Paid Manual 15 EDU Back-Links - GOOD or BAD idea?

[TomRayner]

I have one question and one question only:

Why?

Why do you want these links to your site? What possible value will they give you other than the sole purpose of "getting a link" (and probably not a very good one at that).

Ignoring what SEO benefit you'd be expecting from this, which cannot be a lot, how this helps your business, branding, client relationship and reaching your target demographic is beyond me.

[thealika]

Thank you for your reply, and I completely understand...

We are coming from 2 different schools of thought here, ignoring BlackHat vs WhiteHat SEO. 
A trusted .EDU backlink naturally gives you more Authority as a site - which would then result in higher SERP for a keyword. - (Please correct me if I got something wrong here.)

So in order to have those clients with whom I build trust and relationship - I would firs need to find them. and if I can get a higher SERP for a keyword by using this or any other technique - is that not the point of SEO?

I would love to go talk to companies in real life, have tea and biscuits spend months climbing up the ladder, and get into a good relationship with the CEO so that he would tell his web developer to give me a nice fat Backlink on his relative and High PR site.

But lets face it, any little helps, and I am asking about the little.

Thank you Tom

[TomRayner]

I'm not getting into any black hat vs white hat debate here - I'm simply asking why you want to spend time and money for something that no one but an algorithm is going to see (and largely ignore - any significant benefit that .edu domains once had, in terms of trust etc., has been gone for a long time, largely because of these tactics).

[LynnPatchett]

Hi Nikita,

I am going with Tom on this one. Google has made a obvious effort to cut down on web spam in all forms over the last year or two. This effort has included the devaluing of various types of links and various ranking penalties for sites it thinks are 'breaking the rules'.

Now you say these links seem legit, but the process of obtaining them is anything but. A fiver to get 15 links on edu sites that are in every way only there for the link? This is spam.

Regardless of if these links are going to have any benefit (agree with Tom here, I seriously doubt it but in some verticals you never know) the bigger picture is you are leaving the door open to future penalties and/or drops in rankings due to a dodgy link profile. I would never want to have to get into that conversation with a client!

[Harbor_Compliance]

I agree with what's been said.  I think you want to be very wary and careful of link opportunities.  There's a lot of danger in these tactics and for $5 I couldn't imagine that the ways of obtaining the links would be anything but spammy.

Contrary to what a lot of people say, I don't think it's all that difficult to get quality links these days.  If you're marketing your business in all the other legitimate ways, natural and high-quality links will follow (no pun intended).

[thealika]

Ok, That is great, perhaps you could elaborate a bit on "all the other legitimate ways" ?

thanks

[KeriMorgret]

It's a profile backlink that you're getting, with no bio and just a backlink on the page (judging from comments such as 'Would have been nice to include a little "fake" bio info to make it look more real than just the anchor text link on the page'). That's considerably different from a trusted page on an .edu or any domain. I'd honestly take a valid contextual link from a different TLD over a spammy profile .edu link.

[thealika]

Hey Lynn,

I have had this question burning in my mind for a while:
You mentioned google penalties... How real is it to get bad ratings from google?

I mean how real is the danger of buying these links?

And Part 2. ---
Debating how bad something is prevents you from making mistakes, but how do I progress, - where should I go with a limited budget for SEO but time on my hands? You have any tips, or links to read up on? I would greatly appreciate it.

[Harbor_Compliance]

Holding events, writing blogs, publishing articles, etc. - basically putting useful information out there.  I've gotten most of my business from referral traffic, meaning traffic from people clicking the links I get on other websites.  So the links are the end to themselves, not just a means to getting promoted in the rankings.

[LynnPatchett]

Hi Nikita,

The danger is real enough, you will find many references to penalties and dropped rankings in this forum!

As for limited budget but lots of time, there are a lot of creative things you can do with that combination. It is always good to go through the basics and then dig into the ideas on the seomoz blogs and forums (like here for example). You will find many ways to apply what you read and learn to your own specific site/niches and start moving up the serps!