… Said everyone that makes money by selling backlinks. Even in 2024 they still keep spreading the message, not realizing that it’s mostly a “We, making this product, recommend this product” message.
However, in September 2023 Google already mentioned that links are not even a top-3 ranking factor anymore. This does not mean that they cannot be helpful, but in most niches, you don’t need linkbuilding anymore to rank.
In my own experience, I sometimes do some active linkbuilding for new websites to give them a kick-start and after a year these links expire. When they do, my rankings usually grow further instead of declining.
But hey, I’m not trying to sell you backlinks so I do not have a hidden agenda that would make me spread lies and fear of not being able to rank if you’re not wasting your money.
To make things worse, buying backlinks is directly against Google spam policies. We all know that Google’s communication can be way different from what they actually do in real life, but the guidelines still provide a good insight in what they are trying to accomplish.
Don’t believe me? You can read the link spam guidelines here.
Even when you don’t do active linkbuilding anymore, or only ever bought some guestposts, you are still putting your website at risk. As this X post of NicheSiteLady shows, when she got a manually penalty for “unnatural links to your website”.
Google hit me with a manual action for 'unnatural links'.
— Niche Site Lady (@NicheSiteLady) February 2, 2024
I never bought a link. The example they gave was a legit guest post from years ago (I've only ever done about 5 of these).
I'm adding thousands of spam links to disavow file. Any advice is welcome! (Be nice please) 🙏 pic.twitter.com/xVwxcqQ3At
In short conclusion, doing active linkbuilding and buying backlinks is against Google’s guidelines and can be pretty harmful to your website. Either now, or in the future. But that is not the only part where I think buying backlinks is harming your business.
You see, linkbuilding is mostly done to get higher rankings in Google. In most occasions they don’t provide traffic on their own and there is a 99.9% chance that you would answer the question “Would you have gotten these links if not for the SEO value?” with a big fat NO.
Which simply means that what you’re doing is not in any interest whatsoever of your audience or your customers. When you’re buying these backlinks you’re wasting money, on lies, with the only goal to make your bank account fatter instead of providing a better product or experience to your audience.
In a time where Google is changing, no… where the internet is changing with the upcoming of AI tools, the stupidest thing you can do is forget your audience and only care about your bank account.
I understand that you need money to compensate for life getting more expensive by the day, but increasing your income usually works better when you provide more value for your audience. It’s pretty much as easy as 1+1 being 2.
So please do yourself a favor, stop listening to all the backlink sellers telling you that you cannot ever rank without paying them money for those links. In at least 95% of the niches, you can rank. And by not buying those links you also safeguard the future, at least partially, of your niche site.
AI, Google updates, inflation, changing consumer behavior, all things that are out of your control. But buying, or not buying back links and the risk of buying (future) trouble for your niche site is within your control.
Make smarter choices.
