It is OK to Buy Paid Links From Some Directories Says Matt Cutts

Over the weekend Google Engineer and conduit between the Big G and the SEO industry provided more detail to his post about reporting paid links to Google. As I mentioned in this blog entry about paid links, Matt’s shotgun approach to this problem ignored the fact that many human-edited directories and blogs have a right to monetize their time and effort in uncovering, reviewing, and approving quality websites. I asked that he clarify his language so people understand the difference and have a clearer picture as to what types of paid links should be reported. Although it probably has nothing to do with our blog entry, Mr. Cutts did clarify his muddy language in a recent update…
What Matt Cutts of Google has to say about buying paid links from a directory:

I’ll try to give a few rules of thumb to think about when looking at a directory. When considering submitting to a directory, I’d ask questions like:
- Does the directory reject urls? If every url passes a review, the directory gets closer to just a list of links or a free-for-all link site.
- What is the quality of urls in the directory? Suppose a site rejects 25% of submissions, but the urls that are accepted/listed are still quite low-quality or spammy. That doesn’t speak well to the quality of the directory.
- If there is a fee, what’s the purpose of the fee? For a high-quality directory, the fee is primarily for the time/effort for someone to do a genuine evaluation of a url or site.

Those are a few factors I’d consider. If you put on your user hat and ask “Does this seem like a high-quality directory to me?” you can usually get a pretty good sense as well, or ask a few friends for their take on a particular directory.

It is also worth noting that Matt answers the question of sabotage by saying they try not to punish the linked-to website and instead focus on removing the ability of the linking site to pass page rank. 

Matt’s clarification above does a good job of answering some of the concerns I talked about in the previous blog entry. In line with this, I want to point out that the First Page Fitness Directory rejects links almost every day. We reject about ten links for every one that we accept. Don’t be afraid of submitting, however, if you own a legitimate, quality website. Most of the rejected links are from quite obvious spammers who are trying to think of excuses to link to things like male enhancement pills from a fitness directory. We make it quite clear in our submission guidelines that these types of sites will not be accepted into the directory, and that our review fee is just that – a fee to cover the time it takes to review and approve/reject submissions.