Is Buying Backlinks a Good Idea? : Here’s What Experts Say! (Updated 2024)

If you have some idea about SEO, you know this is a long waiting game. You usually have to run your campaign for months and sometimes years to see any noticeable results. Over time, search engines like Google and Bing keep updating their algorithms and you find yourself adjusting your SEO tactics to keep up with the changes.

Sometimes you see your rankings improve and after some time they drop when your competition takes over those keywords. Then you do it all over again to recover from lost rankings and feel like you will never get out of this never-ending loophole.

However, there are some SEO strategies whose effectiveness has not changed for a long time. Link building is one great example but it takes time, patience, and effort to leverage its benefits. That’s when website owners and SEO experts want to buy backlinks to save time and get quick results.

But should you buy backlinks for SEO? If yes, what kind of backlinks to buy? What are the short-and long-term impacts of buying backlinks?

Is Buying Backlinks Really a Good Idea?

Not really. Google considers this as a violation of their webmaster guidelines. This is because their goal is simply to provide users with the most relevant and useful search results possible. Buying backlinks undermines this goal by artificially improving a website’s ranking and making it more difficult for users to find high-quality content.

Google has a number of algorithms in place that are designed to detect and penalize websites that engage in link buying. If your website is caught buying backlinks, you could be subjected to a manual penalty or a drop in your search engine ranking.

How Does Google Know if You Have Bought Backlinks?

Google uses some methods to detect backlinks that have been bought or sold, such as:

• Analyzing the anchor text

The anchor text is the text used to link to another website. If an anchor text is too spammy or unnatural, it is a red flag that the backlink has not been acquired naturally.

• Looking at the linking website

Google looks at the linking website to see if it is a high-quality website or not. Sites that have sold links to you must have done the same for everyone else. So, it is not hard for Google to find out what’s really going on without having to check out the transactions.

• Tracking the link velocity

Google tracks how many backlinks a website gets over a period of time. If a website suddenly receives a large number of backlinks, they will know you are trying to artificially manipulate their system.

• Using machine learning

Google also uses machine learning to analyze backlinks and identify patterns that suggest if backlinks have been bought or sold or exchanged.

What Risks Do You Face if You Buy Backlinks?

Even if your other SEO tactics are white hat but Google identifies that your backlinking strategy is against their guidelines, this may have the following consequences:

• Your website could be penalized by Google

If your website is caught buying backlinks, you could be subjected to a manual penalty or a drop in your ranking.

What is a manual penalty? This type of penalty is applied to a website by a human reviewer at Google. This is usually applied when a website is found to be violating Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

If your website is affected by a manual penalty, you will receive a notification in Google Search Console like this:

The notification will provide you with information about the reason for the penalty and what you need to do to fix the problem.

The spam links will also be shown:

Once you have fixed the problem, you can submit a reconsideration request to Google. If Google is satisfied that you have taken the necessary steps, they will remove the penalty soon.

• Your website could be seen as spammy

If that happens, you will be notified with a similar notification:

Be ready to see a decrease in traffic to your website and a loss of trust from potential customers.

• You could waste your money

There is no guarantee that buying backlinks will improve your ranking. In fact, there is a risk that you could waste your money on backlinks that have no effect or even harm your rankings, especially if you end up with toxic backlinks because of poor link-building practices.

For example, some may engage in black hat SEO techniques, such as buying links or participating in link schemes to artificially boost their rankings. Others may unknowingly acquire toxic backlinks through spammy comments, link exchanges with irrelevant sites, or by hiring low-quality SEO services.

Why Do People Still Buy Backlinks?

Google Search Essentials – previously known as Webmaster Guidelines – are there to help improve the quality of their search results, and then there is the reality where you cannot adhere to all of their guidelines religiously.

Link building is a perfect example of this. In this context, even if you prepare high-quality content following the editorial guidelines of the website that you want a link from, they will still ask for money.

The higher the Domain Authority (DA) of the website, the more they will charge.

So, there is no doubt that you will have to fix a link building budget as part of your SEO campaign if you want to buy high quality backlinks and gain benefits like:

• Improved rankings

When reputable websites link to your site, Google sees it as a signal that your content is valuable and trustworthy. This means your rankings will improve and you will get to enjoy increased organic traffic.

• Increased website visibility

With increased traffic, you will be exposed to a wider audience that will engage with your business. You can be sure that there will be more leads and sales from the higher number of visitors.

• Faster indexing

If you buy quality backlinks, this might help Google discover and index your website more quickly. This means you will get quicker results. But you have to be concerned about link velocity that we talked about earlier. Too many links given to your website in a little time period will look suspicious for sure.

• Establishing authority

If you get a good number of links from authoritative websites, this will make your website a reliable source of information. This will boost your reputation and credibility in your industry or niche.

• Referral traffic

Referral traffic is a valuable source of new visitors for your website. When someone clicks on a link to your site from another website, they are likely to be interested in the content that you have to offer. This means that referral traffic is more engaging and more likely to convert into leads or customers.

How Much Does Link Building Cost?

According to Startup Bonsai, the average cost of paid backlink is around $360.

The cost varies depending on a number of factors, including:

• The quality of the links
• The industry you are in
• The size of your budget
• The type of link building you choose

In general, you can expect to pay anywhere from $50 to over $2,000 per do-follow link. The higher the popularity and authority, the more you have to pay.

Note: Domain Authority can be easily manipulated these days. Don’t just jump at high-DA links without looking into other factors like monthly traffic and traffic source, domain trust flow, spam score, relevant niches, and external links.

If you decide to work with a reputable SEO agency or a digital marketing service provider, they may offer link building services as part of a broader SEO package. If you buy backlink packages, the price range will be anywhere from a few hundred dollars per month to several thousand dollars, depending on the scope and scale of your campaign.

What Type of Backlinks to Buy?

Here are the best types of backlinks you should have because they are seen by search engines as the most valuable types:

• Editorial backlinks

Editorial backlinks are created when your content, like an article or infographic, is referenced as the source of information when someone quotes a representative from your business, or when your site is featured in a collection of links about a specific topic.

These are the best types of backlinks you can think about. To get these editorial backlinks, you should create content that is always relevant and establishes you as an expert in your field. This will make people want to interview you or feature your brand on their websites. You should also create content that is easy to share and grabs people’s attention with the potential to become popular.

Although technically these are organic backlinks that cannot be purchased, Google does not care if they are totally natural, paid, or obtained for free after a request as long as they are not spammy.

• Guest blogging

The process is simple – you write a blog post for another website and include a link back to your own website. This common link building practice is seen in almost any SEO strategy. Always look for credible sources to build a strong backlink profile.

• Business profiles

When you create a business profile on websites like Yelp, Clutch, Google My Business, or LinkedIn, you can usually add a link to your website. Google sees these links as evidence that your website is legitimate and has been around for a while.

• Resource page backlinks

Resource pages are pages that list helpful resources, tools, apps, products, services, media, or websites on a particular topic. If you manage to buy high PR dofollow backlink from a resource page, you will see the benefits soon for sure.

• Guest post bio links

Guest post bio links are links that you can include in the author biography section when you write a guest post for another website. When you contribute a guest post, you have the opportunity to share a little about yourself in the author bio at the end of the post. This bio usually includes a brief description of who you are and what you specialize in, along with a link to your own website or social media profiles.

• PR Backlinks

PR backlinks are links from news articles or other high-authority websites to your website. They are called PR backlinks because they are often obtained through public relations (PR) efforts. You need to engage in effective public relations strategies to get PR backlinks, such as crafting compelling press releases, pitching story ideas to journalists or bloggers, and building relationships with influencers in your industry.

• .edu or .gov backlinks

These top-level domains (TLDs) are associated with educational institutions and government agencies that are highly authoritative and trustworthy sources of information. This means if you can buy edu backlinks, you may even see your page ranks soaring overnight!

What Type of Backlinks to Avoid?

If you have run a link building campaign before or are doing it now, you know how much time and effort it takes. You do not want your money and hard work to go wasted because of a bad SEO decision.

Check out these toxic backlinks that you should avoid at all costs:

• Spammy links

Backlinks from irrelevant or low-authority websites can hurt your rankings. These websites are often created just to generate backlinks, and they don’t provide any real value to users.

One example of this is a private blog network (PBN). A PBN is a network of websites that are created or purchased for the sole purpose of manipulating search engine rankings. The owner of a PBN will set up multiple websites and use them to link back to their main website, also known as the “money site.” The goal is to artificially boost the rankings of the money site by creating a network of backlinks.

• Irrelevant links

Irrelevant backlinks are links from websites that are not related to your industry, niche, or content. These backlinks come from a variety of sources, such as link farms, spam websites, and even your competitors.

When search engines notice too many irrelevant backlinks pointing to your website, they might interpret it as an attempt to manipulate their system. This can lead to your website being penalized, which means it will rank lower in search results.

• Comment spam

Spam comments are when people or bots leave comments on websites with the only purpose of adding a link to their own website. These comments are often irrelevant or generic, and they do not add any value to the discussion. You should remove them as soon as you find them.

• Forum backlinks

Forum backlinks are often created by automated software or people who are trying to game the system. This means that they are often irrelevant to your website and do not provide any real value.

If you have a lot of spammy forum backlinks, they can hurt the reputation of your platform. If your SEO agency adds it to your link building tactics, cancel your contract and look for a better one.

• Foreign language websites

Backlinks from reputed foreign language websites can be valuable if you are targeting an international audience. But that’s not always the case.

For example, if your website is in English, then backlinks from a foreign language site are not going to be relevant to the majority of your visitors. This means they will not help you rank for English keywords.

• Non-indexed websites

When a website is indexed, it means that search engines have analyzed its content and stored information about it in their databases. A non-indexed website is a website that has not been crawled by Google. Since they are not visible to search engines, getting links from them won’t help with your SEO.

When to Buy Backlinks?

If you are just starting out with a new website, it’s not a good idea to buy backlinks right now. You will get more out of your time and money by focusing on creating high-quality content and building relationships with other website owners.

Once you have a well-established website with a good amount of content, it is time to kick off your link building endeavor. But be careful! Not all backlinks carry the same weight as said before. You want to make sure that you are buying backlinks from high-quality websites that are also relevant to your niche.

How to Analyze Backlinks?

Here we will show you how to analyze backlinks of a website with Semrush

Step 1: Go to Semrush.com and create a new account (or log in if you already have an account).

Step 2: Type in the URL of the website you want to search and click the “Search” button.

Step 3:  You will be shown the number of backlinks the site currently has. Just click here and you will see the whole profile, including the source websites and their authority scores, anchor texts, indexing dates, and more.

Before you run your link building campaign, you have to ensure that the links you are trying to acquire will be valued by Google. This means they should be “do-follow links” with proper anchor texts from high DA sites.

• Choose the sites you want to analyze

This could be your own website, your competitors’ websites, or a combination of both.

•  Select an auditing tool

There are many free and paid tools available, such as Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz.

• Get a quick overview

Once you select an auditing tool, enter your domain name or the domain name of your competitor into the search bar and look at the results. You’ll start with a ton of data, so focus on these metrics:

• The total number of backlinks
• Referring domains
• Domain Rating (DR)
• Anchor text
• Link type (dofollow/nofollow)

• Analyze the details

Once you have a general overview of your backlink profile, you can start to analyze the details. This includes looking at the following:

• The quality of the referring domains
• The relevance of the anchor text
• The number of new and lost backlinks
• The presence of any spammy or irrelevant backlinks

• See what your competitors are doing

Once you have analyzed your own backlink profile, you can compare it to the backlink profiles of your competitors. This will give you an idea of what you need to do to improve your own backlink profile.

How to Buy Backlinks?

• Determine what type of links you need

Before buying backlinks, you should be sure about your specific needs. Consider factors like your website niche, target audience, and SEO goals.

• Understand your niche and target audience

As you know by now that relevancy is crucial to strengthen your backlink profile, always look for authority sites that are relevant to your niche. For instance, if you have an e-commerce store specializing in eco-friendly products, a popular environmental blog may write an article about sustainable living and mention your store as a reputable source for eco-friendly products.

• Analyze your competitors’ backlinks

This is a highly popular and effective method. You can research the backlink profiles of your competitors with tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush to gain insights into their link-building strategies. Identify the websites from which they have obtained backlinks, the types of links they have, and the quality of those links. Then reach out to those website owners.

• Diversify your backlink profile

Aim for a diverse link profile that includes different types of backlinks. We have already discussed that the best types are guest posts, editorial mentions, directory listings, social media links, and resource page links. Diversity helps create a natural and organic link profile that conforms to Google’s guidelines.

• Consider the anchor text

Try to add relevant keywords or a natural variation of your brand name into your anchor texts whenever you can. Avoid excessive use of exact-match anchor text because this can raise red flags to Google.

• Determine how many backlinks you need

Quality over quantity – you know the motto. A few quality backlinks from authority sites will provide better results than a number of links from sites with no reputation. Here keyword difficulty comes into play. The more competitive a keyword is, the harder it will be to rank.

• Do a link gap analysis

Once you know how many backlinks you will need, it is time to look into your backlink profile. You can use SEO tools like Moz Link Explorer to see where your competitors have received their links from. You are more likely to get quality links from them because they have already done the same for your competitors. Besides, that also guarantees that your links will be highly relevant for your niche and audience.

Here is how to do that with Semrush’s Backlink Gap tool.

Go to Backlink Gap and add the URLs of the competitor websites. You can add a maxim of four websites at a time. Then click the “Find Prospects” button below.

You will be shown how many backlinks your competition has gained from credible sources and your current stance. For instance, here backlinkco.com failed to get any links from high-authority domains like CNN.com, Pinterest.com, Indeed.com, etc.

• Reach out to the website owners

With a list of websites to reach out to, you now have to check out their editorial guidelines. Most would ask for a highly informative blog or article with some additional requirements like how many anchor texts you can add your link to, how to pay, and other such info.

Here is an example of an editorial guideline:

You probably won’t find how much a website might charge for a do-follow link here. You have to contact them (mainly through email) for that information.

Here is a good example of a link building email outreach with the reply of the webmaster to give you some idea:

• Do some bargaining if you can

High domain authority sites usually have fixed rates for their do-follow and no-follow links. That means there is no chance to bargain. But relatively lower DA sites are often for bargaining. You will have some idea about the rates after reaching out to some website owners.

• Plan the drip dates

In link building, drip dates are the dates on which you schedule backlinks to be published. This technique is used to gradually build backlinks to your website over time, rather than all at once.

This is almost like scheduling the publish dates of your posts in WordPress. You have to go slow and methodologically to avoid getting penalized by Google.

There are a few different ways to implement drip dates. You can use a spreadsheet to track the dates on which you want backlinks to be published. You can also use a link building tool that allows you to schedule backlinks.

The best way to determine how many drip dates you need will depend on the size and authority of your website. If you have a small website, you will only need a few drip dates. However, if you have a large website or a high-authority website, you might need more drip dates.

• Hire a link building agency

If you do not have the time or expertise to establish your backlink profile, there are link building and SEO agencies that can do the job for you. As you know, building backlinks is a time-consuming and challenging task that involves identifying potential linking opportunities, reaching out to website owners, and negotiating link placements. By engaging a link building company, you can save time and effort as they will handle these tasks on your behalf.

Here are some of the most common reasons you should hire a link building company:

• Time savings

Link building can be a time-consuming process, especially if you’re not an expert. Hiring a link building company can save you a lot of time and effort for sure while you can focus on the most important areas of your business.

• Expertise

Link building companies have the expertise and experience to build high-quality backlinks that will actually improve your SEO. The challenge is to find the best agency since there are numerous to choose from.

• Results

As a beginner, you may waste a lot of your precious time going the wrong way and may even end up throwing in the towel. Link building companies can deliver results that you might not be able to achieve on your own. After all, they have the resources and network to get your backlinks placed on high-quality websites.

• Peace of mind

Hiring a link building company will give you peace of mind knowing that your backlinks are being built by experts who know what they are doing.

But it is not all sunshine and rainbows out there. Of course, there are also some potential downsides to buying backlinks through a link building company, such as:

• Cost

Link building companies can be expensive, especially if you’re looking for high-quality backlinks.

• Risks

There is always some risk involved in buying backlinks, as Google could penalize your website if they find that the backlinks are spammy or unnatural.

• Monitor the results

After you buy permanent backlinks, you need to carefully monitor how they impact your site performance over time. Keep track of your rankings, organic traffic, and overall SEO progress. This will help you evaluate the effectiveness of the backlinks you have purchased and make any necessary adjustments to your strategy.

Ever Heard of Rental Backlinks?

The name says it all – you “rent” links from authority instead of buying them permanently. This is a cost-friendly approach where you usually pay a monthly rent for the links provided to your website.

Renting backlinks allows you to acquire high-quality links from authoritative websites within a short timeframe. This is beneficial if you need instant exposure and targeted traffic.

Also, you get to enjoy greater flexibility in terms of link placement and duration. You can choose specific anchor text, landing pages, and even negotiate the rental period. This level of control allows you to tailor your link building strategy and align it with your overall SEO objectives.

However, the rental cost of a number of links may add up over time. You may even notice that you have paid more for rental links compared to what you would have paid for permanent backlinks. What’s more, backlink velocity or overflow may not be a good idea although that varies from one SEO strategy to another.

But you can definitely keep this option in mind if you think this will suit your link building budget and SEO tactics.

Wrapping it up

So, here we are. We believe we have discussed everything there is to know about whether to buy backlinks, the pros and cons of buying backlinks, how to go about the process, and other options available to stay on the safe side.

Practically speaking, you will have to buy backlinks from popular and credible sources to see positive effects on your SEO metrics. Making the right approach is the most crucial part here, which requires years of link building expertise. If you follow this guideline, we hope you will be able to see the desired results sooner or later.

FAQs

Q. Are nofollow backlinks any good?

Ans. No-follow backlinks are an HTML attribute added to a hyperlink to instruct Google not to follow or pass any link equity from that particular link to the linked website. They were introduced as a way to combat spam and prevent the abuse of links.

Although they do not directly help boost your rankings, they can still provide indirect benefits if sourced from popular and high DA websites, such as helping to diversify your backlink profile, driving referral traffic to your site, and building good relationships with other websites.

Q. How long does it take to see results with organic link-building?

Ans. Organic link-building takes time, and results vary based on your approach. While it might not yield immediate results when compared to buying backlinks, you will get to leverage some long-term benefits; including improved credibility, better rankings, and a more resilient online presence.

Q. Is buying backlinks legal?

Ans. While buying and selling backlinks is not illegal, Google hates manipulative link schemes as expected. That’s why they are against this practice and penalize if they can find out somehow. However, this is a widely common practice that even very popular websites are involved in.

Q. Can I recover from penalties due to purchased backlinks?

Ans. Yes, it’s possible although it might be very challenging. You have to first find out and disavow the problematic links and then submit a reconsideration request to Google. Afterwards, your sole focus should be implementing genuine SEO practices.