Well it’s the start of a new year and paid links, despite the wolf cries, are as powerful and working as well as ever. The main difference from a year ago is one should be much more careful about where you buy links and who you sell links to. In content links are the holy grail of link buyers but this is not to say a good footer or sidebar link won’t work for you. Depending on how many links in the same footer or sidebar and who else is buying links with you, chances are better than 50/50 the link will work for you and help your rankings.

Some Link Buying Don’ts

• Never buy a link on a page with more than 10 other paid links, the fewer paid links the better on a page.
• Don’t link on a page with a notorious link buyer. Check the back links of some of the other link buyers on your link page. If there backlinks are clearly all paid links this puts you at risk if they get spotted by the SEs.
• Don’t buy links from large high profile link networks.
• Don’t buy links on a site that does not rank for their domain name.
• Don’t buy links on languages different then your website.

Some Link Selling Don’ts

• Don’t over sell any web page.
• Don’t sell to blatant black hat sites.
• Don’t sell to sites that are only propped up by paid links
• Don’t advertise you sell links on your site
• Don’t give out your URL to every potential link buyer. The fewer that know you sell links the better.

Since in content links are difficult to find, footer and side bar links will need to remain part of your link buying strategy. Just make sure you use a bit of common sense and caution and your chances of success will be much greater.