We never buy links and we always advise our clients not to buy links either. Never less there are occasions when we take on a new client who has been paying for links for a while, after consulting with us they decide that its best to move away from buying links and moving towards earning natural links. So do they just stop dead?

We usually advise that they don’t stop dead. Google has an interesting problem. They don’t really want to ban a site for buying links, unless the site is blatantly abusing its position either financially or morally. This leaves them in the position of discounting the paid links they detect, and leaving the rest alone.

I don’t know what percentage of paid links Google succeeds in detecting, be it algorithmically, human review, or due to a paid links report in Webmaster Tools. There is a lot of evidence out there to show that Google is not finding all of them. Yet. Their algorithm grows smarter by the day and the greed of webmasters selling links only increases the chances of being caught.

If you search on any very competitive term you will see sites ranking well via the use of paid links, sponsored wordpress themes, hit counters and other shady methods. Ok they are doing well for the short term, but the algorithm will update and Google will slap them out of their index at worst.

The bottom line is that if your buying links today, you want to transition away from that to improve the long term risk profile of your site. Your going to need a transition plan. Don’t simply drop all your paid links at once. Phase them our over time as you replace them with organic links earned based on the merit of your content or tools.

It makes sense to be honest, when you think about it logically, Google has and will continue to get smarter and will always catch the cheaters. As the old saying goes – Cheaters never win.