"Permanent One Way links with a high PR for USD 1 only".

A very common ad, which most of us would have seen a million times. This also has the dubious distinction of being the biggest lie in the link building world. We will see how.

We know this blog will stir up a hornet’ nest and may even result in a few assassination attempt on our lives!! However this will not deter us from writing about the popular fibs. These misrepresentations are used by a lot of link building firms all over the world, while selling their services.

The first one is a ‘high’ PageRank. This green bar is often used as the most important parameter to judge the value of the page. The importance that this parameter has is naturally out of the context of this blog. The firms claim that the links will have a high PR whereas in reality the page which features the link often has no or low PR (not the PR that was committed). The high PR is usually of the home page. At the end, you do not benefit too much.

The second one is a Permanent link. This one always baffles me. Why will a webmaster with a legitimate business, which is thematically relevant to yours, ever oblige to put your link? No one will, unless there is some consideration involved. Even if a webmaster were to put up your link, because they have friendly relation with the link building firm, it still cannot guarantee that the link will not be removed. Every webmaster carries out regular audit in the link scape and all redundant or old links tend to get removed. It is natural. They would keep your links longer only if you offer to pay the webmaster a certain amount of money. And if this would be the case, the links are likely to be frowned upon by Google.

Permanent links can only be sourced from directories (articles, blogs, classified). In which case, the links should be sold at a much cheaper price, as the effort required to develop links from directories is far less than the effort required to obtain links from websites.

The third fib is about the price. A low priced link may not always be bad and quality links has nothing much to do with high price. One has to really evaluate whether the money (even if it is low) he is paying is going to yield results or not. But if the price is absurdly low, it should set the alarm bells ringing. Quality commands a premium.