Is Google losing the war on paid links?

If you’re not paying Google to advertise they won’t be happy. Google wants the entire advertising biz to itself and has been at war with other paid link services for a while now. But are they winning? A new service called InLinks promises to make paid links very difficult to detect and offers links for as low as $10 a month. Curious? I’m many are and already claiming success of their new link campaigns. One has to wonder whether Google is losing this war. Paid links have been around for a long time and many have benefited from the practice.

Let’s be honest, paid links are not hard to detect, but the fact is that many go unpunished by Google even the most rampant run of site variety. So why aren’t they doing anything about it? Could it be they just don’t have the right tools to detect these kinds of links? Suddenly Google’s technical dominance can be questioned. Why have they allowed it to go on for so long when they are clearly against paid links? Makes you wonder.

However if you’re thinking about doing it, paid links might be worth a try for short term strategies. Get a bit of momentum for your site, however continue building up quality, natural links, and always always content.

Shady SEO companies and their practices

Recently Visible.net, Captures.com and WebMarketingSource.com. Made headlines for their shady business practices and got themselves sued. The State of Washington contends that these companies have ripped off their customers by misrepresenting their services. We’ve all seen these pitches before. Promises of page 1 Google rankings, increased traffic, impressive client rosters, and more. A few red flags should be up front fees, 30 day or 60 day cancellation notice requirements, unreturned calls, basically anything that sounds too good to be true.

This could set precedents for SEO marketing firms on how they advertise their services. Expect to see fine print disclaimers to protect themselves against lawsuits like these. Companies like this make the SEO biz look bad.

A few questions to ask yourself …

If you’re ranking in the top 10 then you can ignore this list. However if you’re competitors are ranking ahead of you, perhaps the answer to your ranking issues lies in these questions.

Is your website cluttered with pictures or text? Is there a balance?
What keywords have you targeted vs the keywords your competitors have targeted?
Does your domain match your market?
How many inlinks do you have?
What Meta tags are you using?
Is your body text longer than 600 words?
What’s your page rank?
Is your site easy to navigate?

Answering some of these questions will help you better understand your competition. Analyzing your competitors and their sites will help you integrate some of those ideas into the theme of your site. Simply copying the competition is not the answer. Putting a different spin on a subject, offering great content, and building links will get you to the top.