A link scheme is Google's term for links created mainly to manipulate a site's ranking in search results. It covers both links pointing to your site and links going out from it. Buying and selling followed links, excessive link exchanges, automated link creation, and large guest posting campaigns with keyword-rich anchors are the standard examples. Google now groups this under link spam in its spam policies.
What Google lists as link spam
Google's spam policies give concrete examples. The list has been stable for years, though wording changes from time to time, so check the current page before relying on any single phrasing.
- Buying or selling links that pass ranking credit, including exchanges for goods or services
- Excessive link exchanges and partner pages made only for cross-linking
- Automated programs or services that create links to your site
- Requiring a link as part of a terms of service or contract without letting the owner qualify it
- Text ads or advertorials that pass ranking credit
- Keyword-rich, hidden or low-quality links in widgets distributed across many sites
- Widely distributed links in footers or templates of many sites
- Forum comments with optimized links in posts or signatures
- Large-scale guest posting or article campaigns with keyword-rich anchor links
How Google responds
Google uses two routes. Automated systems, including SpamBrain, try to detect link spam and neutralize it so it passes no credit. Separately, Google's reviewers can issue manual actions, which appear in Search Console's Manual actions report as unnatural links to or from your site.
The broad history is that Google's 2012 Penguin update went after link spam at scale, and its later integration into core ranking shifted the emphasis from demoting sites toward ignoring bad links. Algorithm details belong in the update's own entry.
Gray areas in SaaS marketing
Many normal SaaS activities touch on links: partner programs, affiliate programs, sponsored content, integration listings, customer badges and embeddable widgets. The fix is usually simple. Qualify links that come with compensation, keep reciprocity relevant, and do not require a followed link as a condition of anything.
Example
An affiliate program done right
An illustrative accounting tool, Tallyspire, runs an affiliate program. Its terms ask partners to use rel="sponsored" on affiliate links, and the tracking links go through a redirect domain. Affiliates still earn commissions and send customers, and the program does not look like paid link building.
Common mistakes
Assuming small scale is safe
The policy is about intent and method. A handful of bought links is still a handful of policy violations, even if nobody notices.
Hiding payment through gifts or services
Google's examples explicitly include exchanging free products or services for links.
Questions
Not always. Often the links are simply ignored. But a manual action is possible, and money spent on ignored links is wasted either way.
Guest posting to reach an audience is fine. Large-scale guest posting done to place keyword-rich links is named in Google's policies as link spam.
