Buying Links: What Should You Consider In 2024

Link building is complex, to say the least. Getting one single backlink may take months, and waiting for an answer wastes time and effort. So, naturally, some link builders aim for the easy way out: they just want to buy backlinks. 

But is buying backlinks a good idea?

Plenty of debates surround the question, and there is no simple answer of yes or no. Recent studies show that companies can spend on link building campaigns starting from $3,000$ to $10,000. Hence, if you have to spend money, why not purchase backlinks?

The question of buying links touches on several issues: the risks and outcomes, the threat of Google penalty, and the overall ethical aspect of the matter. Stay with us, and we will figure out together whether to buy backlinks or not.

What Does it Mean to Buy Links?

Backlink buying is paying another website a certain amount of money to get links to your website from them.

The process of backlink buying is as simple as it can be. A website owner offers you a certain price to pay for a link placement to your site. You may do the same to link back to other websites from yours.

Most webmasters think that this arrangement will likely assist in increasing organic traffic and securing better rankings on Google. And at first glance, there is no apparent difference between natural link building and paying for backlinks, and search engines may not even notice that you have paid backlinks.

Yet, as surprising as it may be, Google does not like it when you buy links instead of getting them through white hat link building strategies. Plus, you may always need clarification about their quality and performance when you get cheap backlinks. Before you purchase backlinks, you should ask yourself whether they will really work.

Do Paid Backlinks Work?

The short answer is no. 

The lengthy answer is that it most likely will throw money into thin air since the link seller may not be honest about the quality of links, for example. And we will explain how.

They will likely offer you the option to buy links in a bunch such as 3,000+ . Will there be a way for you to check every single backlink? We highly doubt it. Thus, you will likely end up with harmful links, among them broken links, links from casino-related websites, or no-follow links. Even if you don’t find all these links in the bunch, they can harm your website in various ways.

If paying for backlinks hurts your SEO, then why do people choose to do it? Every marketer has a reason for choosing this option.

Do Marketers Still Buy Backlinks?

The short answer is yes. 

Sadly in some industries, it is a common practice to sell backlinks since they are the only way to get links. Typically, it is widespread in the financial, casino, and insurance industries. 

More often than not, no matter how much effort you put into your outreach campaign, how personalized your email is, and how good your offer is, some website owners will still ask you to pay. 

This is a dead-end. But does it mean you must open your pocket for every paid link?

Of course not. Backlinks have to add value to your website and should be helpful to the reader. If you are careless about the value of your content, you will disappoint the users of your blog or just any person who visits it.

Why is It Risky to Buy Links?

We briefly mentioned that one of the potential harms of buying links is ending up with spammy ones. But we have created a quick checklist of all the essential effects that will potentially happen to you if you really decide to go for buying backlinks for SEO.

Beware of Google bots: In short, Google will ban your website, and you will disappear from search results if it finds out you buy links in an artificially, instead of naturally building them. 

Harmful links: A lot of cheap backlinks that are out for sale come from untrustworthy websites that only exist to scam people who wish to grow their sites. 

Becoming a Spam: Another way to turn into a spammy website is buying backlinks from only-content websites. PBNs are typically a network of websites designed to draw traffic, and they manipulate SEO, making it seem as if the main site has a lot of natural links. But they post the same content and decrease the authority of your website 

In the example below you can see a screenshot from a website like that.

Money spent for nothing:. If you are buying anything, you expect it to be of good quality and serve its purpose. But it turns out that with backlink buying, you may spend the money for nothing, as it will cause harm and not do you a good service.

Instead of buying backlinks, you can spend that money to enhance your content and make it a linkable asset.  

Spending time to remove them: If Google doesn’t value the paid links, you will have to go through the headache of removing them from your pages. Thus, unfortunately, this can lead to the disavowing of the links that actually helped your SEO efforts.

If you want to reach key metrics like your domain authority or page authority and have good results without significant losses, you better choose a more practical link building strategy rather than wasting money and encountering risks. Besides risks there are other factors to consider before buying links for SEO. 

5 Reasons Not to Buy Links in 2024

We may have risk factors to reconsider the idea of buying backlinks. But there are several critical reasons not to buy links.

Penalties from Google

Besides having a negative impact on your website’s performance, buying links will also discredit you in the eyes of Google. If you read Google’s spam policy, you will see that it does not approve exchanging links for money, or any form of barter.

In other words, Google sees paid links as schemes. If Google notices that you buy links instead of building them naturally or via link exchanges, the consequences will be pretty harsh.

Google typically applies two types of penalties: manual action when a human reviewer bans a site for violating Webmaster Guidelines through buying links or an algorithmic penalty. The measures taken after those two penalties were different.

A manual penalty may lead to two big issues:

• Rank Drop: Your ranks will significantly drop in search results.
• Deindexing: In some cases, the entire website can be taken off the Google index, making it practically impossible to find in a Google search

It may come as a surprise, but recovering from algorithmic penalties in case they find you buy links may be more challenging and we will tell you why.

• No notification: Google doesn’t notify about algorithmic penalties, unlike manual ones.
• Broader Directions: Since the algorithms work with vast amounts of data, you don’t get clear directions of what you need to do. Meanwhile, Google points out what went wrong and where there are manual penalties.

It goes without saying that paying for backlinks also reflects on your credibility in front of Google. Lower credibility means lower visibility. Plus, even if you resolve the issues, it will take time to rebuild the trust.

The bright side is that you will be notified when Google identifies any issues, and you will have time to work on them. 

Poor Link Sources

Paid backlinks may not only lead to penalties, but they also can get you backlinks from poor link sources. Potentially, you may come across people who will offer to provide you with link building services from various platforms such as LinkedIn, Slack, etc.

There is not a 100% chance that you will encounter scammers. There are also honest and good link builders, but the chances are still high. Mostly, they will offer you cheap and bad backlinks, yet in a large amount, which will appear as a great offer at first sight. When they provide the page metrics, they may not be honest about them.

In the examples, you can see how suspicious offers look.

Here’s another example which even comes with a big red warning. 

So when they offer to sell backlinks, make sure to stay away from offers like:

• Suspicious-Looking Links: Links that do not look like regular ones. They may be shortened or miss a part of their address, which suggests that something is wrong with them. 
• Sidebar and Footer links: The name suggests that these links are placed either on the sidebar or footer of the page. Typically, they may be viewed as less valuable or placed on sites with low quality.
• Forum links: These links are placed on forums in comments. They have low quality and are considered spammy.

You can see in the screenshot what forums usually look like.

When you want to buy links, think about the fact that you are not the only person they have made this offer to.  So, it will also affect how the search engine views your website if it traces your connection to them. What we can say is that one natural link is more valuable than hundreds from poor link sources.

Temporary Gains

There are dozens of links out there, and you may think that Google won’t be able to trace all of them but it will. So, if you buy links, and get some kind of gain out of them, it will only be a temporary one.

For a short period of time, you can notice an increase in traffic to your website, which may lead to an increase in visitors that will potentially turn into leads. But beware that spammy links also can harm the quality of the website.

Consider this: readers only click on the links that they see as valuable. If they notice that something needs to be fixed with them, they will see your website as lacking in quality.

This can further lead users to scroll past your website in the search results if it loses authority in their eyes. 

So, if you want a long-term effect, you better have a good link building strategy that will drive more results.

It’s Unethical

One way or the other, you have considered all the possible consequences that paid links can have. But has it crossed your mind that buying backlinks for SEO is also unethical? That’s an important reason to think about.

Backlink buying crosses the threshold of the acceptable in several ways. We will briefly mention the ones that we think you should keep in mind if you ever want to purchase backlinks.

• Breaking the guidelines: We have to mention again that the attempt to buy links breaks Google’s Webmaster guidelines. Other popular search engines like Bing have guidelines against purchasing links.
• Goes against fair competition: The effect that purchased links have on a website is artificial. You may have high rankings for a short time, but it will be unfair to the sites that have spent time creating high-quality content.
• Losing User Trust: Users want to find the best results when they go to search engines for answers. Meanwhile, paid links push irrelevant content, which breaks users trust in the company’s work and credibility.

The efforts of ethical SEO are drawn towards creating an environment for healthy competition. It gives equal opportunities for all kinds of businesses to get the attention of the clients.

High Costs

We briefly mentioned that backlink buying is not cheap, and we will expand on this a bit more. Anyone who wants to buy links has to prepare a considerable amount of financial resources since a series of factors make the links quite costly.

Sometimes, website owners charge additional fees not to take down links and keep them live. Buying backlinks for SEO is not as wise as it may seem. The risks involved with Google, the costs, the ethical side, and the temporary gains make it worthless. The money spent on the effort to buy links can be better invested in the content and white hat link building solutions. We will explore the actual prices of links in the next section, so keep up.

How Much Do Backlinks Cost?

When we talk about the cost of buying links, we have to understand that this is a market, and as in any other market, the prices are subject to change. Research shows that on average backlinks can cost up to 361 dollars. The prices vary based on a few factors:

• The domain metrics (such as DR, Traffic, etc.)
• Whether the website will offer to write the content for you
• The industry
• The relationships with the website owner

Depending on the metrics, the prices may also go up. So, you may think that you need 300$ to buy a link. But it can turn out that the link costs 600$, and it may lead you to rethink your whole budget.

However, one crucial factor remains intact: whether you buy backlinks at a low price or high, they still are not going to cut the prices coming from the harsh consequences of penalties. So, it’s better not to expect anything good from buying a cheap link.

Why are Backlinks So Expensive?

While we already know that links are expensive to buy and it is better not to do so, it will also help to understand why exactly they are at such a high cost. Turns out, aside from metrics in link building, several other factors play a role in the backlinks price.

When you buy links, you have to be mindful of where exactly your link is going to be placed. If it is going to be placed in the main content of the website, then you have to open your pockets wider since the placement in the main content means that it will go through an editorial review. 

The website admins charge according to the efforts and time that the link will take from them during the review process. Links do not get placed instantly. They go through a review process and website admins charge according to the time and efforts that the link publishing takes from them.

Speaking of industries, we know that for some, the only way to get links is to buy links. The demand for links in specific industries also causes the prices to be exceptionally high since the content written about the topics about the industry is less, and the websites willing to make placements are not so many. 

That’s why the prices go up each year due to increased demand.

But if buying links is not worth it, you may have a natural question: What are other ways to get backlinks if not through buying them? We have the answer ready for you.

How to Build Links Ethically and Safely

If you think that we took away an easy way to get links from your heads and we are not going to offer you any alternatives, you couldn’t be wrong. We have a whole link building checklist you can check out for more information, and down below, we have some quick suggestions for your next link building campaign instead of opting to buy links.

• Consider an A-B-C link exchange: A-B-C link exchange is an exchange between three websites to avoid direct links and have a more natural link building.
• Personalize your emails: Link building is a relationship, not just a cold exchange of links, and personalization is not just about including the names of your partners. The more you tailor your messages to the specific needs of your partners, the more chances you have of successful collaboration with them. You can add their name, position, and some information that you know about the company.
• Create good content: Good articles become linkable assets, and partners will reach out to you for an exchange.

So, nothing worthy comes with ease, but it will always have a lasting value, and the same is true for ethical and safe ways of link building. They will require more time, but the fruits will be more than from buying links, and you won’t have to do a double amount of work while losing your credibility.

Conclusion

We have come to an end, so it will be worth wrapping up what we have learned so far.

• Industries like finance, casinos, and insurance engage in buying links, and some website owners will still demand a price for backlinks.
• If you buy links, you can encounter spammy websites that will harm the quality of your web pages and decrease the traffic.
• Google has strict guidelines against buying links and considers them as link schemes. If you get caught, it will take time for you to resolve the consequences.
• Buying links is expensive and still does not guarantee long-term effects. Sometimes, you will need to pay additional costs to keep the links live.
• It is unethical to buy links as it breaks the trust of the audience, increases the number of spammy links, and disvalues the efforts of competitors.
• White hat solutions for acquiring backlinks may take more time, but their effect will last longer.

FAQ about buying links