Getting cheap backlinks
Just had to give a word of warning to all small business owners about the dangers of cheap backlinks packages, following the worst example we’ve seen in a long time on this very blog. Cheap backlinks can seem like a bargain – after all, more backlinks mean better google ranking, right? Well, in this case, no. There are thousands and thousands of companies, many of which are just the same company with different names, who offer cheap backlinks – but what are you actually getting for your money?
Do cheap backlinks actually work?
Just to let you know, our blog is ‘do-follow’ – to give a small reward to genuine people who take the time to comment on our posts (google it if you don’t know what it means!), the downside is that the spammers use this as a way to build ‘legitimate’ backlinks for the poor people who’ve paid for a cheap backlinks package. The upshot is that your ’1000 backlinks’ are actually worth either nothing or very close to nothing – so from the point of view of your search engine ranking, you really might as well not bother wasting your time or money.
Last night’s cheap backlink example
Just to give an illustration of what you’re getting for your money, last night our blog recieved 43 identical comments, all from the same place but with different names on each one (as I type this, they’re still arriving!). The comment text seems almost sensible (it’s more like an e-mail, but does at least make sense) – the hope of the people making the comments is that we don’t check our comments and just let everything through, well we do check them, but thousands of other blogs around the world don’t and this is how these ‘companies’ make their money. What you’re probably paying for is a few hundred very badly paid people (think 20p per hour) sitting in a scruffy office somewhere doing nothing other than writing this rubbish and then posting it to as many blogs as they can – it’s only one step up from the automated technique of just commenting with nonsense that contains links. Unfortunately, companies just like yours (like the rest of us, tyring to improve sales on a shoestring) are making un-ethical people very rich by falling for these scams – building good quality backlinks takes time, skill and knowledge and costs money; bulk posting a load of rubbish onto any website that takes it, costs nothing and does nothing!!
Please don’t do it!!
You’re hopefully reading this after searching for ‘cheap backlinks’ and hopefully you’ve realised that what you’re actually getting for your money is not worth having. Good SEO can make a huge difference to the ranking of your website, which should increase your sales, if your product or service is good and you’re website sells it well. Cheap backlinks will do you no good at all and if you’re unlucky, might even drop your ranking in the search engines. So a final plea to small business owners – no matter how tempting the offer looks, or what their website promises, please don’t be tempted by this rubbish – if you need better search engine rankings, speak to a reputable SEO company (like us!) or learn how to do it yourself!!
If you’ve ever been tempted by, or actually used, this type of cheap backlinks package, please let us and the rest of the small business community know so that, hopefully, the one good thing that comes from it less people fall for it!
Tags: small business SEO
Useful read, I completely agree with you that cheap backlinks will do you no good at all and if you’re unlucky, might even drop your ranking in the search engines. We should be careful from these tempted offers.
It was about two months ago when I discovered the hard way that cheap backlinks are definitely not the way to go. I stumbled upon a website, offering a “great deal” – 2000 backlinks for just 35$. Back then it really sounded good and I decided to go for it. Well for those two months, there have been no results at all. So I would advice you to pay attention to the article!
Yea I love the ones I get saying “This site is most good!”. I actually did find this post looking for cheap backlinks. Thanks for keepin me on the right track.
Good deal. I bought 500 backlinks for 30$ last month.
Cheap backlinks can somehow help increase the traffic of a website. This website is useful. I already bookmarked it.
I almost can’t believe the irony of this – a spam comment from someone who’s being paid by a ‘reputable’ seo company to post comments. And they’ve commented on a post about the dangers of using cheap backlinks packages, priceless!!
Hi Mick,
Often I’ve found a lot of the links created by this type of “service” are using xrumer or similar, and involve spamming thousands if not millions of blogs.
Unfortunately what most people don’t realise is that while they will get a few actual backlinks, many will be on low quality sites. Overall though, the URL’s being linked too will likely just get caught by Akismet as a spammer. Given the huge percentage of WordPress blogs that use Akismet, next time the person who has posted the links goes and posts a genuine blog comment, it will likely be blocked – and they won’t even know what happened or why.
Anyway thanks for the post, I enjoyed reading it.
Matt
Brand Police´s last blog ..SEO for WordPress – Getting the Basics Right
Completely right Matt, the problem is that most people/small businesses just don’t understand the seo process and see these deals as a bargain. We’ve worked with customers whose site has been absolutely destroyed on Google by ‘SEO’ companies using bad practices and it’s taken months to undo the badness, before even getting onto some proper seo.