The blogosphere has been abuzz lately regarding the value of using link brokers to increase a site's link popularity.

Rand has a nice viewpoint on both Textlinkbrokers and Text Link Ads.

When it comes to deciding on the purchase of a text link (or a package), I'd think about it from an ROI perspective. If you can break even on monetizing the traffic that comes directly through the link (referral traffic), any "linkjuice" you might get to help your rankings is strictly bonus, thus the purchase decision becomes clear. If, however, you're getting very little traffic, but may achieve great rankings from the boost, be cautious - if a search engine ever does pull the plug on the ranking value of those links, you might have a costly expense that's bringing in little to no income. At this point, my philosophy becomes - if your boosted rankings at MSN are bringing you enough revenue to sustain the link spend, keep it running.

Patrick Gavin offers the following:

One of the most sought after links is a "link embedded within content" of a page. The theory goes like this: search engines will be able to identify what links are in the content area of the page and which links are outside of the content area and "count" the links in the content and discount the links outside the content area as "commercial" links.

I don't think the search engines are there yet and it will always be difficult to divide a page and separate out commercial versus editorial links.

To summarize, Rand is in favor of link buying if the traffic and MSN rankings are worth it. Patrick doesn't believe search engines are savvy enough to pinpoint paid links vs. organic links, so buy, buy, buy.

Who's right?

In my own experience, Google seems to be doing a good job of flagging links that have the characteristics of a paid link and weighing them accordingly. Google Guy Matt Cutts even says no to link buying.

Checkout the bottom of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette homepage and you'll see a group of paid links. I would think Google could recognize these pretty easily. In addition, the Post-Gazette is a client of Text-Link-Ads and their participation in its network is easily accessible. Google can easily go to TLA and get a listing of their clients who are selling links.

To their credit, Textlinkbrokers is far more conscious of keeping their link building on the down low. This approach seems far better, although the links purchased here are still in the style that is typical with link pages, such as directory links and lists of links in a reciprocal manner.

Add the fact that Big Daddy has played a huge role in lowering the effectiveness of of backlinks from crappy sites, and the job of the text link broker becomes more difficult.

At the end of the day, building links to your site that matter is hard work. It takes creativity, time, energy and money to create link worthy content. Google wouldn't have it any other way.