sub-zero Wrote:No, to my knowledge, Google has no idea if you paid for the link or not, unless it is an obvious Paid Directory ONLY, and even then I don't know why they would care.
In the past, Google has blocked sites which try to artficially increase their search engine rankings. If you hired a dodgy SEO firm, you need to write to Google in order to get your site relisted, and even that can take months. I am not sure what their policy is towards paid links specificall, but their general policy is definatly against 'abuse' of their ranking system. So PRESUMABLY they would be against people paying for links in order to increase their Page Rank..
sub-zero Wrote:The rule of thumb is that you should not have more than 12 links on a site, for the links to be worth anything
Thanks for pointing that out sub-zero! Now that you mention it, there are a few paid directory sites with hundreds of links per page on them. And some of these cost in the hundreds of dollars per month for a listing! What a rip off!
It sounds like google is simply dividing the Page Rank by the number of links on the page, or something like that, and your total Page Rank is then the sum of all incoming Page Rank links.
Obviously, the best solution (and probably the only legitimate solution in google's eyes) is to have people link naturally to your websites because of their interest content. Then you basically have a good site and good ratings (the way the Page Rank algorithm was supposed to work).