I’ve been up to my eyeballs in articles and blog posts about Purchasing Links and Google PageRank, and I’m getting a headache. It seems there is much debate over whether Purchasing Links is a Good Thing, or a Bad Thing - but - doesn’t the real issue lie in the ‘PURPOSE’ of a Paid Link - NOT whether it’s ‘Purchased’ or not?

To me, Purchasing Links is not necessarily bad, nor good. A Paid Link is just a tool to use on a website, no more, no less. I really don’t see that whether a link is purchased or not actually matters, whereas I do understand that WHAT you do with a purchased link, and HOW you do it is critically important.

And as I see it, there are 2 primary facts to consider when deciding to use Paid Links:

1. FACT: Purchasing Links for the ‘purpose’ of Boosting Google PageRank is Unacceptable to Google. ~ Period. No If’s, No And’s, No Buts. Get over it, Move On.
2. FACT: Purchasing Links for the ‘purpose’ of Boosting Traffic, Generating Interest, etc. is Acceptable to Google - as long as those links use the rel=”nofollow” attribute - as Matt Cutts advises, and I quote:

“What if a site wants to buy links purely for visitor click traffic, to build buzz, or to support another site? In that situation, I would use the rel=”nofollow” attribute. The nofollow tag allows a site to add a link that abstains from being an editorial vote. Using nofollow is a safe way to buy links, because it’s a machine-readable way to specify that a link doesn’t have to be counted as a vote by a search engine.”

I’m oversimplifying - but basically the ‘guidelines’ appear to be something along the lines of - buy all the links you want - just make sure they use ‘nofollow’.

There is one question that I see time and time again - how does Google know WHY any given link is present on my site at any given time…or something like that. My response is - Does it matter? Granted - ‘nofollow’ will negate any quick ‘link juice’ , so I suppose if you’re only looking for quickie, short term gains in PageRank, you’ll really want to do something else… really - I’ve seen it happen - the penalty for defying Google on this one can be devastating. But I digress…

Paid Links + nofollow = PageRank Boost - Penalty

If you’re working long-term - Paid Links plus “nofollow” equals a Boost in Google PageRank minus penalty.

Think about it - When Relevant, Value-adding Links are Purchased and Utilized ‘appropriately‘, why not?

For instance:
Website A buys a link from relevant, high value site - Website B - for the purpose of generating more targeted traffic. And this Paid Link from Website B does use ‘rel=nofollow’ - so there are no worries about incurring Googles wrath.

Naturally, Website A does not incur any immediate benefit to it’s own PageRank from the presence of Website B’s link - that is not the purpose. The purpose is targeted traffic, and adding Website B’s relevant, high-value, Paid Link to Website A DOES that. The result is more appropriate traffic to Website A, and more exposure for Website A, and more authority is attributed to Website A, and so on, and so on, and then guess what happens… a higher PageRank is earned for Website A.

And there you have it. Done right - Paid Links plus “nofollow” equals Boost in Google PageRank minus Penalty