Something that was mentioned last week at SES NY was Paid Link advertising. Matt Cutts wrote up an article on the matter.
So what actually is happening with paid links? Google is ‘asking’ that people report sites that are either buying or selling links in order to start to clear up the index.
I happen to completely and whole-heartily disagree with this move by Google. Normally I’m very passionate about what Google is doing and support it, but this is one move that I do not see as a favor for webmasters or the company as a whole.
As much as Google doesn’t want to admit it, paid text link advertising is a critical method of marketing for websites around the world. People who really care about how they are ranked should be able to do exactly that and be able to rank in a position they want — no matter the cost.
Yahoo! and MSN haven’t spoken out on this matter this, but Google is taking a very firm stance on paid link advertising.
The industry of paid textlinks has been around for years and won’t be going away any time soon. Some websites depend on textlink sales as an additional source of income on top of other traditional advertising. Some stores heavily depend on paid linking as a means to positioning themselves higher in the index for any given keyword term. Paid link advertising is very important and Google should be dismissing this fact instead of trying to fight it.
How does this effect Wordpress SEO? There are many advertisers out there that use companies such as TextLinkAds.com and such for advertising their site — I know I do — and it’s critical to know that this industry is not going away nor it is going to actually compromise how the web works.
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