If you've been running your online business for a while, you've probably already gotten some offers to buy links for your site; perhaps even with prices as low as a few zlotys per link. Sounds like a good offer, right? You get into such a link scheme and you rank higher in the search engines within a few months or even weeks.
The problem is that Google advises against buying links and considers it a bad practice that can even lead to penalizing your site. But that doesn't stop people and agencies from selling links and offering link building services.
So what is it like in the end, is it worth buying links? And is it safe to do so?
The answer to this question is more complicated than a simple yes or no. And it is largely based on what we consider link buying.
While buying backlinks is something to avoid, paying for the time and services of experts who build links for you is another matter entirely.
Want to know more about buying links? In this article you will learn why you should buy links and how to do it correctly.
Key findings
- Buying links is a complicated topic, and although Google advises against buying links in the strict sense, many SEO agencies (such as ours) offer link building services that rely on link building in a more organic way.
- The quality and relevance of backlinks are crucial for SEO and can significantly affect your site's ranking and visibility in organic search results.
- Safe and proven link building practices avoid negative consequences. Buying low-quality links or working with agencies that use black-hat SEO techniques can be harmful to your site.
- Building a natural backlink profile takes time and knowledge. Free link building options may not produce comprehensive results despite significant input.
- While backlinks are still important for SEO, Google's algorithms also value content quality, relevance and user signals. It is possible to improve your site's ranking without exclusive reliance on backlinks - but they should not be forgotten.
Before we go any further, however, we need to clarify a few things.
At NON.agency, we do not offer to buy or sell backlinks. We believe that SEO should be done according to the rules set by Google and other leading search engines.
We do not encourage or condone buying backlinks from link farms or other sites that offer links for money. Buying links from such sources is a short-term solution and may ultimately harm your website.
What we offer is a link building service by our team of SEO specialists according to white-hat SEO principles.
Why do people buy backlinks?
First, let's deal with the elephant in the room. While Google doesn't want you to buy links, people do it all the time.
Websites in every industry engage in a never-ending battle for the top spots on search engine results pages (SERPs). They often buy backlinks or rely on link building services to achieve this goal.
Why do they do it?
In short, having a well-developed backlink profile (that is, a significant number of quality organic links) is one of the key elements of SEO. Quality links influence your site's rankings and help you gain high visibility in organic search results.
Such actions bring tangible results, i.e. in the form of increased organic traffic from search engines.
But how does this relate to Google's guidelines? Isn't it against Google's guidelines?
Yes, that's true. But...
... Google would first have to determine that the links were built fraudulently. And as it turns out, it's not that easy - provided you actually know what you're doing.
This means that if you have acquired backlinks from relevant websites, surrounded them with valuable content and followed other proven practices, your links will stay up and provide tremendous value.
On the other hand, if you are careless and buy low-quality links or work with an agency that uses black-hat SEO, you can find yourself in a heap of trouble.
Is link building safe?
This leads us to the question at the heart of the matter: is it safe to buy backlinks?
The answer to this question is that it depends on how you build links.
Are you buying cheap backlinks from unknown sources OR working with an agency that uses a transparent link building process?
Do you buy links from private blog networks (PBNs) and publish your articles on link farms to make a quick profit, or do you focus on long-term improvements through real outreach, broken link building and other white-hat tactics?
At NON.agency, we use reliable methods and follow our proven link building process so that you get backlinks that will increase traffic to your site.
We don't sell links, but the time and expertise required to create quality content and ensure links are placed on relevant sites.
Building reliable links requires patience and costs money. There's no getting around it. If someone promises backlinks from high authority sites for an extremely low price, it's a sign that they're not exactly being fair.
But I pay for every link!
✅ Information
If you choose to order links from us, you are paying for the time and resources our team invests in developing strategies, creating content, networking and ultimately building each individual link.
Think of a scenario like this: you approach a self-proclaimed "SEO expert" and ask for links from sites he claims to be affiliated with.
It shows you a list of sites where it will place your links. You choose one, pay the agreed amount, and your link appears on the landing page in a moment. Sound too good to be true?
Well, this is probably the case. Most often, such links are placed on low-value sites or unrelated to your niche. Instead of helping your ranking, they will most likely hurt it.
When you work with us, you still pay for the link. More specifically, you pay for the entire process, which usually includes:
- Analysis and search - we first look for reputable websites related to your business.
- Outreach - our outreach team handles contacts and makes connections to these websites.
- Content creation - our team of creative writers creates original content to be featured on landing pages - all with link relevance in mind.
- Link building - when everything is ready, we place quality links on relevant pages to satisfy SEO needs.
That's why links "bought" from an SEO agency seem much more expensive. Here's how our agency's link building costs break down:
- Time 65%
- Activities 20%
- Tools 10%
- Content 5%
Can't I just get free links?
Most SEOs recognize the value of a good link, so if someone offers you their services for free, you'd better ask why. However, you can try to build some links on your own - paying only with your time (provided you have the necessary tools at hand).
We don't want to curb your enthusiasm, but it's much harder than you might think.
Approaching a random site owner with an idea for a guest post in which you can add dofollow links to your site may work once or twice, but it's not a viable option for a comprehensive backlink strategy.
In most cases, it will look like this:
- Look for relevant sites with high organic traffic that are not hidden link farms,
- Reach out to the websites mentioned,
- Negotiate a satisfactory offer,
- Create valuable content where you can include links,
- Choose the right anchors,
- Monitor the progress of your campaign.
These are at least six steps that require time and specific skills.
In addition, you can use business directories such as Google My Business, find platforms for collaborative marketing, or build links by registering with HARO (Help a Reporter Out) and responding to inquiries from journalists.
Ultimately, building a natural backlink profile will cost, if not money, then time and effort. Not to mention that most site owners will charge you for guest posting on their site, regardless of the quality of the content you create.
It costs money to publish articles too!
Site owners know how valuable it is to be mentioned in highly ranked sites and use this factor to make some cash. Even big brands such as Forbes offer to publish articles for a certain fee.
And yes, most of them get paid for every link they publish, just as affiliate marketers get paid every time someone clicks an affiliate link on their site.
Needless to say, many site owners set strict guidelines for guest posts to make sure these posts fall within what their typical posts look like, as well as to avoid potential penalties after publishing links to low-quality sites.
So link building these days requires you to do two things: good content that someone will want to publish on your site, and money to cover the work you put into the process.
If you don't meet these requirements, you may have difficulty getting dofollow links that will make a difference.
Do backlinks really work?
Yes, it's true! There is plenty of evidence for this, including our case study. As we mentioned earlier, backlinks are one of the most important elements of an SEO strategy.
This has been the case for the last decade and it is still the case today. Search engine algorithms take organic backlinks into account when "evaluating" a site. Good links signal credibility and can help you rank higher in search engines, especially when combined with other elements of an SEO strategy, such as content marketing and site optimization.
Are backlinks still valid in 2023?
The recent push to use AI-based chatbots such as ChatGPT i Gemini, has caused some to doubt whether SEO in its traditional form will ever return.
To some extent, this is true. For example, the advent of ChatGPT has changed the way we create written content. Now all you need is a good prompt and a set of keywords to create an article or blog post in seconds.
The quality of such articles is often questionable, but in special cases it can get the job done. Google has gone ahead and openly allowed AI-generated content, placing even more emphasis on E-E-A-T and overall content quality.
Where are the links in all this?
While we don't know for sure what it will look like when the Search Generative Experience will take over the SERPs, it's safe to assume that backlinks will remain irreplaceable. They provide proof of trust and integrity between websites - a factor that is difficult to replace without reinventing the way the Web works.
In other words, investing in quality links today will serve you well in the long run, regardless of current search engine trends.
Is it possible to rank in Google without backlinks?
Note that backlinks are not the only option you have if you want to increase your ranking in Google and other search engines - even though the correlation between backlinks and higher rankings is quite strong.
Google's algorithm has become sophisticated enough to judge the quality of your site based on content, relevance and signals from users. This means that if you want to build a strong online presence without focusing on link building, it's as possible - albeit a bit more difficult.
For example, the skyscraper technique allows you to attract backlinks as a side effect of creating quality content that builds further on your existing content.
Brian Dean, the father of this technique, compared it to the way skyscrapers in New York City catch the eye of people walking around the city. The taller the skyscraper, the more it stands out from the crowd.
The same goes for content marketing. If your articles are better than others and contain more details and original ideas, while providing real value to your readers, you can expect to improve your rankings.
The problems begin when one tries to put this method into practice.
It can be used for strategic articles - and often is - such as an article describing types of wood for a website that sells flooring, or an article on social media marketing for a tech startup.
However, it is safe to say that this technique will not work for every type of content.
So it's not possible after all?
We'd say it' s largely possible. You can position your site in organic search results without building backlinks, as long as it meets other important requirements for quality content, optimization, etc.
But should backlink acquisition be avoided altogether?
Absolutely not.
Risks associated with buying backlinks (from shady suppliers)
With this in mind, it's worth looking at the risks associated with buying links from unreliable providers.
In general, the risks of buying links are twofold: you can lose money on backlinks that have little or virtually no impact on your position, or receive a so-called manual penalty from Google.
Let's decompose this risk into its own.
No change in search engine positions
If you're buying backlinks from questionable sources, you're rolling the dice. At best, you will get some increase in rankings with a site that has not yet been marked as spam.
More often than not, these links lose the potential power they would normally provide after a few weeks or months. This only means wasting resources on short-term solutions.
Penalization
Another risk to be aware of, especially if you are buying backlinks for the first time, is the possibility of receiving a penalty from Google.
Such a penalty is always awarded as a result of manual action by a reviewer (human) and is based on evidence indicating a violation of Google's guidelines. This can severely limit your chances of ranking higher in search results.
In extreme cases, it can even prevent the site from appearing in search results altogether.
To break out of such a penalty, you will most likely have to relinquish your paid links. This means that the entire cost of building these links will go to waste.
Worse, there is no guarantee that the site will return to the state it was in before getting the paid backlinks that caused the problem.
Probably the fastest way to solve this problem would be to remove all paid backlinks and rebuild the backlink profile from scratch.
"Economic" reasons
Imagine a glass full of water and someone pulling water out of it one spoonful at a time.
It will take much longer to empty a glass with one tablespoon, but if you use 50 tablespoons, the glass will be emptied in no time.
The same is true for links. If a site sells links, it means that the number of outbound links will steadily increase. As a result, their authority (or power) will diminish over time. Therefore, buying the same links from link farms has no long-term benefit.
Again, links obtained from a domain whose purpose is primarily to offer links are at best neutral to your rankings, and at worst toxic.
Bad neighborhood
When you buy links from a random site, you have no control over what other sites your links lead to. This leads to having dozens or even hundreds of "neighbors," which can be quite toxic.
You can check your site's link portfolio and see if there is anything you don't want to be associated with. But at the end of the day, there is no guarantee that other linked sites will remain the same forever. It could change without you knowing.
Let's put it this way:
Google sees a site linking to yours. At first, this can be a sign of credibility, as it means someone trusts you enough to link to it. However, that same site links to suspicious sites, which Google usually blacklists.
What does Google "think" then? Suffice it to say that you look just as suspicious as those other sites. And that's certainly what you want to avoid.
If you want to quickly check if any of your links are toxic - try the following Backlink Blacklist, our FREE tool that allows you to perform a quick link inspection.
Summary
The decision to build backlinks to increase your site's authority and visibility in organic search results is very important.
First you need to decide if you want to do it. Evaluate the risks and benefits to make sure you know what link building is all about. There are many seemingly insignificant things that can determine the results of your work. It's worth approaching teo professionally, especially given the potential that a good link portfolio has.
Then you need to decide how to approach it. If you're not willing to take risks, your best option is to contact a reputable SEO agency (like ours!) and order link building services. You still have to pay, but this price includes much more than just placing a link on a pre-selected page.
Nothing prevents you from ordering links from unknown sites, but this is not the safest solution either.
Regardless of your choice, proceed with caution and stay on top of the latest SEO news. After all, it's all about growing your business!
