Posted by randfish After last week's Whiteboard Friday on the penalties paid links can incur , I got several questions about whether paid/spammy links could be used as a weapon to potentially harm someone else's rankings. In this post, I'll walk through why this is rarely the case, how you can defend yourself from potential scenarios and why this isn't a great tactic to employ against your competitors. Can Paid Links Be Used as Weapons in the SERPs?