Hey, welcome to the Linkly blog. I am guessing you’ve made it deep into the backlinks rabbit hole and now you are looking at buying those high-quality backlinks to give the much-needed SEO juice to your website.
Fine, let’s dive deep into it and see if they’re worth it or not.
So as you already know, Backlinks are links from other websites that point back to your own website. They act as “votes of confidence” in the eyes of search engines like Google, signalling that your site offers valuable content or resources.
But what if there’s nobody ready to give you this vote of confidence organically, well, then you might get really tempted to buy those backlinks.
However, it’s not all that simple.
Why do people buy backlinks?
Building high-quality backlinks naturally takes time and effort. Some website owners resort to buying paid backlinks to:
- Accelerate the link-building process: It boosts your backlink profile quickly.
- Aim for hard-to-get links: Securing natural links from high-authority websites can be difficult; paid options might seem like an easier alternative.
There are different types of paid backlinks
- Sponsored Posts: You pay to have an article featuring your link published on a website.
- Niche Edits: You pay to insert your link into an existing article on another site.
- Paid Reviews: Websites review your product/service and include a backlink.Link Networks (PBNs): You pay to place links on a network of sites specifically designed for manipulating search rankings.
The Inflated Market of Paid Backlinks
Paid backlinks form a lucrative but shadowy market. Here’s why the prices can be as high as $1000 for one backlink.
- Cheap Packages:
- You can find packages offering hundreds or even thousands of backlinks for as little as $5 on platforms like Fiverr. However, these are usually extremely low-quality links from spammy or irrelevant sites.
- Niche Edit Prices:
- The average cost of a niche edit is around $300-500. Sites with higher Domain Authority (DA) can charge significantly more.
- A report by Fat Rank found that highly sought-after backlinks from sources like MSN can cost upwards of $4,000 to $7,000.
- Premium Guest Posts
- Prestigious publications in competitive niches can charge thousands of dollars for a single guest post with a backlink.
- uSERP even suggests that you should never spend less than $500 on a single backlink, with top-quality ones costing around $1000.
Why are prices so inflated?
- Demand: Website owners want a shortcut to higher rankings, driving demand for paid backlinks.
- Difficulty: Securing quality backlinks naturally is hard work, justifying higher prices for those who can deliver them.
Are paid backlinks safe? And how can they be a threat to your SEO?
PageRank (PR) is a Google algorithm that ranks web pages in search results by evaluating the number and quality of links to a page. It operates on the principle that pages receiving more high-quality links are deemed more important and are thus ranked higher.
Google considers bought links that pass PageRank to be a link scheme that violates its Webmaster Guidelines.
H3 What happens when Google sees that you’re backlinks are bought:
If Google suspects you’re using paid links, there are two potential outcomes:
- Google ignores the links: Their algorithms will recognize them as unnatural, rendering them useless for your search rankings.
- Google penalizes your site: Google employs people to manually review sites. If they find sufficient evidence, your site may partially or completely disappear from search results.
H3 But, why do people still buy backlinks and does it ever work?
Google won’t usually issue a link-based penalty unless they have strong evidence of paid links. Since paid links can often blend seamlessly with earned links, many SEOs think they can buy links without getting caught – and a significant number do just that.
Here’s an example from Ahrefs article
What can I do if not paid backlinks?
Well, we recommend you start with building pillow backlinks. Read this (link) article to know more about pillow backlinks and once you get a good DA of 10+ you can come on Linkly and get access to a community of 2500+ SEO link builders to build backlinks with the help of link exchange for just $39/month.
We have a link-exchange and free guest blog vault with thousands of opportunities.
check us out today and till then happy link-building.