Hi, I am Praneeth.
In this blog, you will learn everything related to why not to buy backlinks for your website in 2020.
Without further ado let’s get started.
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What is a backlink and what is the purpose?
Backlink in simple terms is a link connected from one website to another website.
In Search Engine Optimisation, Backlinks play a major role in the ranking of the website Because Backlinks Are like votes for search engines mainly Google.
The higher the number of backlinks is to a website,
The more votes the website has which Google’s Algorithm Observes and Ranks higher because more people are linking to it as a vote saying the content is good So Google wants to show The content that users Like on top of search results.
Before Understanding Why not to buy backlinks For your website Let’s see what are the reasons that people have for buying backlinks instead of building them.
Why people prefer buying backlinks instead of building them.
There are three main reasons why people prefer investing money in buying backlinks rather than wasting their time and energy on building.
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People buy backlinks Because they are tired of Building them.
Look the most important and the most difficult aspect of blogging and SEO is link building.
Links or backlinks are one of the top 3 ranking factors In search engines mainly in Google.
Because the number of people blogging has increased And the number of Blocks getting published Has also increased,
There is immense competition almost like a cutthroat competition In SEO.
In such cases Even if you have the world’s best content on your website If you want It to rank high on search engines And drive traffic to your website through To Google You need backlinks.
When it comes to manually build links for Also known as link building You fall into You doing things like,
- Finding broken links on On bunch of websites.
- Sending a Large number of Outreach emails to Hundreds of bloggers And website owners Most of the time Not getting a reply or not get accepted for link placement.
- Outreaching to hundreds of websites and requesting the website owners and bloggers for guest articles To be published on the blog for a link To their website, You will face a lot of rejections Most of the time.
Link building is a very very tiring task Ok in SEO But you need links To be able to rank higher on search engines Faster.
Then the easiest alternative to building links is buying them.
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Skip the ranking time and get more traffic.
Another reason why people buy backlinks is that Whenever they publish content or blogs on their blog They want their blog to rank higher on search engines As fast as possible Which is not the case Naturally.
It at least takes 8 months for a new blog To be able to rank higher on search engines depending on the competition and search intent of the keyword.
By buying backlinks you can speed up the process of ranking your Particular blog In the Search engine.
There are some Cons of doing this which you will learn later in this blog.
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The Easiest Way to build EAT.
In 2020 And further Google which is the largest search engine on the internet wants website owners and bloggers To show their expertise authoritativeness and trustworthiness which is also called EAT.
Google does not just want to show the highly relevant search result in The resulting space But it also wants to make sure that the information that is available on the results page and in the blog articles is Is trustworthy and Credible.
Hence Google wants the website owners and bloggers to show their Credibility and expertise On the subject they are blogging on And the best way to let Google know the expertise Of a blogger is through external signals Mainly backlinks.
It’s impossible To build a backlink From a highly Authoritative website To a tiny website through manual link building.
Hence people prefer buying links instead of building them From these highly authoritative websites in the relevant niche To establish the eat Over the subject in Google’s Eyes.
And the benefit of doing this Is When 2 Blogs Are fighting for a particular position in Google With the same content On both sides But 1 website with established in eat will rank higher than the one with no eating established.
Google will also penalize websites that have Less EAT over the subject by algorithm penalty And not Sending organic traffic to the website.
Why not to buy backlinks.
Now that you have a rough idea of why people buy baking instead of building them.
Let’s see 5 reasons why not to buy backlinks for your website.
Here is a quick overview of the reasons.
- Buying backlinks can lead to a penalty from Google.
- Most of the backlinks that you buy are very very low quality.
- Buying backlinks are very very expensive.
- Buying backlinks is not a great investment either.
- Building backlinks is a great skill to learn.
Let’s learn each reason in detail.
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Google penalty is always a big risk when it comes to buying backlinks.
The most important reason Why you are anyone should not Buy backlinks is because it is against Google’s Webmaster guidelines And buying backlinks is considered as a link schema Which can Leave you to A big manual action and penalty against your site, It is very very hard to recover From such a penalty Google.
You can see the image below Where Google clearly states that buying or selling any sort of backlinks is A big mistake and can hurt your actings in search results very badly.
Google has Devoted a highly trained and specialized Team 24/7 to monitor the webspam on the Internet who are doing all sorts of Link building.
Which one way or the other Try to manipulate Google For higher rankings and more traffic And if the Highly experienced and trained web team founds your website To be trying to manipulate Google.
Without a second chance, you will have a big manual action penalty on your website.
Google is very vocal and very strict regarding link schemes like buying or selling Links and link building And,
It has a specialized web page where Google wants/requesting the users to report websites which are either involved in buying or selling links.
You too can send a report to google by clicking here Regarding Link schemes.
Google does not even like bloggers and webmasters to build backlinks to the website as Google considered it as a trying to manipulate Google For-hire rankings But,
If Google found your website to be buying or selling backlinks to another website It is very difficult To recover from that penalty As Your website might have a permanent mark of the penalty.
You will lose all the Google traffic To all of your blogs, Google stops showing you in the search results Which means the visibility of your blog will be reduced, You’ll not have any leads and sales ultimately You will go bankrupt.
According to the study, The conversion rate of organic traffic is 14% Which means,
The organic traffic that you get from Google is highly targeted and highly convertible Soap Google also is very careful Regarding Which website to show in the search results.
The biggest advice in SEO is to avoid buying backlinks and manipulating Google in any way possible And the last thing you can do is get a big manual action and penalty for Opposing Google’s Webmaster guidelines and eventually go bankrupt.
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Most of the backlinks that you buy are very very low-quality links.
With low-quality backlinks, I am referring to things like these,
- Backlinks from totally irrelevant websites to your website examples like Porn, gambling Websites.
- Backlinks In very low-quality content to your website.
- Backlinks with relevant Anchor text To your website.
- Backlinks from website sidebars, footers not from the content.
- Backlinks from social bookmark website and forums which Google banned Long back ago.
- A backlink from link networks like private blog networks and Web directories.
- Backlinks from blog comments and webspam on the internet
In a video, John Muller who is Google’s web analyst Said that links from these websites Irrespective of who created it Googles algorithm ignores these links or devalues them Most of the time.
If you’re getting a link from Private blog networks or link networks, You might get a penalty But mostly Google just devalues such Links and calls this link as webspam.
If you are getting the links from these websites even if they are do-follow which mostly aren’t, They won’t help you much in Higher rankings in Google because Google Values the relevance of backlinks more than the authority and quantity of links.
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They are very very expensive.
Ahrefs did a study to find out what is the average cost of buying a link today and They found $361 to be the average cost of a link when it comes to buying.
361 Us dollars for one link is a very very huge number and insect Sure Looking to rank for Competitive terms even,
If the link is highly relevant You will have to buy multiple of these links because in most cases, You want more backlinks from highly relevant websites to be able to rank higher on search engines and outrank other websites in search.
Sometimes it is hard for even Google’s algorithm to Recognise some links whether they are paid or natural, things like.
- Highly relevant And authoritative website linking to your website.
- Relevant Article to your article.
- A genuine website with a clean link profile.
- Keyword-rich anchor text.
- Good long-form article Linking to your website.
But it is equally expensive to get links From search quality to your website When it comes to buying them.
The cost may exceed a few thousand dollars to get a handful of such links to your website.
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Buying backlinks is not a great investment either.
Let’s first see some examples,
RD means referring domains which means a number of unique domains/websites linking to a particular page as per Moz keyword tool.
This is the search analysis feature in Moz keyword tool which I own.
Did you remember I said backlinks are Top 3 ranking factors in Google, not the ultimate ranking factor?
According to a search engine land, Top 3 ranking factors in Google are,
- Content.
- Backlinks.
- Rankbrain.
So, If you think You can rank higher in Google and stay there for a long time With backlinks Then it is a misunderstanding my friend.
Google Gives more importance to the content and User metrics like dual time and clicks through rate of The blog article in search results Rather than backings Because Google has to serve the most highly relevant Article that Users like.
If your blog even if you have hundreds of backlinks Has ranked high on search engine like Google But has poorly written content and a bad user experience like,
Less click-through rate and dwell time Irrespective of how many backlinks you have on your website, You will not stay on top of Google for a long time because of rank brain
Rankbrain is a machine learning algorithm that Can tweak the Google algorithm And its ranking factors like backlinks and content quality and freshness Based on user metrics.
You can learn more about rank brain here.
Instead of investing money in Buying backlinks, Invest in other aspects of your website or blog, Like:
- High-quality content With attractive infographics.
- Invest money in creating highly researched Blogs with Incredible statistics.
- Website design and structure.
- Improve landing pages And sales funnel on your website.
- Invest in search engine marketing.
- Invest in Creating new products or updating your existing products.
- Invest in the branding of your website.
- Invest money creating high-quality videos And podcasts of your blogs.
- Invest money in buying premium themes and plugins Which are helpful.
- Invest money in your education And self-improvement Like learning coding and Programming skills for your blog, Communication skills, etc.
Focus on things that naturally attract backlinks In the long term Instead of Buying the backlinks In the short term.
Other than blogging focus on things and invest money in things that help you in the long term Like investing in your education, skills, And self-improvement.
Look Backlinks are not permanent Whether they are paid or natural, they can get broken, can get deleted, They can get old, And Irrelevant.
But Good quality highly researched ever-green content with lots of attractive infographics, videos, and podcasts are going to last for a long time more than backlinks.
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Link building can be a great skill to have.
Instead of Buying backlinks, Focus on building them.
This can save you a lot of money and time In the long term If done rightly.
With link building, You will eventually Learn some important skills of life Like these.
- Networking skills.
- Communication skills.
- Negotiation skills.
- Marketing skills.
- Consistency and discipline.
Guest blogging, Social media marketing, and Email outreach are great ways to learn these skills in link building.
When you build backlinks by yourself instead of buying them,
You will eventually build new relationships and connections with other bloggers and website owners of your industry and the most important thing to be able to succeed in life are connections And your professional network.
Money can be earned and can be lost, Blogs can be deleted or bought but you can neither delete relations nor buy them.
With link building by yourself, you will end up having more opportunities And personal relationships with other bloggers which can benefit you in many ways like
- New ideas for your blog.
- More relevant and targeted traffic to your website.
- Useful communication of ideas and strategies.
- Your brand recognition.
- More chance of collaborations and partnerships in businesses.
You will not have the benefit of these skills and advantages if you buy backlinks instead of building them.
This is the reason why you should not buy backlinks for your website.
If you are still not convinced with any of the reasons why not to buy backlinks for your website, Here is an important note, It sounds Philosophical but it is important to understand.
Important note:
Before buying backlinks know that,
- You are cheating and manipulating Google which is giving you food & all luxury for your life, it is an unethical practice and you are not honest with your business and your profession.
- You will have a lot of Sleepless Nights to face because there is a high chance of getting a penalty for buying backlinks.
- Once if you get a penalty from Google for buying backlinks It’s very hard to recover from such a penalty, As it leaves a permanent mark on your website which can hurt your website a lot in the long-term in terms of the credibility of your website and trust from Google and it can ruin your entire online business.
- For the sake of short-term benefit and success, you are punching yourself in your face and hurting your future opportunities of success In the long term.
- You are most likely to end up bankrupt because Links are expensive to buy and they are more expensive when you get a penalty for buying them because you will lose all your money and traffic for the long term.
With that said let’s conclude the blog.
Ending remarks.
There you go I have answered Everything related to why not to buy backlinks In 2020 and beyond.
Do comment down on what do you think about buying backlinks.
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Read my other blogs.
- Pros and cons of building backlinks for your website.
- How to create a website on wordpress without hosting?.
- Pros and cons of search engine marketing.
I will catch you next time.
Till then, keep learning and keep growing.