Several of my clients prior to me starting to work with them engaged in both buying and selling links via LinkExperts.com in order to solve this need, or monetize others need to solve this need.  A well ranking site with hundred thousand pages can easily make an extra $250k a year selling links.  In some cases they can make more than they would have selling actual ads.

Why was this only Prior to working with me?  Because Link buying and selling is In the words of Matt Cutts "Very high-risk behavior.”

Despite what Conductor.com has said in its FAQ:

Every Conductor ad is search-friendly, meaning that it works behind the scenes to positively impact your rankings in search engines like Google and Yahoo. The link acts as a signal to search engines, helping strengthen your position as a provider of products or services relevant to the content of the page the link appears on. For example, a site with content about coffee makers, which then links to a manufacturer of coffee makers, helps reinforce and confirm that the manufacturer’s site is indeed about coffee makers. This association is taken into account when search engine users look for providers of coffee makers – the manufacturer’s site is now more likely to appear.

But Matt Cutts of Google has said publicly:

As the head of Google’s webspam team, I would just like to point out that paid links that pass PageRank are absolutely a violation of Google’s quality guidelines, and we do take action on those violations. You can read more about our official policy on paid links here:

These two statements are clearly in opposition to each other. If Google will penalize you for buying or selling, then the ads can’t be “Search-Friendly”. 

BlackWaterOps never engages in link buying and selling.  If we work with a client to build links it is through PR, and through engaging netizens.

There are some “Greyer” areas of link building that may not be good journalism, but won’t get you banned from Google either.  Sending product to bloggers to write about gets you good high quality inbound links that will last a life time.  Which can be a lot cheaper than paying for inbound links on a monthly basis.  While one could argue that in both cases you “paid” for the link so they should be equally bad, in the second case the author stakes his reputation on the endorsement, and provided education to the users.

This is also more acceptable because the link is relevant, so the Page Rank “Flow” as Google is calling it these days, is in fact related to the link, as opposed to a link for Herbal Viagra on a high ranking page about the latest Microsoft Search Engine.

Are there instances where Conductor.com’s LinkExperts make sense to use? Yes.  If you have already managed to get delisted for Google.  Paid links may help you with Microsoft Rankings. 

Paid Links Generally take time to detect so if you have a “Fly by Night” domain, you have little to lose, and a lot to gain.  This is a BlackHat/Calculated Risk Game to play if you want to capitalize on a trend that is only likely going to last a few months.  Like being the top hit for the “Toy of the Year” at Christmas time on a site that only sells that toy. 

I wouldn’t personally do this, but there are those of you who will, and I didn’t want to leave you with the impression buying an link never has its usefulness, because then some other SEO would write the “When to use Paid links” and I’d look like a stooge.

Also be aware one method BlackWaterOps uses to help our customers is to detect and report paid links by competitors to Google, and others.