Should we buy links to help with SEO?

A case study of why many companies continue to buy links

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Our commentary:

Well, the answer to the question, as with many tricky #digitalmarketing questions, is "it depends". I prompted to write this post, to alert you to a really interesting new piece in the New York Times shows both sides of the story - the publicity has caused a penalty. It's a massive company - JC Penney - an $18 billion company,  that's featured. This is a big a case of Google SPAM as when BMW were delisted from Google several years ago.

Through using paid links as their strategy JC Penney have been very successful. As the NYT puts it:

The company bested millions of sites — and not just in searches for dresses, bedding and area rugs. For months, it was consistently at or near the top in searches for “skinny jeans,” “home decor,” “comforter sets,” “furniture” and dozens of other words and phrases, from the blandly generic (“tablecloths”) to the strangely specific (“grommet top curtains”).

That's the plus side - this is the downside when they were outed - the Google Penalty takes effect:

"At 7 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, J. C. Penney was No. 1 result for “Samsonite carry on luggage.”

Two hours later, it was at No. 71.

At 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Penney was No. 1 in searches for “living room furniture.”

By 9 p.m., it had sunk to No. 68.

In other words, one moment Penney was the most visible online destination for living room furniture in the country.

The next it was essentially buried.

PENNEY reacted to this instant reversal of fortune by, among other things, firing its search engine consulting firm, SearchDex. Executives there did not return e-mail or phone calls.

Marketing implications:

So, what to conclude? In the Econsultancy Best Practice Guide to SEO, Chris Lake and myself promote a strongly ethical approach to gaining links through quality content and outreach to other sites.

However, when I'm asked by a small or growing company "should I buy links since all my competitors do", the answer would seem to have be "Yes - it will give you a short-term benefit if you do it a way that's not detectable by the Google algorithms, but be aware of the long-term damage you may receive".

And that's the thing, Google may penalise, but it will often and rightly let companies back into the SERPs when they have cleaned up their act. So you may suffer a set back for several months, but you have reaped the benefit in the short-term. It's no surprise many company owners think "Make hay while the sun shines"?

Recommended link:Original New York Times article - The Dirty Little Secrets of Search