There’s a great article posted earlier today on the SiteProNews.com site. The article, written by Bill Platt, discussed the recent controversy surrounding paid links and some comments on them made by Matt Cutts. While you may not gain great insight into the buying or selling of paid links (it’s not that kind of article) it does lend some interesting analysis of the issue and how the engines (mainly Google) are addressing it.
The article also provides some great links to forums posts discussions of the topic including forums that Matt himself is commenting in. You can read the article on the SiteProNews.com site here. I’d put this article in the “recommended but not mandatory” category of reading. There aren’t any “how to’s” but if you’re engaging in paid links as a buyer or a seller it’s always good to know what the feelings of the engines are and what they can and cannot do.
Three hours later …
Well well well, I just had the great fortune of reading a very interesting article on the WebProNews.com site. It discusses Cutts’ recent silence on t he topic of paid links AND (this is the fun part) the fact that VP of Advertising for Google, Mr. Tim Armstrong himself co-founded the company Associated Content, which pays writers to produce sontent (200,000+ pages and growing at a rate of 2,000 pages/day) for the AdSense ad revenue AND (wait for it, wait for it …) BUYS LINKS. Oh ya gotta love the irony.
You can read the article on the WebProNews.com site here.
SEO news blog post by Dave Davies, CEO @ 1:33 pm
