Tarnishing paid links with the bad boy brush

Whats all the fuss over paid links?

We've had them for years and now suddenly everyone's up in arms as Google appears to have stated it wants to see them out of action?

Paid links are (to me) a sign that someone is serious about investing in their website. Wanting free links from free directories is just chancing your arm and does not get you anywhere.

I do hope that certain individuals in the SEO world have not "tweaked Matt Cutts ear", especially if they had a strategy already mapped out if he did listen. I don't know if he did but it does make me wonder.

If Google knows which links go to bad neighbourhoods in general then why not adjust their filters to acknowledge "good" paid links and "bad neighbourhood" paid links?

Let us SEO's go figure out which ones sit where, like we don't already know!


As I've always said go for a balance of free and paid links, blog links, 3rd party corporate website links, pr links, linkbait and links via social media and you'll likely have a better spread if Google decides it does not like one certain type of link.

I'm wondering if Google in time will really clamp down on hard with those of millions of links and perhaps look for a few hundred links that really are high quality?