Paid Link

What is a Paid Link?

A paid link, or a paid backlink, is a hyperlink to your website that you purchase with money. Paid links aimed at improving the website’s rankings on search engines, such as Google, are link schemes and violate search engines’ policies.

Buying links is the most common activity of black hat SEO.

Paid links can come in different forms, such as:

• Advertising: You pay a website to display an ad that links to your site.
• Sponsored articles: You pay a website to write or publish an article or review that mentions and links to your site.
• Paid product placements: You pay a website to feature your product or service and link to your site.
• Paid link placements: You pay an individual, company, or service for placing a link on their existing page.
• PBNs: You pay a private blog network owner or manager to place a link on their websites.

However, not all paid links are manipulative, and some are safe and natural.

For example, links from advertisements, sponsored articles, product placements, etc., that have the “nofollow” or “sponsored” attribute do not violate Google’s policies. But they also don’t pass “link juice” and have no effect on the website’s rankings in search.

If Google detects paid links to your site, it will most likely devalue (ignore) them.

In the worst case, Google can impose a manual action on a website buying or selling links. This can lead to the website’s demotion in search results or complete removal.