The Paid Link Debate and Local Florists

Discussions about how Google has been dealing with paid links have raged on for months in the webmaster community. I'm late to the topic but wanted to add my thoughts on the issue and how it effects local flower shops before the year end.

Google's head of search spam, Matt Cutts, explained how selling posts and links that pass page rank can distort results and can place less-than-helpful entries above pages more relevant to a query.  Google instructs webmasters to handle paid links, both in ads and in editorial content, as follows:

Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such. This can be done in several ways, such as:

- Adding a rel="nofollow" attribute to the <a> tag
- Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file

and urges webmasters to report paid links via the Google Webmaster Tools console.

A couple webmasters involved in the floral industry jumped into the debate and offered differing opinions on the devaluing of paid links. Back in November, Mark McFall of Vital SEO Marketing published about how paid text link schemes were being used by the three largest flower sellers in the US to seemingly manipulate search results. He's right. Those links are and should be worthless. Thanks for the good sleuthing, Mark.

Infinite (RKF), working with both florists and the medical community, weighed in with a comment on Aaron Wall's SEO Book blog about how paid research in the medical field was just as manipulative to Google's users as paid links. While he and others opposed to new devaluations have a point, my own experience with watching how paid links and posts have distorted SERPs about flowers and florists puts me firmly on the 'clean it up' side.

I remember a few years ago filing a spam report about a site that was at or near the top of results for virtually every city in the US for a query "city name+ florist". Interestingly enough, the site wasn't even located in the US and was primarily propelled to the top of all those searches via a text link ad in an English version of an Asian news site - a PR 8. 

The next month, another affiliate marketer of flowers, no dummies they, bought an ad, too - with slightly different anchor text. The following month, a third affiliate reseller floral site joined the group and in short order, the three sites - all with directory style navigation full of city-specific pages - were on page 1 for many US communities.  My spam report asked why paid links were so trusted as to push those affiliates past the brick & mortar businesses.  I don't recall the news site specifically selling page rank, but the effect was the same. Few visitors to that site would be interested in sending so many flowers as to justify the hefty link price.

And of course, it was an affiliate flower seller site that first got outed for using pay-per-post.

Paid links have been one of the top methods for affiliate resellers, order gatherers, to place well for local city queries. Since the affiliates have no relevance geographically, and therefore would be unlikely to receive organic links for specific towns, they've generally need to buy their way in. Effective paid links have long been a heck of a lot cheaper that Adwords for competitive terms that include 'flowers' and 'florists'. 

Who's my link hero? Eric Ward. I don't think he won any popularity contests from the chattering class during the link devaluation period with this post:  

Selling paid links... If you haven't yet read it, see Danny (Sullivan's) article here. Now, can we all try to agree on one core concept: It's Google's engine, they can do whatever the hell they want with it. Please stop the Google-is-evil talk. They are the best thing that ever happened to those who create really good content, and the worst nightmare to content and link spammers. I've yet to find anyone who works white-hat who thinks Google is evil. For those of us who pursue a very specific type of link building for a very specific type of content, Google rewards us handsomely with higher rankings for our clients. For those that dabble in the dark linking arts, it's your own fault. Face up to it, or stay happy that at least you can still spam Livesearch.

He's the kind of guy that writes about helping non-profits with their link building pro bono simply because their content deserves to be found. Would that the floral industry as a whole have as much passion for good links as Mr. Ward.

Instead, the majority of authority sites and quality directories in our industry don't even openly link to local florists. The few that do either place the links behind password protected areas or use intermediate pages that don't pass pagerank at all. Most say 'they're working on it' but after four years of pleading, I'm not too hopeful. *sigh*

It's no wonder paid links have been so effective in the flower business with the associations and companies in positions to share organic link love continuing to hoard it. And the funny thing is that many of the links that help make them authorities come from those brick and mortar florists.

Here's hoping 2008 is the 'Year of the Link' for local florists. Why not start today by linking to one of your favorite local flower shops?