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Aaron Wall is recommending that companies with a brand name buy links, but Google says buying links is bad and discourages. Who should you believe?

I’ve always believed that webmasters have a right to do whatever they feel will make them more competitive and improve their websites for their visitors. But I also believe that Google has a right to do whatever it feels it necessary to improve its website and company to make it more profitable and to give its customers, searchers, better service. Hopefully, best practices and best results will meet where these two intersect. But that’s not always the case.

It does seem to be the case that there is a lot of search spam that still goes unfiltered. Is Aaron Wall right when he says:

The key to understanding the above is to appreciate that not only do the large brands have more money and more exposure, but they are less likely to be policed if they do the same thing that a smaller webmaster does. It is why a billion dollar company’s affiliate program passes PageRank and my affiliate links do not.

Obviously, I have no insight into Aaron Wall’s affiliate program and why Google may not count his affiliate links as valuable as some big brand. But he does make a convincing argument that big brands can get away with more than the little guy. Still, here’s some food for thought:

If you engage in a tactic then you must be willing to pay the penalty if you are caught. If Google says paid links are bad and discounts those links then you’ve paid a lot of money and spent a lot of time building links that provide you with no benefit. Even if you get the benefit initially, because Google constantly tweaks its ranking algorithms, you may find yourself at some point in the future falling in the rankings without notice and it will seem unfair.

I won’t tell you whether you should buy links for your Texas brand, but I will say tread lightly and don’t do anything stupid.

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