Transcript
Hi guys and welcome to another edition of Zupo's SEO Talk & Tea.
Today's conversation is, Should You Pay for a Link? I think that this is a question that at its outset sounds obvious. But I think from my day-to-day and interacting with different SEOs in the field, it's a little bit more nuanced than a lot of people may think, so I wanted to spend some time talking about that with today's video. But before we jump in and have this hot topic discussion, I want to introduce the tea, you know, this is Zupo's SEO Talk & Tea and it's always nice to have intense conversations with a nice cup of tea or coffee.
So today's the DAVIDsTEA again, matcha. It is a recurring player in our YouTube series. Although we are running low, this may be one of the very few times that we may see it again because I'm running out unless I order some more, but I really enjoy the tea on cloudy days, especially like this one, it's kind of got that toasted brown rice kind of feel. And it just feels nice when it's kind of like chilly, and then you can have a little green tea that tastes a little bit like toasted brown rice. But I'm going to go ahead and get brewing. Let's go ahead and get this conversation started.
So, should you pay for a link? So the quick answer that most people would say is no, that's the quick answer. Google's stance on paying for links as an outright, they don't like it, so you shouldn't do it. So how I like to kind of ride that line is, if you are being asked to pay for a link outright, like transactionally, like we will allow you to add this link to our website if you pay us this certain amount. I would say about 80 to 90% of the time, if that's the case, we do not do that.
We don't go for that because one, in my opinion, I don't know if it's worth it for a client to do that. And then second, that does kind of fall really close against Google's guidelines. Now I will say the conversation is not that easy though, because oftentimes the ask and the deliverable is not to one-to-one. So what that means is, for example, there are a lot of times when companies will say like, "Okay, you have to pay a yearly membership or you have to become a sponsor of our company and that will give you the opportunity to guest posts on our site." In those cases, I am much more willing if not employ those kinds of tactics much more because that's a much more accepted practice of the market. There are many councils, trade organizations and publishers that have a filter where they will only allow certain types of people into the organization and to ensure that the people that come in are committed and that they're worth it they'll require payment.
And that's kind of an accepted practice because it's like any gym membership, not everyone can come in and the different tiers that you pay for it, you get your different access, right? So the same thing here where I would say that there's many firms, even my own clients, who have paid for memberships at different trade organizations, councils, or different reputation sites that have given them the opportunity to have more benefits so that it's not only they're paying for the link, but they're also paying for the opportunity to become a thought leader or a guest poster or a contributor, or they get to have their ad somewhere. In these cases, I would say paying for a link is much more accepted and actually would say you kind of need to pursue it if your company is a company that doesn't have the brand equity or the exposure in the past.
So what I mean is if you're a company just starting out, and you want to become a more well known industry, oftentimes you will have to pay. If you're a company that already has been in the industry for years and you have the brand equity and you've networked for awhile, you may not need to do so. So what I want us to get this conversation into is I have read studies, and I think these are informal studies, but I've seen studies where people have asked SEOs anonymously, "Have you paid for a link before?" And the number that has said yes were much higher than you would've thought. I think the number was like 40 to 60% have said yes. And I think the answer is like, yes, but not frequently. And I would say that's not surprising. There have been companies that we have found that are solely there to sell links. One of my old agencies that I own tried it. It was an internal experiment or we wanted to try it out.
And so when we worked with this company, they would charge a certain amount for a link for a certain quality of site. And it got a little bit pricey, I must admit it was a little bit pricey. And I would say it was very money intensive, the higher you went. And I could see where if you had budget, you could do that, but you wouldn't need massive budgets for it to scale at a really quick pace. So what I would argue is that if someone would say that money you're spending on the link is the same money you'd be spending on hiring someone to build the resources and the time to make the link, get the link themselves. But my argument back would be well, I would like that better because if you're building things on your site, even if you don't get a link, you're still building a foundation, you're building experience, and you're building more things on your site rather than just straight up paying for a link.
And I will say the stipulation sometimes of paying for links, I think it was like you get six months and after that, they cannot guarantee the link will be there anymore. And that just didn't feel great for me, but that was a one experience with one link building company. I'm sure there's other ones that other SEOs may use that they really enjoy. But in my experience, I would say, here's my line. If it's a purely transactional one-to-one like 80 to 90% of the time, I'd say, don't do it. We don't do that, paying for the link unless there is a unique situation where we feel that it is too valuable to skip. We may consider it, but I don't think, off the top of my head, I have really ever done that.
So I would say, keep your eyes open, but I don't really normally take those routes. However, if you're paying for something that gives you the opportunity to get a link, for example, follow leadership, or you become part of some VIP club, or you get your name everywhere, then we're much more accepting of those opportunities and I wouldn't shy away from those. Because even though they're technically paying for a link, it is paying for a bigger package and that's when I would encourage you to look into it more, and you can evaluate on your business side if you should do so.
But I'm going to go ahead and end the conversation there. If you have any questions about it, this is a little bit more nuanced conversation. Feel free to leave a comment in YouTube, comment on our website, or you can shoot us an email. I'd be happy to go into a little bit more detail about your specific situation. I'm going to go ahead and pour my tea, but if you guys liked or found the video valuable, please like and subscribe, I'm going to go enjoy my tea now. I hope to see you guys again soon. Thanks.
Ooh, that's good.