To buy a link or not buy a link, that is the question

Here’s a tip if you want to get to the top of the tree for Travel Insurance – BUY LINKS

Here’s a tip from Matt Cutts – DON’T BUY LINKS

So where does that leave us? That’s right, in the middle of a deep dark wood without sat nav, a map, mobile phone or indeed a compass.

You see here’s the trouble, the rhetoric from Google is telling us that buying links is shameful, yet shamelessly, it would appear the majority of the top ranking sites for the term ‘Travel Insurance’ are indeed pursuing the art of link buying. So Google where is the justice with this?

Are you simply offering words of wisdom for future policy, or are you just laying a myth to those true ‘white hatters’ that follow your policy like the children followed the pied piper.

Here’s the dilemma, does a site owner follow a path to darkness and begin to buy links like there is no tomorrow, or do they tough it out and build the stature of their site the right way?

MoneySupermarket.com has recently come back into Google’s favour for flouting rules; the penalty it took was swift to say the least. Now based on what I have read in the last few weeks, Google want to dampen any power from sites known to be offering paid links. Very noble I say. So my question is, why does this not work in reverse? If a site is known to be buying links from these questionable sources, why not ban the piggy backer as well as provider of the link power? To me it is the way forward.

Its dog eat dog in the real world and it is just as fierce in the internet world. But just as in the real world, money talks. The more cash you can throw at something, the more you can falsify your position, and is that not what SEO is all about?

SEO takes on many forms, in many ways it is similar to Martial Arts, there are many variations in skill sets. A master will have his own way of practising his art. But is any SEO that is simply doing nothing else than buying links a true master or nothing more than a con artist?

For travel insurance sites such as Travel Insurance Direct who are independent and who do not have a colossal marketing budget behind them, what can they do whilst the art of buying links is maybe frowned upon, but until sites drop out of the elite positions within Google, buying links to falsify its position to the masses is totally legal.

Back to you Matt Cutts and Google.