David Naylor addresses the issue of Google's Paid Links Algorithm affecting both sides of buying and selling paid links.

Naylor explains "Google attacks the webmaster from one side at a time to stop collateral damage. For example, if you sell links your site might not pass link juice or page rank while those links are still on your site. Clean up and after a update or two you should be OK. Buying links, well that’s another ball game. You could loose the domain forever if you don’t move quick enough." Sites that ranked high and had paid links and sites without paid links have both been omitted from SERPs. The common link between the two sites are the placement of links. To quote Naylor, "For example, a site about “home cooking” linking to a “holiday site”, but where the holiday site would have dropped this time both have dropped – oen for selling the links and the other one for buying links."

For Overcoming this dilemma, Naylor suggests a three-tined path: -

1. 1st batch of links: You need to gain your authority to play in that market place, but don’t over do it, being way too authoritative for an industry is sometimes worse than no authority at all. Try and get some links from press releases and on sites that don’t normally sell links.

2. 2nd batch of links: Once you have authority status get some blog love, but avoid Pay Per Post blogs for now. Take GetClicky.com: I’m not getting paid for that review or link, I did put my affiliate code in so I could see how many people I passed into getclicky.com and signed up… I’m geeky like that.

I think I have sent 180 people to date, 23 people signed up via my link, and only 13 people had balls to comment on my blog lol, but I will have passed a little of my authority onto GetClicky. Once you have enough blogs that have gained authority status linking to you, you’re set for stage 3.

3. 3rd batch is a free-for-all, you have gained authority and your stage 2 links should be pulling in the search terms. This means you will get scraper sites linking to you, so buy text link ads on lower grade sites, PPP and review-style sites. Your authority should pull you though.

So far, the Google camp has remained mum.