Obtaining followed links - white or black?

[GardenBeet]

I have just watched the overtake of the number one UK position for garden accessories.

The old 1st place holder held it for the last 2.5 years (min) ....taking a look at the back links of the number one holder it seems they are paid links ...as they are little follow image adverts with anchor text posted on the home page of niche blogs, forums and design related website..

....so is this white hat or black hat?

[PeterM22]

buying links is generally blackhat. You can sell advertising, but to keep it whitehat, it's best to use nofollow.

Pete

[asimahme]

Buying links or using any marketing tactics that are against Google's guidelines would be considered Grey to Black Hat methods.

Buying a link period from another website to be listed on their home page for an anchor term you would like to optimize for would be black hat.  However there are linkbuilder's out there paying for Guest Posts which can be considered Grey Hat.

Obviously everyone has their own opinion on what Black, Grey, White hat methods really are.

[Dan-Petrovic]

OK, let's keep the various colored hats out of this for a sec. What they did is simply against Google's Quality Guidelines - and that's it. The level of severity is not as high as if they hacked somebody's website - nevertheless still in breach and it could bite them back if Google should ever audit their link profile.

[GardenBeet]

right - so is there anything that can be done?

[Dan-Petrovic]

Are they your (or your clients) direct competitor?

[GardenBeet]

Yes - my competitor - I held number 2 for 2.5 years as well but due to some site rearrangement have fallen for this term - but am really annoyed if they are paying for these links - they are chasing very similar terms to me and at the peak of the gardening season seem to have raised to the top -

[Dan-Petrovic]

You do have an option of reporting them to Google (with detailed explanation of what they did). I have to admit in all my years of SEO I have never actually done it. Firstly not all spam submissions get looked at and actioned and many are used to simply improve the algorithm on a global scale, secondly there are much better things to do.

I would suggest that you continue marketing, branding, networking and building compelling content for your site and products. Create as much buzz about your business as possible and get people talking about it.

On a technical side of things there are probably links that you SHOULD have and didn't think of it.

Here's a few tips:

• If your web design company linking to you via their portfolio page?
• Have you given testimonials to service providers you used?
• Are you involved in the local chamber of commerce?
• Where you rent your office space, do they have a website with a tenant directory?
• Do you allow user generate content on your site?
• What happens when people buy on your website? Thank you page can be a great time to get people tweeting and sharing what they just bought. Use the momentum of after purchase to get links for free

[GardenBeet]

hey thanks - i'll take your advice - life is too short !!! plus I could be wrong - this SEO world is fun and games indeed

[SEODinosaur]

Buying links to benefit for SEO is frowned on from google. However, if your buying to gain real traffic to your site such as links within a directory it is not a bad thing.

For example, I can pay yellow pages (Just an example... I would never do this) for their best tier package and it will not affect my results, in fact it can help them.

[SEODinosaur]

lets say I have 2 sites (two companies I am doing SEO for) one is for a Taxi service and one is for a limo service. Would me offering my taxi traffic a link to a limo service be black hat? **no way!  ** Would google look at that link as a bad link? I highly doubt it!

Kink building is great and works as long as the sources are relevant.

Googles goals are to make money. in order to make money they need the best search engine. In order to have the best search engine they need the best SERP's. The only way have the best SERP's is via user interaction. If the user likes the link so will Google.