Text links are links purchased on a website in order to improve the search engine ranking for a specific set of keywords.  Most webmasters also use this technique to increase their Page Rank (PR), although this is frowned upon by Google.

The main sites allowing for text links to be purchased/ sold are:

• Text Link Ads
• Text Link Brokers
• Link Worth
• BlogRolled

The problem with the above sites is that they take a substantial portion of each deal (normally 50%).  Accordingly, in order to bypass these intermediaries, many webmasters try to reach deals directly between themselves.

Things to Consider When Purchasing Text Links: Following are few considerations if you decide to purchase text links:

• make sure that there will be no "no-follow" tags on the link;
• negotiate the positioning of the link (a link in the footnote of a page is not worth as much as a link in the content of the page);
• decide if you want site-wide links or a link on one single page (preferably the home page);
• make sure the link is on a page related to the content of your site;
• make sure to deal only with reputable sites;
• make sure to choose your keywords carefully; and
• see if you can get a discount by purchasing a link on an annual basis, as opposed to paying monthly.

That being said, we do not recommend purchasing links.  Good SEO should not require the purchase of links.  If you are willing to commit time and effort to the process, you should be able to have good SEO for free.

Google has for a long while made its views known on paid links.  It has followed through with its threats recently (October 2007) by severely penalizing websites selling text links.  The main argument put forward by Google is that paid linking impacts its algorithm and, accordingly, results in lower quality search results.  It seems that Google has no means to counter the selling of links so it resorted to forcing webmasters to do the work for them.

Many websites have seen their Page Rank (PR) decrease substantially.  Some websites have even lost all their PR.  This has lead to many bloggers crying to injustice, but voicing their discontent is all they can do.  Some webmasters have decided to comply with Google's guidelines while others still refuse to align.  The reality is that many websites rely heavily on link sales as their main source of revenue.  For them to no longer sell links would mean to go in the red.

Whether to continue selling links or not is a decision left to each webmaster, but the current crackdown by Google will inevitably lead to a "black market" where webmasters will try to camouflage their link selling and hopefully go unnoticed by Google.

It is unclear why Google is going against websites selling links as opposed to websites buying links.  If Google's goal is to improve its search results, it would only make sense to penalize websites that try to improve their rankings through monetary means since they don't deserve those rankings in the first place.  Websites selling links on the other hand may be relevant, so penalizing them for selling links is not the best course of action.  In other words, link selling is not an indicator of the relevancy of a site, but link buying does impact the rankings, so why not only crack down on link buyers?  Actually, it seems that Google is not even going against sites buying links as many of those sites still have their PR intact.  Google probably views link sellers as the source of the problem.  That's a mistake however.  Link buyers are at the core of the problem and it would be much easier to go against them. 

To tell websites selling links to stop basically means to tell them to refuse money coming their way.  This goes against basic business sense.  On the other hand, telling websites that buy links to stop is a much easier undertaking because they can simply redirect their money to acceptable SEO practices.  They don't have to "say no to money" the way link sellers would have to.  They just have to redirect their spending to something more acceptable. 

Maybe this latest move by Google has uncovered one of its weaknesses.  What if its algorithm cannot crack down on links coming to a site, but can do it for links leaving a site?  Another theory is that sites buying links might also buy exposure online through Google Adwords.  Google may not want to go against its own customer base.