Paid Links and Purchased Content

The recent uproar and backlash over Matt Cutt’s announcement of a war on buying links is pretty interesting. I especially liked the black hat take on it. I bet he has been waiting a while for that one.

Google’s New Policy

As far as Google’s policy goes, it’s just not like Google to come out like this. It really sounds like their stretching for answers on this one. Asking for tags, narcs and other special treatment. I think the paid links are really giving them trouble. It’s like seeing your Dad break down in tears for the first time. Google seems a little more human now; more like a real company. Like one of those companies that is actually trying to make money. Overall, I imagine they’ll catch a lot of the hardcore link spammers, miss the under the radar ones and we’ll all move on to something else….like buying content!

Buying Content to Build Links

How about it? If one finds themselves heavy on bankroll and light on links, just buy some content instead of the links. Site A with bankroll buys a piece of landmark content from Site B. Site A doesn’t just scrape the content though. Site A has Site B 301 the page and transfer the content and the Guice. This presents an interesting twist on the arguments about paid links. Essentially, Site A has “paid for links,” but the links were done with the intent of pointing at the landmark conent. That’s what Google wants. I don’t see how moving the content and the links violates Google’s algo, but its still “buying links” at the end of the day. It’s clearly taking advantage of one’s knowledge of search engines too improve rankings. Companies with bankrolls buy up the all the good content and put in redirects.

I’m guess Matt would give a reluctant thumbs up to this kind of a tactic. The questions become:

• How do the economics change when you’re buying content versus links. How willing are people to sell their prized content?
• Will Google allow that juice to pass if they can track the tactic algorithmically?

What do you think?