Is Buying Backlinks Effective?

Buying backlinks is a highly contested SEO strategy. There are varying opinions from SEO experts and practitioners regarding whether or not buying backlinks is effective.

A backlink is a link made by another website to your website. It is a signal for the search engine that your website’s content is reliable and relevant to others. Backlinks are an integral part of your website’s performance in terms of search engine rankings and traffic.

Due to the value backlinks can have for your site, building backlinks is an essential part of SEO. While you can build backlinks organically by creating relevant and original content that others want to link to, many people might also want to build backlinks faster by buying them.

What Makes a Backlink Effective?

To understand whether or not buying backlinks is effective, let us see what makes a backlink effective in the first place. Backlinks are not all the same and can have one of three effects on your SEO rankings.

Backlinks can either have a neutral effect on your rankings, they might increase your website’s value or they might even harm your website’s value. The impact the backlink has on your website depends on the quality of the backlink.

Backlinks placed in pages relevant to your content are more valuable as people are more likely to click on the link. If the page that is creating the backlink has a high rating already, that adds authority to the backlink and increases its quality.

On the other hand, backlinks from a page that seems like spam might hurt your website’s ranking. Backlinks that no one clicks on might not affect your rankings.

What Counts as Buying a Backlink?

Buying a backlink is defined as exchanging money, goods, services or products for a backlink or a post with links. This includes directly paying someone for links, sending someone free products to review in exchange for backlinks, writing guest posts on a blog in exchange for backlinks and so on.

Should You Buy a Backlink?

Buying backlinks comes with a risk that often may not be worth the SEO benefits of having a few extra backlinks. Buying backlinks is discouraged by Google and known as a black-hat SEO technique.

Hence, if you were to buy a backlink and Google detected that the backlink was purchased, your website could be penalized. This could affect your website’s rankings to such a degree that it might never recover. You might have to disavow all the backlinks you bought and that would still not guarantee a recovery of your rankings.

However, if you are careful about buying backlinks and using them to support your organic process of building backlinks, it might be an effective strategy.

Best Ways to Buy a Backlink

One way to buy backlinks effectively is not relying solely on purchased backlinks. You can buy a few backlinks while continuing your organic process of building backlinks.

Even when buying backlinks, keep the same things in mind that you would for building organic backlinks. For instance, always prioritize relevant and original content and network only with websites that are relevant to your niche.

Don’t ever buy backlinks from a website that openly advertises the sale of backlinks in exchange for money. Instead, offer to create content for relevant websites through guest blog posts, reviews, etc. A safe way to buy backlinks is to ensure that the website discloses the fact that you have sponsored the content that links back to you.

Bottom Line

Buying backlinks can be risky if done carelessly. There is no shortcut to building your SEO rankings; otherwise, everyone would be doing it! However, buying backlinks can be effective when done smartly and in combination with other strategies.