Jon Leger just moved his 1WayLinks tool from beta to full production. As most people know, back links are incredibly important in Google (the Google search engine was initially called “back rub” for this reason). In fact, you may recall a post I recently made about a site that I accidentally got to Page Rank 2 without content using only really weak back links.
Jon's 1WayLinks product promises to give subscribers hundreds of back links per month (750 or more) for a monthly fee. As a subscriber, you can choose the anchor text and the URL. It's a very cool service, and like all of Jon's products, superbly run. I am a member, and if you are looking for back links, I recommend it. It works great in conjunction with his 3WayLinks product.
However, it this OK? Is it OK to buy back links like this?
Google Is Not The Law
OK — so first things first. There is nothing illegal about 1WayLinks. It is probably true, however, that if Google had a good way to identify the kind of links generated by programs like 1WayLinks, they would discount their weight and probably “slap” the site using them. Why?
Google is all about money. Period. End of statement. Google has a board of directors that answers to shareholders. Those shareholders invested in Google to make money. Google's managers report to the Board, and the Board directs those managers to make money for shareholders. Simple. Google needs to make money on their search engine.
Luckily for users, Google management believes that the best way to make money on the search engine is to provide the best possible user experience. The better the user experience, the more users come to the Google search engine and click on ads.
So, Google fights things like 1WayLinks because they know that people (people like me and you) are also trying to make money just like Google will try to use these tools to beat competition in their niche. In some cases, tools like 1WayLinks can be used to cause inferior content to rank above superior content, degrading the “user experience.” As an aside, what you should realize is that having great content that users value is a good defense against actions by search engines like Google.
In any case, Google is not the law. These are just two competing business practices
Is 1WayLinks Ethical To Use?
So, the big question (in my mind at least) is — is 1WayLinks ethical to use?
Let's start with an assumption that Article Marketing is a valid and ethical marketing strategy. After all, eZineArticles.com is a respected business, and content on that site is highly favored by Google. You will recall the when you submit an article to eZineArticles.com, you are afforded 2 backlinks in the footer that must be maintained by people that syndicate (copy) your content across the web.
To my knowledge, no few people complain about the ethics of article marketing
So, how is 1WayLinks like article marketing?
- User created content. Both article marketing and 1WayLinks accept user generated content.
- Back links. Both article marketing and 1WayLinks allow back links
- Syndication. Both article marketing and 1WayLinks articles get syndicated. In the case of 1WayLinks, the syndication is automatic.
- Human review. At both eZineArtices.com and 1WayLinks.net human review is required.
I am sure there are other ways to compare the two services, but for now I'll leave it at that. From a web surfer's experience, the two are substantially the same.
My conclusion is that 1WayLinks.net is not that much different than article marketing. Since article marketing is a commonly accepted business practice, I conclude that 1WayLinks is OK and should be accepted by people (and Google) in the same way as article marketing.
Have you checked out the 1WayLinks tool? Read the sales page and tell me what you think.
Thanks,
Mark
Hi Mark,
This sounds pretty cool, but I think I would be careful.
Case in point: I purchased an expired domain, a dot com that is a marketer’s dream. Three tiny little word keyword phrase that is mentioned all the time in online marketing. It came with G-juice of a GPR-3.
So I set up several posts, pimping affiliate products. and then I bought in to a deal from a guy in India to put 100 links on many “appropriate” websites, all for only $14. They did in fact do the links, but the sites linking in were crappy.
In about two weeks the site was ranked at 0/10 and even though the serps are still in first spot for the excellent keyword url, there are absolutely none of the post titles or body content indexed.
I’m in no panic with it, but feel stupid for trying what seemed like a good deal. It’s not nice to fool Mother G.
It is only one site out of over a hundred niche sites, but it is sandboxed for sure and just in a wait and see situation.
I would like your thoughts on this and appreciate your input greatly.
Hey Rich;
You are right — it pays to be careful. Anything can happen, but Jon is a network security nut, and has been very careful to design a system that is unobtrusive and difficult to detect (low footprint).
That said, all you have to do is look at the Squidoo Slap to see a perfectly reasonable link juice scheme get blown up by Google. So, you take your chances almost no matter what you do. Google can and does slap people for no apparent reason (as well as for legitimate ones).
As always, the best defense is great content. I also think that having a variety of incoming links helps.
It sounds like your PR3 site was slapped to PR0 outside of a normal scheduled update. That is a little unusual, and it more than just “sandboxing.” Note that the sandbox is a mythical place that does not really exist. It really means “G rankings gone for unknown reason.”
For a normal “new domain” sandbox situation, I would say not to worry. When this happens to my sites they always come back. In such a case I would recommend more link building and more content (continued growth). That seems to do the trick for me.
I have little experience with purchased domains, so I am not sure what advice to offer there. It is said that it is important that your incoming links are not from “bad neighborhoods” — whatever that means. But, if your content is still indexed (I could not tell for sure from your comment) that is a good thing. If you get delisted, that means that they found you and are punishing you directly. Decreased ranking, OTOH, could just be algorithmic.
Did you take down the old content? If I were Google (and I am not), I would have logic that said if all the content has changed then reset the PR to zero. Why? Because the PR is based on the value of the pages. If they are gone, so should be the PR.
In any case, nothing for you to do now but sit and wait (and maybe do a little ongoing work on the site).
Sorry that happened to you.
Regards,
Mark
Great article Mark.
This is one of the most emotionally neutral and objective looks at paid links I have seen. I gave up on the idea of “white hat” and “black hat” a long time ago. What you are really dealing with is managing risk. In most cases the risk to the receiving site is minimal.
Great article Mark. If you don’t mind – I have an off-topic question. Do you need to purchase $7 secrets to get the script or does it come with your new e-book or through Jonathan’s e-mail e-book? In other words -I want to write my own $7 e-book, but I obviously need the script. Thanks!
@Aaron — Thanks.
@Kent — you need the script (sorry). The good news is that it is only $7.
Here is my affiliate link if you are interested in buying it that way. http://www.masonworld.com/recommends/7ds (no pressure at all).
Thanks,
Mark
These days you can’t entirely depend on SEO(backlinks included), now and then Mr Google changes it’s algorythms, that’s why you might consider using PPC as “insurance”
@Ted — certainly nothing wrong with PPC is you can make it work….
@Ted If you have many websites that relies on SEO, I would suggest you get a few “user based” websites” as well. By that, I mean websites that people like, and you get traffic to in other ways than seo.
For example a forum or some other type of “user-based” website. Blogs also work. After all, I got here through my rss feed. ( This is one of the extremely few blogs I subscribe to via RSS. Nice job Mark ;o)
Great article btw! I good comparison between article marketing and paid links.
And if you outsource articlewriting to the Phillipines or another country where the cost of living is cheaper, you can get a lot of articles quite cheap. Then you will also get traffic from the articles, as well as you know where you will get the links from.
And to reduce your cost/make money, you can bundle the articles and sell them with PLR rights =P
– Preben
@Preben — Thank you very much. I will work hard to stay on your list of subscribed content. I also subscribe to very few feeds, so I totally get that.
You’re welcome =)
Btw, what did you think about my article outsourcing idea?
Get lots of articles quite cheap, submit and use them, then sell PLR rights ;o)
I plan on doing this very soon. You should check out replacemyself.com
– The first page might look cruel, but it’s great inside. Well worth the $4 trial!
– Preben
P.S. As long as you continiue to dish out quality content actually worth reading, and stick to your theme of “no-hype” marketing blog, I promise I will stick around =)
: thanks!
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