When I first came to We Build Pages, and even before I came, Jim and I spoke of the need to discontinue our paid link model. I am white hat and I am often referenced as the “Google Guideline Guy”. It seemed weird to many that I would even associate myself with a company known for obtaining “ninja” paid links. Little did people know that we have been revving up for a 180 degree turn.

We Build Pages no longer engages in paid links that violate the Google guidelines.

This change is not an easy one, but it is vital for our clients well being. We have guided our clients through thick and thin, through many updates and algorithm changes. We are convinced that paid links that are not machine readable will not only stop being effective, but will also bring real and significant risk.

To be more clear, we believe the age of penalties will soon be upon those engaging in paid links.

We also recommend to webmasters that they not risk themselves, or their ranking by accepting payments for links that are not machine readable. Back in August of 2007 Matt Cutts described in detail what paid links are considered in violation of Google policy.

Paid links must be machine readable, which means they must, in some way, be nofollowed or redirected. The common ways of achieving this are…

- redirect through url blocked by robots.txt

- redirect through url that does 302 Javascript

- rel=”nofollow” on individual links

- <meta name=”robots” content=”nofollow” /> on entire page

We Build Pages is still a link building company.

We will be offering many other services as well very soon, but our expertise was and is link building. Our link building services are the heart and soul of our business, and our link builders are the heart and soul of our office. We have dozens of talented and experienced link builders and they are hard at work even as I write this.

The change of policy of how we build links does not change the fact that we build links. Our link builders will be finding the right links for our clients that provide strength, not weakness. We provide free links or the right machine readable links for our clients content.

Speaking of content…

Our team of over 100 writers create content for clients that help our link builders do their jobs.

If you want to work with We Build Pages, the first step is an intensive and exhaustive report. Often these reports are around twenty pages long. They are created by Rhea Drysdale and are so intensive that you may very well feel violated by the time you are done with it. But there is a reason for this report. In order to survive and excel in Google requires real content that is link worthy. If you do not have linkable content then we will explain to you that you need to get some. We can create this for you, or you can create it for yourselves, but the bottom line is that without linkable and useful content, your rankings will not survive.

Paid links are over.

They are too risky for Jim or myself to recommend to anyone. If you are serious about your company you need to seriously consider stop using paid links that violate the Google guidelines and policies.

This is the best advice we can give.

Here is what Jim Boykin said aboout this over at the We Build Pages blog: Paid links are not worth it