Backlinks are an important part of SEO. Google tends to rank pages higher the more the page or website is linked to other websites. It improves overall visibility and establishes the webpage as a higher authority in the algorithm. For this reason, many companies resort to buying backlinks to bolster their ranking. But is buying backlinks a good idea?
What is Backlink Buying?
Buying backlinks for SEO is a simple concept. It involves a site owner agreeing to add your backlink to theirs at a certain cost. Essentially, you pay for your link to appear on another well-established website. Doing this supposedly boosts organic traffic to your website. Moreover, companies do it to rank higher in Google search results.
Buying Backlinks: Good or Bad
Is it legal to buy backlinks? What are the potential risks and pitfalls? Google’s Webmaster Guidelines consider the sale or purchase of links a link scheme. As a result, paid backlinks have two main risks:
- Ignored by Google. In 2016, Google released the Penguin 4.0 update, allowing algorithms to ignore many spam-like paid backlinks. As a result, paid backlinks will neither hurt nor help the page’s ranking and become a waste of money.
- Penalized by Google. Human reviewers employed by Google can impose specific actions manually on web pages. If they find out about your paid backlinks, they may demote the website’s rankings on the search engine. This means some of your website will not be displayed in search results.
Remember that nowadays, Google rarely imposes manual actions to penalize a website or remove violating web pages. Instead, the platform has become more adept at recognizing and ignoring low-quality or spam links.
Does Buying Backlinks Work?
While paid backlinks for SEO have their downsides, many companies still resort to buying backlinks even in 2024. Why? One simple answer is that it can still work. It’s quite difficult to distinguish between paid and earned links. Hence, many websites successfully trick Google’s algorithm with paid backlinks to earn higher rankings. While Google can improve its algorithm and paid backlink detection, it will likely miss many paid links.
Purchasing backlinks also takes way less effort than earning backlinks. Many website owners will charge a fee regardless if you have good content. They may refuse to provide links for free because they know they can charge for them. This is why organic SEO and organic backlinks are hard in some industries, such as finance, casino, and insurance.
How Much are Backlinks?
With that out of the way, you might wonder how much it takes to buy backlinks. According to PrestigeLinks, paid backlinks cost anywhere between $180 to $380 per link. On average, that’s about $280 per backlink. However, some backlinking websites offer bulk discounts, which can lower the cost to $100 per link.
On the other hand, remember that there are good and bad backlinks. The price also depends on the industry. Companies can expect to pay a lower price in easy industries like gaming or charity.
Meanwhile, more competitive industries like real estate, legal, and technology offer mid-range pricing options between $350 to $600. Companies can expect to pay between $600 to over $1,500 per link on the most expensive end of the spectrum. These prices apply in ultra-competitive industries like healthcare, finance, and casino.
There are more affordable alternatives out there. Some services can even charge as low as $83 on average for paid backlinks. Website owners may also look through Fiverr to find cheap packages for backlinks. However, these are usually not the ideal way to buy backlinks because they may not improve your rankings.
How to Purchase Backlinks
Backlink purchasing might be useful, but not all backlinks are equal. Some backlinks are of higher quality than others. How can you buy high-quality backlinks? There are four main ways to buy quality backlinks:
- Niche Edits. Companies may ask website owners to add their links to an existing webpage.
- Private Blog Networks (PBNs). Companies may build a network of websites that link the “money” website from each website.
- Paid Guest Posts. Companies may write guest articles themselves which contain links to their website. Afterward, the company will pay another site owner to publish the article on their platform.
- Backlinking Agency. Companies may pay an agency to build backlinks for them instead of paying for each backlink.
- Sponsored Content. Companies may pay a fee to place a sponsored blog post on a webpage. This is different from guest posts in that the website owner tags the post as sponsored.
A Word of Caution When Buying Backlinks
The backlink industry is lucrative, which makes it vulnerable to spammy or suspicious offers. Be wary of building backlinks using websites like PeoplePerHour or Fiverr. While some may sell good backlinks, many also sell poor-quality ones. These services are relatively easy to spot as they offer a large number of backlinks for a very affordable price. Overall, it’s best to avoid backlinking services that offer suspiciously low prices, fast links, and guaranteed results. Chances are, these services use cheap backlinking methods to generate results.
In addition, using the PBN route is not ideal. Many search engines dislike PBNs so that this method can destroy a website’s ranking. On the other hand, niche edits and paid guest posts are decent ways to buy backlinks. They are good strategies because you can curate which websites to build backlinks on. Moreover, they generate backlinks quickly; you can choose your anchor text.
Companies should also consider the website’s quality when buying backlinks. Ultimately, search engines cannot tell whether a link is paid. They can only detect whether or not a website provides quality content. If a website that links to yours is low quality, you may still be vulnerable to penalties regardless of whether or not you paid for the backlink.
An Important Part of SEO
Backlinking is a vital part of SEO. Many companies have chosen to buy backlinks to gain an edge over the competition. While buying backlinks can yield results, it also comes with certain considerations and potential pitfalls. It’s important to conduct research beforehand and tread with caution.
Tanner Grey provides digital marketing services to website owners and companies. Call us at 844.500.1339 or get in touch with us online for more details!
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