Many bloggers and website owners are always looking for ways to improve their organic search rankings.
One strategy that has been employed by many is the use of paid links, which can be defined as a link on another site that is targeted toward your content in order to drive traffic and potentially improve your search ranking.
Paid links have long been frowned upon as a spam tactic, but some believe they can be beneficial if used properly. This post will discuss what paid links are, how they work, and whether or not they should still be considered taboo in the eyes of Google.
Bloggers who want to improve their organic search rankings might consider using paid links because it could send them more traffic from other websites with high domain authority scores, which tend to rank.
Many people are under the impression that paid links can help boost their search engine rankings. But, does this really work? Let’s look at some examples to see how it may or may not have an effect on your blog ranking.
The first example is a website called The Art of Manliness, which has been around for years and continues to rank highly in Google searches despite having no affiliate programs or any other type of monetization program.
This means that they’re getting all their traffic from organic searches and none from paid advertisements. Now let’s take a look at another site with similar content: Survival Life.
Effect Of Search Rankings Of Your Blog-
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is an art that can help you tweak your blog or website in such a way that it has the capability to rank higher than all others.
Some of you would know most of this stuff but there are certain points that might be new for some people.
If you already know about SEO, then skip the part that deals with basics and go straight to tools & techniques.
The people who would find this article more useful are beginners.
Do not think that you know everything about SEO. If you already have a blog, then try to optimize it for search engines and see if it comes up on the top page of Google or Yahoo! Make notes of what works and what doesn’t. Then read this article again and see which parts you did not know or were unaware of.
Search engine users do not go beyond page 3 on Google search. On Yahoo! the first 3 pages are about 80% of all searches while at Technorati, it is even less than that. This means that only a very small percentage of people get to see your blog and among those who do, even fewer people actually click on your blog to read it.
This means that you have a very small chance of getting traffic from search engines. But there is a way out – optimization!
To bring your blog to the top within a few days or weeks, the only solution is to hire an SEO specialist as they have the expertise and experience in doing this stuff. If you have a large enough budget, then you can do it yourself by reading books, articles, and most importantly blog posts on SEO.
The keyword is – Budget! You will not be able to optimize your blog without having a decent knowledge of SEO, which means that you have to spend some time on it.
If your budget is very limited and you do not want to hire an SEO specialist, then the next best thing will be to use the tools and techniques that they use. You can follow what they do step-by-step and achieve high search engine rankings for your blog in relatively no time.
Why is it Important to Have a Search Ranking of Your Blog?
Web search results are sorted by different factors. These include the number of times the page is linked to on the web, popularity, and personalization. The more links there are to a site or page, the higher it will appear in the list of results for a particular query.
Google is able to create this list quickly by using technology similar to PageRank, which it calls “a system for ranking web pages that are accessible on the Internet”.
Popularity is a factor in search rankings as well. Sites that often appear in Top 10 results may be deemed more popular than those appearing lower down in the list of results.
This is because people tend to click more often on higher-ranked sites. Popularity might also be determined by the type of site that is being searched. For example, a search for web hosting services would yield different results from a search on life insurance.
Personalized results are those that have been customized based on information a user provides when signing into a Google account. Customization may include links to other websites if the searcher has previously visited them.
Customization also takes into account the searcher’s search history, which is stored by Google. As a result of this process, it is considered that personalized searches give you better results.
Factors Determine Search Ranking-
- Site loading speed: if a site is too slow, people will look for alternatives and this will result in a lower ranking
- Keywords used on the page: the use of keywords related to search terms can improve rankings by increasing relevance to those search terms. However, overuse of keywords can result in lower rankings.
- Site design: the layout and architecture of a website don’t affect ranking alone, but they may contribute to poor or good site performance. This may include page load times, navigability, ease of use, etc. Poor design may cause users to leave immediately without looking at content on the site. In this instance, the ranking will be negatively affected.
- Contextual keywords: these are connected to the content of a page and they affect users’ impressions of the relevancy of that page to their search terms. If a page is about a particular topic then its use of contextual keywords related to that topic can improve rankings.
- Age of the domain: this may affect rankings because older domains are often more established and therefore more trusted by search engines.
- Keyword(s) in meta tags: these are not displayed on a page, but they affect rankings. However, keyword stuffing can be used to manipulate results artificially.
- File size of graphics or video files: this affects website performance. Large file sizes may increase loading times, which in turn can affect rankings.
- Content freshness: new content is treated with more authority than older content by Google’s algorithm. This means that newer posts will often rank higher than older posts within the same time frame.
Google has been updating its algorithm, again and again, to make sure search results are relevant. The search result was not perfect even a few years back, still, there were lots of spam sites in the Top 10 results that used paid links and article spinning for SEO purposes. Google has also given a warning to webmasters not to use paid links and instead build high-quality backlinks. Now let’s see what kind of impact paid links have on Google search results and how it benefits the spammers: Let me give you an example, I work for a geospatial company and we need to get backlinks from authoritative sites like Wikipedia and national geographic. There are companies who offer these services at a very cheap rate which makes sense because they use thousands of article directories like Ezine Articles, Article Base, Buzzle, etc., and post articles with links to your site. Also, a significant amount is paid for getting a link from Wikipedia or any other popular blog. Google detects these kinds of activities as unnatural link building and it affects the search result rankings negatively. Also, there are services that provide article spinning. Spinning is nothing but rewriting the same article in different words so that search engines think of its unique content. Services are being offered to spin articles making it look 100% spun. No doubt, they are hurting SEO for small business owners with their cheap quality links services because of which people don’t spend time on building quality links. I am not saying all the companies who offer these services are bad. There are good quality link-building campaigns by some agencies which will provide long-term value to your site and they don’t do this for a cheap rate. They understand that if you want to get high rankings then it needs time, patience, effort, and of course money. Google came up with their myth buster series to clear out SEO myths and paid links is another one from the list. Actually, they have been catching spammers using both manual and automated methods. Even if you invest in paid links, it will affect your site ranking but only for a short period. You need to keep in mind that link building is not all about getting high PR links, there are hundreds of high quality backlink building strategies that can help you improve your site’s rankings. Keyword targeted anchor text and page-level anchor texts also count as good backlinks. Google has also released a new tool for webmasters which lets you see the links your site is getting and its impact on search result: You can clearly see here in this example, there are a couple of spammy links and their effect in 2 weeks and month respectively. In short, Google is clear from the Paid links myth but they have already given a warning to webmasters not to use paid links for their site. In my opinion, it’s easy to get caught if you are using thousands of automated services every month .Does Paid Links Have Effect On Search Rankings Of Your Blog: Google MythBuster Series.
Quick Links
- SEO Scraping
- Essential Organic SEO Steps For The Newly Registered Domain
- Search Engine Marketing Benefits
Conclusion- Does Paid Links Have Effect On Search Rankings Of Your Blog 2024
There’s a lot of misinformation and confusion about how Google treats paid links, so we wanted to take the opportunity to set the record straight. We’ve put together this blog post series that should help you understand what it really means when your site is penalized for buying or selling links.
Hopefully, by reading these posts, you’ll see just how much value there can be in creating high-quality content with other bloggers on your subject matter–even if they’re not paying for a link! This concludes our series on understanding search engine rankings and whether purchased backlinks have an effect on them.
Google has made it clear that links are not the only way to rank for a search. With so much new blog content being created every day, there is no need to resort to linking schemes in order to get your website ranked higher on a search engine result page (SERP).
There are other ways for you and your company’s digital marketing strategy team members to work together with SEO experts who have experience using innovative techniques like video optimization or social media promotion.
