Oh, you can cheat people in business, but I'm not sure that's the case here. If you sell links claiming they're going to help the buyer's PR (which I don't think you should do in the first place), then you also ought to tell the buyer that Google could choose to stop that PR from flowing to them. If you already know you're blocked, then you shouldn't tell the buyer they're going to get any PR out of it.

I agree that if you're selling links you ought to be stressing the potential for traffic to your buyers' sites, but I think it's fair to say that very few people who are going to invest in buying links are just looking for the traffic. 

Jill

The main issue here is selling links under the assumption they pass link juice without telling the buyer that Google might block those links of passing PR.

Harith, a seller can never guarantee that any of his links pass juice, so as a buyer I would not assume that PageRank or anchor text is ever part of the deal. The only thing you can measure from a paid link with any certainty is traffic. Simply, a seller cannot promise PageRank and a buyer cannot demand PageRank from any paid link.

Halfdeck

Agreed!

Its therefore I find it unethical of Jim Boykin & Aaron Wall to suggest "The person buying them will probably never know if that links passes link juice to your site in the eyes of google, and it isn’t going to hurt you."

Moreover, I find it unethical too when Jim Boykin supported by Aaron Wall inviting publishers to spam Google in daylight:

"That’s why I’m all about getting our own links from virgin sites that aren’t selling links in above the radar places nor from networks….I’d like my chances of a link to bring traffic and juice to be high."

"I find it unethical too when Jim Boykin supported by Aaron Wall inviting publishers to spam Google in daylight"

I sympathize with that Hairth, but you gotta remember, SEOs are spammers who care less about helping Google create cleaner search results than getting paid by clients. It's an SEO's job to manipulate search results. So "unethical" is and will always be apart of an SEO's job description. Some might argue that spamming Wikipedia or Google's SERPs isn't unethical, but I think even Danny Sullivan realizes the negative impact spam has on social media. Creating a negative user experience may not feel like a big deal if you're talking about someone else's site, but when it comes to places like Sphinn I think SEOs start to realize the value of good user experience. The problem is its all fun and games as long as you're doing it to them instead of them doing it to you.

>>   SEOs are spammers who care less about helping Google create cleaner search results than getting paid by clients    So "unethical" is and will always be apart of an SEO's job description.  

g1smd

 Well said! 

Halfdeck

 If SEOs wish to gain respect and care about their reputation they should'nt follow unethical practices. Moreover ethical SEOs should distance themselves of spammers.

 I had great respect for  Jim Boykin and Aaron Wall. Not anymore. 

I think you streatched what I was saying, and the point I was making, to cover something I wasn't saying, on a point I wasn't making.

I don't think anyone should cheat anyone. eneough said.

Jim

webuildpages

What did you mean by: 

"The person buying them will probably never know if that links passes link juice to your site in the eyes of google, and it isn’t going to hurt you."

 And 

"That’s why I’m all about getting our own links from virgin sites that aren’t selling links in above the radar places nor from networks….I’d like my chances of a link to bring traffic and juice to be high."

I wouldn't jump to pass judgement unless I saw how the links were being sold. 

It's not unethical if you sell links as part of "text advertisements" whether they pass PR or not as you're selling traffic, not PR.

However, if you sell links specifically for PR and your site doesn't pass PR, then it's unethical.

More importantly, a site of such quality or value to visitors will generate natural links and we wouldn't need to worry about selling and buying links in the first place.

This leaves me wondering more about the ethics of the people that need the manipulative value of the paid links than the sellers.

IncrediBILL

 "It's not unethical if you sell links as part of "text advertisements" whether they pass PR or not as you're selling traffic, not PR."

In that case it wouldn't hurt the traffic at all to add rel=nofollow attribute to those links. Don't you agree? 

I'm a little ambivalent on the whole "rel=nofollow" issue and all the hype around it except when it comes to stopping link juice from those that spam blogs, wikis, forums and member registration pages which are notorious for spam.

Other than closing those pesky holes, I think it's up to the search engine to decide whether or not to pass link juice based on the relevance of the two sites being linked together and not my job to sit around worrying who has "rel=nofollow" installed or not. If the two sites are relevant to each other passing a link shouldn't be an issue and if the sites have no relevance with one another the SE should be able to already discard the link.

This brings me to the real issue is that the SE's obviously don't know the relevance between a blog post about a crochet pattern and links to comment spam to pharma sites or they wouldn't have created this bogus "rel=nofollow" nonsense in the first place.

Besides, other than people that do this stuff for a living your average joe webmaster would never know he needed a "rel=nofollow" in the first place, just like he doesn't have a robots.txt, nor would all of the older built websites contain such things.

So you think older sites and webmasters naive about thie bogus parameter get penalized for not hanving link condoms?

The outcry of outrage would be deafening...

Don't know whether its the moderators or the system which has deleted my previous comments.

Not good for discussions if somebody start deleting the opinions of one side of the discussions. That will result in one-sided discussion :-)

"If SEOs wish to gain respect and care about their reputation they should'nt follow unethical practices."

Yes Harith, but SEOs cannot remain 100% in the white and remain competitive. And those who believe they're completely ethical are defining their own standards. An SEO's goal is to bend the search results to their will. Google's goal is to display useful results to users. Those goals do not mesh well, except in rare cases where the site being optimized is something Google users will value.

Is there such a thing as an ethical SEO? If you're optimizing a great site that deserves #1 ranking, then that's not unethical. And if you buy links for traffic and increased exposure, that's not unethical either.

But who is to say the site you're working on is great? I've heard alot of site owners say great things about their crappy sites. And what percentage of SEOs refuse payment from clients who own crap sites? My guess is very few, especially if the price is right. And what percentage of SEOs buy links only for traffic? My guess is not many.

"let google worry about it" is the same as throwing trash on the sidewalk and leaving it for someone else to clean up after you. That's the kind of behavior many SEOs are promoting.

To be an ethical SEO, you must value Google's user experience above your clients needs or take on work only when those two needs don't conflict - and unfortunately, they often conflict.

We have no moral compass in the SEO industry. But the reason isn't because SEOs are immoral people. It's because having a moral compass conflicts with the SEO business model. 

Danny,

Thanks for taking the time to reply.