Paid Blog Posts getting Deindexed?

[globaleyeglasses]

Hello, We've used a popular paid blog posts platform to get back links through blog posts.

Recently, performed a link audit noticed a very interesting problem. 40% of the 49 sites we purchased paid posts from, have been de-indexed.

These blogs are the kinds that would take money from almost anybody in any given niche to write a review and give a paid link to you. So, I assume most of these blogs had a high number of outbound links.

Their page rank has also been demoted to 0 (obviously since they're deindexed).

Now, our dilemma is that should still go ahead with paid blog posts, after checking for the following:

1. PR

2. Google Penalty

The sites at the time of purchasing the posts were not penalized. But 40% of the sites being completely de-indexed is a staggering number.

Can someone please suggest whether to go with paid blog posts techniques or not?

[JohnW-UK]

Do you want a link to a few of them and the company you employed?

[Sean_Dawes]

Assuming you are in the eye glass business, why not find bloggers and give some product away to those bloggers for product review posts? I would stay away from any paid blog networks.

[globaleyeglasses]

Since this is a public forum, so would prefer not to. But, I'd say, these are sites like these:

http://www.turnip-gray.co.cc/

[globaleyeglasses]

Yes, we do hosts quite a few giveaways a month

[Sean_Dawes]

How about asking for customers to write testimonials on their blogs? You can use email to create a b spot in the email to have a contest encouraging customers to submit their testimonials on their blog to be entered to win x.

[JohnW-UK]

They are low quality blogs/sites. And do not seem relevant to your industry!! Not surprised the links vanished.

[Jinx14678]

Hi,

Just from the Looks of the site you gave as an "example" it looks like a BMR type site...

These are going to be going down hard, as they in most cases serve no purpose other than as a link farm, shrouded in thin badly written content.

These types of schemes used to work very well, but with recent updates I would HIGHLY suggest staying away from this strategy you give of searching on PR and Penalty and expand your search to include other factors such as...

User Experience

Alexa Rank

Is the content currently on the site in question even good?

Does it allow social sharing easily and are there social shares?

Is its backlink portfolio just a bunch of links from Blog comments and other shady looking sites

There is quite a bit more to consider, but just as a suggestion, I would say look further into the quality, other than just how you think a search engine might perceive the site in question

Shane

PS just as a "Real World" scenario, One of My Niche's has LOTS of guys who do this, and they all (March 23rd) lost all rankings for Anchor Texts that employed this strategy, due to it WAS their only strategy...

[KeriMorgret]

If you'd like to be able to give details, you can ask a private Q&A question. Those questions are not indexed, are viewable only by SEOmoz staff and associates, and all of us are under NDAs.

[jeffreytrull1]

In case you haven't seen, most private blog networks like Build My Rank are conceding defeat themselves: http://www.buildmyrank.com/news/its-been-a-great-run

There are several others that have since bit the dust, and I'm sure Google will keep deindexing anything along those lines.

If you're talking about posting to any kind of a network that's used on a mass scale, I wouldn't waste your money.