The New York Times took an inside look at JC Penney and found that they were engaging in less than ethical SEO tactics. Specifically, they were purchasing thousands of low quality links in an effort to rank higher for very general and competitive terms. Did it work? Yes, for a while – and over the holidays, arguably the most important time of the year. However, once Matt Cutts from Google got wind of it – Google demoted their site by a ‘manual’ penalty. Former #1 organic rankings on Google are now showing up around #71.
The moral of the story- buying links is bad. It works, but only for a short time. And then you pay the price.
Read the full article here.