Link Building in russian speaking countries

[InformMedia]

Hello, We are an international company, based mostly in Romania and Hungary, but we also launched some websites in Ukraine. The interesting thing in Ukraine that we are facing heavily, is how they are doing link building. Basically the only link building that they do is buying links through a platform: sape.ru (http://www.mainlinkads.com/ this is English version). Local SEO consultants also advice to buy links. It wasn't so much a problem, but when you have a good site with good content, but have competitors that are buying links and then overcome our good keyword positions, we started to questions whether to start buying links ourselves. What is your opinion on this? Is it possible that Google will penalize a big bunch of sites, now in sape.ru there are: 487 069 sites? Can we adopt the same strategy as our competitors as long as it is working? Thanks, Irina

[RyanPurkey]

That's a tough one, huh Irina? If sites are only agreeing to link via payment, I'd try to add some value by looking for content sharing opportunities and slightly more robust ways of purchasing an associated link than just the link alone. This way there's some justification to the payment and the link can be considered residual.  It sounds like you're doing all the right things so far. 

[InformMedia]

Thank you Ryan,

Sites were launched 2 - 3 years ago, so not so new on the market :), we already connected them with our proprieties in other countries, and also for half an year doing some social marketing.

We tried to get some links by contacting other sites, but good valuable sites only agree to sell links :).

[RyanPurkey]

This is always a difficult question when you enter a market that is heavily in to link buying / manipulation.  It's pretty logical to conclude that Google knows this is going on, so you're left wondering if it's the only way, or if everyone else is doing it would I really get penalized for it too?

If your websites in the Ukraine are new, I'd recommend sticking to creating links and signals that are from trusted sources before going down the link buying road. Google also gives positive weight to sites that have more links from other countries so you could link to your Ukrainian sites from Romania and Hungry where applicable. Try spending a few months getting social traction and non-bought links and see if that begins to make you competitive.  At that point you should have a better idea of what to do.