Links act as a vote of confidence for your website to help it rank and appear on the SERPs. To build a decent link profile, many people resort to buying links through different means. But all links are not created equal and sometimes, buying links can do more harm than good.

So, how do you buy permanent backlinks with long-lasting results, and should you even be doing it? The answer depends on your definition and process of ‘buying links.’

Properly assessing the links against your minimum criteria, choosing outreach over renting links, and steering clear of shady link building offers are just some of the many ways to attain lasting backlinking results.

Naturally, there’s a lot more that goes into successful link building than what we’ve just mentioned. Read on to learn more about the risks and rewards associated with buying links and how to engage in thoughtful link building that aligns with Google’s Terms of Service.

The truth is: link building is not easy and there’s no ‘get links quick’ scheme you can follow. Links that are worth investing in are mostly ones that originate from a lot of hard work in the form of natural link building or outreach.

When we talk about buying links, we’re referring to the editorial fees or placement costs charged by most websites these days. You can also add the cost of link building agencies, your staff, and software tools to these expenses.

Even with this in mind, it’s easy to fall prey to nefarious link building schemes online.

Here are some ways to ensure that you buy links that are effective, low-risk, and provide long-term results:

It’s common knowledge that quality trumps quantity when it comes to link building. Consequently, the first order of business is to assess the quality and reliability of links against your minimum criteria.

To simplify this vetting process, we have divided links into two types: Links worth buying and links to steer clear of.

Since links are supposed to be a vote in your website’s favor, they should come from a trustworthy and reliable source. As a general rule, high-quality links that provide the best results are dofollow, belong to a high authority website, and are relevant to your niche.

However, this can be quite subjective and may depend on your starting metrics. Apart from targeting genuine sites with good traffic, you should go for ones with a higher Domain Rating (DR) than yours. But if you’re starting at DR 0 then you can opt for any DR and prioritize relevancy while choosing your links.

Just like high-quality backlinks can benefit your rankings, bad backlinks have the exact opposite effect. You generally want to steer clear of spammy links from low-authority websites that can harm your rankings.

You will encounter a bunch of schemes from retail websites that offer links at fixed prices. These are often Private Blog networks (PBNs) which carry a lot of risks and lose their value over time.

While it may seem like an easier way to build links, it’s not a sustainable long-term strategy. In fact, it can increase your risk profile as it doesn’t align with Google’s Terms of Service.

While every business has different link building requirements, you can still create a general checklist of rules to assess the quality of a backlink.

Check your links for:

Relevancy: Google gives a lot of importance to relevancy. Try to stay within your niche to get the best results out of link building.

Quality of Content: The quality of the content can speak volumes about how trustworthy and reliable a website really is.

Domain Authority and Domain Rating: Go for websites that have a DA and DR that’s greater than your own or more than 20 or 30 at least.

Anchor Text Relevance: The anchor text profile should be balanced with relevant anchor texts.

Author Profile: Check if the authors actually exist or if the site uses fake profiles.

The world of link building can be quite difficult to navigate, especially if you don’t have much experience in the field. It can be difficult to tell what you’re really signing up for when you approach link building opportunities that involve any kind of costs.

That’s why one of the best ways to build ethical links that you won’t get penalized for is by hiring a reliable link building agency. At Outreachmama we engage in thoughtful link buying through outreach to get permanent, long-lasting results for your business.

Do the rewards of link buying outnumber its risks? Let’s find out.

Link builders have been playing a cat and mouse game with Google for years. By now, the search engine is pretty well versed at weeding out unnatural link building tactics. That’s why paying for links can sometimes be a slippery slope.

Before you engage in link buying, it’s important to know the following risks:

Penalties: Google is strictly against paid links and tends to penalize websites or links that don’t match their strict criteria.

Damage to Link Profile: Sometimes paid links from untrustworthy, low authority and spammy sites can do real harm to your link profile. This impacts your whole backlinking strategy and your rankings.

Wasted Investment: Link building is not cheap! In case you get penalized by Google for your paid links, all your investment might go down the drain.

Increased Risk in the Future: Even if you manage to pass under Google’s radar now, there’s no telling how long you can get away with it. When Google’s Penguin update wrecked the industry, many site owners got penalized for practices they engaged in many years ago. It’s not impossible to imagine that Google might strike down on such links again in the coming years. Going against the guidelines today can increase your risk profile for tomorrow.

If buying links is entirely bad then why are so many people doing it one way or the other? The answer lies in how rewarding it can be if done right.

Doing it right means going for high-quality, relevant, and trustworthy sources of links with good content while ditching the spammy ones.

In today’s day and age, there are a lot of reasons to engage in thoughtful link buying, some of these rewards include:

Simplifies Outreach: Paying the editorial fee for link placements and posts is just the way the industry works these days. With so many competitors willing to pay for links, it’s almost impossible to get free link building opportunities. In this way, paying that cost for guest posts, niche edits and more can help simplify your outreach efforts.

Provides Faster Results: Since outreach is simpler when you pay for those backend costs, you also get much faster results than you would with purely organic links.

You Can’t Compete Without It: The world of SEO is highly competitive with multiple businesses fighting to make their mark on the SERPs. If you’re not willing to invest in boosting your search engine rankings, multiple competitors will gladly take your place. The simple fact is: If you’re not investing in link building, you are risking being left behind.

It’s Not as Risky as it Used to Be: Since the past five years or so, the penalties and negative implications of paying for links have diminished significantly. Google no longer shuts down entire websites for engaging in paid link building. It’s partly due to Google’s increased focus on search intent. What matters most is that the ranking content matches the search intent.

Just like any other tactic, paid link building has its benefits and downfalls. By assessing the quality of your links, consulting a link building agency, and weighing the risks and rewards, you can build a long-term, permanent link building strategy.

If you follow the necessary steps and do it right, it can be almost impossible for Google to tell whether it’s a paid link or a natural one. And if you don’t do it at all, you might not have what it takes to compete in the industry.