While both Justilien and the SEM INC blog already covered the eMarketer research about the Word of Mouth Marketing effects worldwide excellently, there’s still one point I’d like to mention about this subject.
What if the top SERPs for “Your Company” look a bit like this:

If you spot a positive consumer opinion, a review that praises one of your products or a great critic on a trusted website, don’t hesitate to link to it! This is not only a way to serve positive feedback about Your Company to your existing website visitors and to encourage consumers to give you (positive) feedback, but also may change the future SERPs for a “Your Company” search query into something more like this:

This is like using Google, Yahoo! and MSN as giant mouths in your Word of Mouth Marketing Strategy.

Like SugarRae pointed out a few weeks ago, it’s quite difficult for Google to find out which link is paid and which one isn’t. If you look at SugarRae’s post from the other perspective (like Google is doing with their current approach), it seems like you have to clarify which links aren’t paid in order to not receive a penalty. Some links that are editorial picks may look like paid links in some cases, right? Although I couldn’t care less about a PR penalty, I still think this is something Google should realize.

Since Google decided to reverse things by punishing webmasters for selling links and because it apparently is pretty easy to determine which links are paid, I’m writing this post as a paid link disclaimer.

So, Google, I’ll explain why these links may look a bit sponsored but really aren’t paid links, in order to avoid a penalty.

1) The Unrelated sidebar links
Check out the “Things I like” section in my blogroll. This includes links to Joox.net and 3dLiveStats. Not because I got paid, but because I a) like these sites and b) the owner is a friend. Although these websites are not 100% related contextually, they are 100% related personally.

2) The Related sidebar links
Yeah, I know, some companies are really good in buying links under the radar. This stealthy link approach usually contains buying links from really related websites. Sometimes even in homepage blogrolls of topically relevant blogs. But not in mine, Google, not in mine…

3) The Sponsored Links
When I started this blog a few months ago, I had a “sponsored links” section. Not to attract some quick bucks, but for testing purposes only. Don’t believe me? Check out the archive and verify the target URL of the link. That link was there to achieve this.

4) The Reviews
Unlike you may think, not all reviews are sponsored ones. Sometimes people feel like reviewing stuff just for fun or to share some findings with their readers. None of the reviews on this website are (or will be) paid ones.

5) The Footer Links
Ok, I admit, this one is tricky. I guess the links in my footer are paid ones, but I didn’t receive a penny for those links. Like I explained in my footer as well, those links are still present because I can’t design and used a free web template with a sponsored footer.

6) The new link in the old post
While adding a new link to an old post might trigger your Paid Link Alarm Bells, not every <a href>-addition to an obsolete page is a paid link. In some cases it’s just an editorial change, in some cases it’s just an update.

This post was written as an illustration to show how difficult it is to detect a paid link, whether it’s algorithmically or manually. Not everything is always what it seems, so I wonder what factors affect Google’s decision to penalize a website or not.

There, I said it. That’s what I believe is true; there is no such thing as a ‘you have been buying links so you should suffer’ penalty. At least, not if you do it correctly. I’ll make some statements about buying links that probably not everybody will agree on, but this is what I consider to be the truth.

If you don’t publish your link buying tactics yourself and if your website’s link profile doesn’t contain >90% paid links, then:

• Buying links cannot get you penalized;
• Buying links from obvious link networks only results in backlinks with little to no search engine value;
• Buying links ninja style will continue to get you killer rankings;
• Selling links can only disable your ability to pass link juice or PR (but you might want to read this);
• Google will never be able to detect all paid links

Just about every time the topic finally seems to be left alone, someone out there heats up the good old paid link debate again. This time, Rand Fishkin (unintentionally) causes the discussion to emerge once again. By showing the buying and selling link tactics of several websites on SEOmoz’ blog (this info has been removed now), he made it very easy for the Paid Link Police to add some more websites to the list of websites to check out while building the Paid Link Neglecting Algorithm. Several people got all wound up because of this, including (at first) me, because these sites would more than likely receive a penalty (just checked, none of them has been penalized yet).

However, it is almost impossible for Google to penalize you for buying links for your website. At least, not if you didn’t scream “Hey, I’m artificially inflating my link popularity!” on your OWN website. David Airey penalized? Jim Boykin analyzed his penalty earlier and the same thing happened here. In some cases, it may seem that certain websites have been penalized for buying links. What in fact happened, is that the link juice tap of some obvious paid links has been closed, what resulted in less link juice, followed by lower rankings.

In most other cases, you can buy all the links you want and not get penalized. You could buy the same links for your competition, right? And if Google states that Spammy Backlinks can’t Hurt You, paid backlinks probably can’t hurt you either. This basically is the same thing.

The worst thing that can happen is that you buy hundreds of text links that only provide traffic. And, if you managed to buy the right ones, there’s nothing wrong with that.

Covert advertising is a form of advertising in movies or tv-shows that doesn’t need disclosure during or near the product placement, but works under the premise that it’s a natural part of the work. Mentioning the advertiser in the credits is advisable, but not mandatory. This makes Covert Advertising -if done correctly- quite hard to spot for the movie critics, but this also makes it a very efficient way of advertising.

Buying links is like covert advertising. If you do it the right way, it adds value to both the movie and your brand. If you do it the wrong way, it not only makes the movie look bad (themovie can get bad reviews from the critics as well), but it might also harm your brand.

Have you ever been watching a movie and saw a bad actor drinking from a soda can with the brand pointing towards the camera in a very unnatural way? Did that make you think “OMG, that’s frikkin’ bad. Why didn’t they make a regular ad in stead of this unnatural crap”? Well, that was like a bad paid text link.

Have you ever seen a movie where the main character was drinking a soda with the brand pointing to the camera and thought “Hey, I’d like a drink just like that as well!”? That was like a good paid text link.

Make sure that you don’t make your covert ads too obvious. Although Google has been busy penalizing multiple directories (which used questionable tactics), their Paid Link Detector is still far from perfect. If they can’t even figure out how to spot websites that buy thousands of text links (or sell them), buying links as a link marketing strategy will still help you to achieve top rankings. But keep in mind that there are no companies out there that only rely on covert advertising, it can only be successful on the long term if you mix it up with other tactics.

After I read Joost de Valk‘s SEO minded reply to the post about To click here or not to click here from Copyblogger.com, I just had to try and see if I could come up with a good example about anchor text differentiation. While this focus isn’t on the same point as the original post anymore (optimizing ‘click here’-click through rates), it’s always fun to investigate stuff like this.

Please note that the link profile of a random page isn’t the same as the link profile of the home page of a website. If you analyze all anchor texts used in links pointing to a home page, you’ll see a substantially higher percentage of URL only links (www.mydomain.com), company name only links (My Domain) and image/ logo links. Also, within the SEO/ tech/ blogging/ etcetera industry, the use of targeted anchor text is much higher than within, for example, the knitting niche.

Ok, that was the ‘disclaimer and this is why this blog post isn’t entirely correct but it’s mainly for entertainment purposes anyway’-part. Off to the fun stuff; investigating other peoples’ link profiles with Jim Boykins recently updated neat-o link analysis tool. This bookmark-to-the-max ninja tool absolutely rocks!

Natural link profile
Let’s analyze the We Build Pages link profile. Why? Because it’s a natural link profile (well, at least the majority of the links) and because developing kick ass tools like this just deserves a few more backlinks. The Neat-o tool found 878 links to analyze, that are pointing to the WeBuildPages.com domain. With the anchor text “[not found]” removed, 723 links remain. These 723 links used a stunning total of 337 different, unique anchor texts. The top 1% (or the Top 7) anchor texts used:

1. internet marketing (49)
2. we build pages (44)
3. webuildpages (27)
4. cool seo tool (26)
5. jim boykin (23)
6. http://www.webuildpages.com/neat-o/ (22)
7. http://www.webuildpages.com/cool-seo-tool/ (22)

If you substract the total of links (723) with one of the top 1% used anchor texts (213), only 510 links remain. This means that the top 1% anchor texts has a uniqueness (or differentiation) of 3% (7 anchor texts/213 links) and the other 99% of the anchor texts has a uniqueness of 65% (330 anchor texts/510 links).

Artificial link profile
Now let’s try to dive into an artificial link profile. Loren Baker spotted a great example recently. The Neat-O tool finds 996 links pointing to iDealPaydayLoans.com, with 44 different anchor texts. With all links with a [not found] anchor text removed, 803 remain. The top 1% anchor text (the top 8 ) of these links is as follows:

1. payday loans (297)
2. payday loan (187)
3. pay day loans (74)
4. online payday loans (40)
5. no fax payday loans (29)
6. fast payday loans (20)
7. loan payday (19)
8. payday loans online (18)

If you substract the links with one of the top 1% used anchor texts (685) from the total of 803, only 118 links remain. This means that the top 1% anchor texts has a uniqueness (or differentiation) of only 1,2% (8/685) and the other 99% of the anchor texts has a uniqueness of barely 30% (35/118).

This means what?
Unlike in the WeBuildPages link profile, there is no company name- or URL only-anchor text in the top 1% anchor texts used in links pointing to iDealPaydayLoans.com. Considering this, together with the total anchor text differentiation (only 5,5%, compared to WBP’s 46,6%) and the calculations above, it shouldn’t be very hard for Google to spot unnatural link profiles.

In the process of finding links and determining which links are actually valuable, Google can play a bigger role than you’d expect. Google can tell you exactly which website is of high quality, is relevant to your website, attracts lots of visitors or can provide lots of conversions. Google can even provide information about the possible monthly value of a link in $.
How? Read on.

1. Use relevant, commercial search queries.
No new information here. If this is new to you, please go read this or this. If your website is about hotels in Barcelona, use Google to search for hotels in Barcelona. Google will provide a list of websites which Google thinks are high quality, relevant Barcelona hotel websites. The perfect material for your link.
All you have to do is Google for hotels in Barcelona and contact the websites that are in the top 50, top 100 or whatever other amount of websites you prefer.

2. Search for related, non commercial websites.
If you have tried the previous tactic before, you’ll know it sucks. If you’re lucky, there might be two websites in the top 100 that are willing to add a link to your website. This strategy can be more successful.
When you’re promoting your website about hotels in Barcelona, search for ‘information about Barcelona’, ‘Barcelona city info’, ‘Catalonia area’, ‘FC Barcelona’ or ‘Spain weather info’. Google will show (mostly non commercial) websites related to this subject and somewhat relevant to your website. Most of these sites might be willing to add a link to your website, especially when you’re able to offer them a ‘reviewing’ fee.

3. Use Google AdWords.
The second tactic sometimes provides a lot of useful websites that -paid or not paid- are willing to link to your website. But here’s the top tactic. Google’s own ad program can deliver very valuable info about which link
a) is relevant to your website
b) can provide a lot of visitors
c) may provide a lot of converting visitors

Are you using Google AdWords? Don’t forget to let your ads appear on the Content Network. While not every Google AdWords user is a big fan of the Content Network (mainly because of the higher amount of non-converting visitors), this option may provide valuable data about which websites to contact for a link.

Since earlier this year, it’s possible to see on which websites in Google’s Content Network your website is appearing. To run a report like this, select the bottom report type in the AdWords Report panel and hit ‘create report’.

This report shows you websites that are relevant to your subject, because Google matched to content of these sites to the content of your. It might be possible that the website isn’t 100% relevant, but there must be at least one page on the site that is relevant enough to show your ads.

The report also gives an indication of the possible amount of visitors, because it mentions the amount of impressions. Besides the impressions, Google also lists the amount of clicks (interested visitors), the amount conversions (possible customers) and the total costs and cost per conversion (value of the link). You can also download the report in csv (excel), which makes the data even more accessible.

This means that Google doesn’t only show which websites or web pages are relevant to the subject of your website, but it also is an indicator for the amount of visitors and conversions that a link on that website or website can provide. Google’s Content Network report option can even calculate the possible value of a link for you.