There's been a lot of discussion about Google's announcement regarding paid links. For those of you who haven't been aware, Google is now penalizing sites that pay for in-bound links. Personally, I don't give much notice to "new" announcements or supposed changes to the Google algorithm. That is, until it affects my business or the success of my SEO customers.

I was recently working with a customer who saw a pretty significant decline in Google rank (about 5 positions). This is a concern because nothing significant changed with regard to the website or ranking strategy except one thing - the company recently purchased links to help build link popularity.

Being on top of these things, as I need to be for my clients, I've recommended that they no longer subscribe to the particular linking service they have contracted with. Even though other forces may be at work, resulting in a decline in rank, I feel that paid linking could be hurting them. Has your Google rank recently been impacted? Are you paying for links?

The paid link debate will likely rage on. Tread carefully and continue to apply basic link strategy: one-way links from like sites, reciprocal linking, 3-way linking and so on... just don't pay for it!