I’m sure you have heard about the new link buying scheme from Text Links Ads, InLinks. What i’m not sure if it is a good idea to buy links from them. Not that I do not think they are effective, they are for sure. My problem with them is I don’t like the idea of renting links. Sure it can be a quick fix if you need instant result but you are risking a lot. This is for sure against Google guidelines, that even if I don’t like them, we still don’t really have the choice to follow them most of the time. Not that my advice is to follow them 100% of the time, it’s just that everytime you don’t respect them you take the risk of getting burned by the allmighty Google BanHammer.

So you can use paid links, but do it under the radar and that my main problem with inLinks, it’s easy to find which website are part of their blog network. Let’s say I would like to rank on my first name, Francis. I make a quick search on inLinks wonderful search engine and than you see the results. My problem is the quick Snippet of text is enough to track back the original blog where the content is from. All you have to do is put the snippet between quotes on Google and tadam, you have the blog. In case you have several results, you have several pointers to find one which one is the original blog (think PageRank, Alexa Rank, Date of the blospot).

If i’m able to do reverse engineering on inLinks, I’m sure that Google can do it too. So, even if they tolerate inLinks for a couple months/years, they day they will decide to push the ban button on all the website that are selling links will come, one day or another. So in the best case, investing in inLinks let you rent a ranking for a couple months/years, which is not bad at all. But if it is your major strategy, you, my friend, are in trouble.

Often we are tempted to use shortcuts to do our linkbuilding work, but I can guarantee you there is way better place to put your money than rented ranking. Even if it will help you make some money short term, think long term. Never forget that dinosaurs will die, and that day, you will be sitting on as stable as a one legged stone chair making you tons of money.