Why Buying Links is Frowned Upon?

If you read Google’s Webmaster Central lately, you might have noticed that the number one search engine is encouraging others to reports websites that have paid links on them or buy links, which do not use a "rel=nofollow" condition or block the page from the index by using a robots.txt, for example. While Google has discouraged this practice in the past, it now appears that the search engine is serious about punishing offenders of this rule.

You should know that there a number of ways that some webmasters attempt to influence Google PageRank or their rankings in other search engines. One of these methods include buying natural links. Instead of doing a link exchange with another website, you can either buy links from another website or sell links on your site. Usually, a third party website brings the buyer and seller of the link together. The third party website negotiates a price for the link, and the seller of the link is paid only after the third party receives payment from the buyer of the link. Then, the seller of the link will place a text link of the buyer’s website on their page. While it may cost you more money, a webmaster may decide to buy links on a highly ranked pages of another related website, to manipulate the search results.

I understand Google’s position on paid links. For one, a website with few pages but a huge marketing budget could easily place their links, with selected keywords on hundreds of thousands of pages, in attempt to increase the PageRank of their site and ranking amongst keywords. In the past, I used to buy text links. However, it was to introduce my website to a big market, for I used to advertise in the business section of online newspapers and affiliate newscast programs. I had no attention of manipulating search results or my website’s PageRank. Well, Google or any other search engine does not have to worry about me buying or selling text links. It is not worth getting removed from the index or getting your site punished in some other manner.