The link building struggle is real. You’ve poured time and effort into outreach campaigns, but responses are scarce.
The allure of buying “high-quality” backlinks for a quick SEO boost is undeniable. But before you hit “purchase” on any link building company website, beware: These backlinks might not be the magic bullet they seem.
In this article, we dive deep into the potential pitfalls of buying backlinks, even if they’re advertised as “high-quality.”
We disclose the risks and hidden costs associated with this link building strategy, and more importantly, provide actionable alternatives to help you build a sustainable and Google-approved link profile.
Is buying backlinks worth the risk? Let’s break it down and equip you with the knowledge to make informed decisions for your website’s SEO success.
What is Link Buying?
Buying links refers to the practice of paying a website owner, publisher, or link service to place a hyperlink on their website that points back to your website. The goal of buying backlinks is to improve your website’s search engine ranking (SEO).
If you want to buy high-quality backlinks, it would typically involve:
- Relevant link insertions into existing blogs that charge money for each backlink.
- Paid or sponsored post submissions that contain backlinks to your website.
However, if you buy links from platforms like Fiverr, the professionals you hire may use various link building tactics and you won’t have quality control over their process.
In any case, it’s a questionable SEO strategy that aims to manipulate search rankings by buying backlinks instead of earning them. It can often involve tactics that scream “inauthentic” or “spammy” to Google algorithms.
Why Do SEO Professionals Buy Links (And Why You Shouldn’t)?
The simplest reason why SEO professionals buy links is convenience. Why should I do all the work when I can pay someone to do it?
Buying backlinks allows them to:
- Save time and effort: Buying links is quick and effortless due to its transactional nature. SEO professionals who do not want to work hard for months or years to get results often resort to such shortcuts.
- Drive quick SEO gains: SEO professionals buy backlinks with a targeted approach to get a quick boost in backlinks pointing to certain pages. The goal is to improve the page’s PageRank and search rankings. However,
While you think that you’ll get away with buying backlinks if you do it sparingly, that’s not the case. These gains are often temporary.
Google classifies all kinds of links bought for manipulating search algorithms as spammy links. This also includes links paid for in exchange for something other than money.
The search engine can (and will) penalize websites with unnatural link profiles, which is why link buying isn’t a sustainable practice in the long run.
Here are Google’s guidelines for your reference:
How Much Do High-Quality Backlinks Cost?
The price of buying backlinks varies significantly from company to company. You can expect to pay anywhere between $50 and $2,500 to buy high-quality backlinks.
According to Ahrefs, the average price for a link insertion in a blog post is $361.
Various factors affect the cost of buying each link, including:
- Domain authority (DA) and domain rating (DR) of the target website: Getting a backlink from high DA and DR websites will cost a lot more than those from low authority websites.
- Type of website: If you want links from specific niche websites, the agency will need to put in more outreach efforts and the link will cost you more. If you’re satisfied with getting a backlink from any relevant website within the agency’s network, it will cost you less.
- Industry or niche: Links from authoritative websites in competitive industries like finance and real estate will cost more than those from websites in relatively less competitive niches like education and charities.
- Quality of backlinks: Backlinks from blog comments or online forums will cost less while those from guest posting on authoritative websites will cost more. The link building tactic used, anchor text, and link placement all affect the cost of buying links.
- Agency pricing: Different agencies or link building service providers use different pricing models. So the price per link will vary depending on the agency you choose.
5 Risks of and Warnings Against Buying Backlinks
Though some may successfully manipulate their SERP rankings by buying links, the risks outweigh the benefits, making this a high-risk strategy.
Given that link buying is against Google Search Central (formerly Google Webmasters) policy, you should avoid it. But if you’re still not convinced, let’s discuss some more reasons why you shouldn’t buy backlinks.
1. It may cause your website to incur Google penalties
Search engines like Google are constantly getting smarter at detecting unnatural link profiles.
If you’re caught buying backlinks either by Google algorithms or a manual reviewer, it could lead to penalties, pushing your website down in search rankings instead of up.
In the best-case scenario, Google will simply ignore link spam and won’t count the link juices from those backlinks while deciding your search rankings. In the worst case, your website may get deindexed or devalued for a long time.
Recovering from these penalties is extremely difficult and even if you do, it takes a long time to build back your website’s authority and reputation.
2. You may end up wasting money on low-impact backlinks
Backlinks are valuable because they pass on “link juice,” which signals authority and relevance to search engines.
However, buying backlinks often involves irrelevant websites with low domain authority. This weak link juice does little to improve your SEO and might even dilute your existing link profile.
For example, if you want to build links for your email marketing platform page, you should not buy backlinks from random news and magazine websites like this:
Even though this website has high DR and monthly traffic, it doesn’t attract visitors who would want to use an email marketing platform.
None of the pages on this news website ranks or drives good traffic on “email marketing” or related keywords.
If you build a backlink from this article, it will be equivalent to wasting your money on buying low-impact links that drive no targeted traffic or conversions.
3. You could become a victim of a link scam
Have you ever hired freelancers from Fiverr and UpWork who promise you hundreds of backlinks for less than $100? Buying backlinks from such link builders often involves questionable practices like link farms or private blog networks (PBNs) specifically created for backlink manipulation.
Associating your website with such link building practices can be disastrous for your SEO health. For example, check out the Fiverr Gig below that claims to provide 200 high-quality links for just $20 in just three days.
Seems too good to be true right? It surely is.
Unrealistic claims like these are clear signs of link scams and if you get caught in one, you’ll end up with spammy and toxic links that destroy your link profile.
4. It may hurt your website’s authority and reputation
When your website’s reputation is harmed, it becomes challenging to get it back. Even your good link building efforts don’t reap results for a long time due to reduced credibility. You struggle to improve your rankings and organic traffic for months.
Buying links will inevitably hurt your website’s authority, irrespective of whether you’re caught or not.
If you get caught, it will lead to penalties, loss of trust and credibility, and reduced SERP visibility and rankings.
Even if you don’t get caught, buying backlinks is likely to get you low-quality backlinks that weaken your link profile, thereby, negatively impacting your search rankings.
5. It can be an expensive and risky strategy
If you ignore the low-cost, low-quality link schemes, link buying is not cheap. Legit link-building companies charge hundreds of dollars for a single authoritative backlink, which is often not worth it.
Even if you find a reasonably priced, legit link building agency, there’s still no guarantee that every single link you buy is of high quality. Most companies rely on tactics like blog commenting or link building through online forums, which doesn’t make much difference to your website’s SEO.
So, it’s either too expensive or too unpredictable, with no guarantees of quality. Given the risks and high costs involved, it is rarely worth it.
Final Verdict: What Should You Do Instead of Buying Backlinks?
Buying links does more harm than good to your link profile, SEO, and website credibility.
You should instead build high-quality contextual backlinks naturally, through quality content and organic manual outreach. It offers sustainable results in the long run.
Look for websites with a relevant audience base and get your links placed in relevant articles on their website.
You can also choose to outsource link building to verified agency experts with proven track records. For instance, we are trusted by 150+ brands for our premium link building services.
Speak to our experts today to get started!
P.S. We only deliver conversion-focused high-quality backlinks that drive targeted traffic to your website and strengthen your link profile.
