Purchasing links

Hi, my real estate company is looking to outsource its ongoing SEO. I have a number of proposals fom different companies. One suggests that as part of their link building strategy they will purchase links from high quality/relevant sites on a monthly basis. They've sent me a list of sites that they recommend and they are certainly relevant to my field. Will purchasing these links harm me in the long run? I read Gary the scuba guys link building 101 thread (which was great!) Google webmaster guidelines, and numerous others on the forum and all seem to suggest that you should be wary of purchasing links. Could someone please give me their advice? Thanks

-Relevant links
-High Pagerank links
-Appropriate anchor text
Can all be helpful to your links building strategy and can be costly also

just be careful if a link is from a place that does not discriminate who they
link to (i.e. Irrelevant sites) then this might alarm google and
devalue the "LINK JUICE" of those links

One way to know if google has penalized the site/link in question is the
pagerank of the page (if page falls from PR5 to PR0 then PROBABLY google does
not value those links)

There is a degree of risk with this stratergy but it is also a very common one and can be highly effective. The worst case seniro is most likely to only be that those links will be devalued if discovered. Thus it depends on how detectable the links are as sold links. I would speculate that most purchased links are never detected.....

buying or selling links is a bad idea if you don't follow SEs rules regarding buying links.. according to google

yes, but you should control the quatity of links.

Course that isn't what they said... Yahoo "sells links" and people "buy links" from Yahoo... and Google doesn't have any problem with that model... so what's the difference?

If the "LINK" is the only commodity... the prime reason for a relationship [what you are paying for] that is a problem.

If the link is a benefit or feature of the product or service offerings - that seems to be - OK!

So

• A 3rd party review of the website or company is "PREFECT".. the link allows visitors to the page to review the site that was reviewed.
• A membership or subscription is "PREFECT".. the link is merely an acknowledgement that this company or domain supports the site or company's efforts.
• A service portfolio is "PREFECT".. the link is merely an acknowledgement that this company or domain received services from the advertising company.

In all of these "money changed hands" and all have links being offered... thus "paid links"... and Google "LOVES THESE!

So when you comment unilaterally that "buying or selling links is a bad idea"... without any clarification on which specific links you are noting... you are misinforming members.

It won't hurt as long as you place the link naturally, the way that google won't think that its a paid links.

Buying links is not bad, but having 100's of links made in a day can do more harm than good.

Just make sure that those links seem natural and come in slow.