Am I buying links according to Google?
-
I have the opportunity to sponsor a variety of sections in a variety of .edu sites. Really appealing since they will both provide high quality traffic as well as to help our rankings... (maybe )... Anyway this opportunity involves a monetary exchange, no different than advertising in Adwords and/or buying a display ad with the NYT. The links will be both text and banner... With follow links. My questions to you guys are: Is this practice penalize? And will display ads pass link juice also? Thanks for the help...
-
Thanks Jim
-
John, Thanks for taking the time to answer my question.
I tend not to fall in these kind of practices, but when an opportunity like this presents itself you have to agree with me that it is tempting... and Google should know that... We are sponsoring a section of the site, and not a multitude of pages so I guess that might help.
On the other hand I couldn't agree with you more! There is something wrong with Google if they penalize a site for 'Advertising' and trying to better your business...
-
Thank you for the input... and that is my conundrum. We would never purchase links in a manner that Google will raise any flags, I guess at the end of the day is all going to depend on Volume and how many other links are pointing out from the sites that we all go after...
-
"Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such. This can be done in several ways, such as:
- Adding a rel="nofollow" attribute to the <a>tag</a>
<a>* Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file"</a>
<a>I do hate the implication there that any link received that doesn't meet the two criteria above is done for the purposes of manipulation...
At the end of the day hyperlinks existed before Google, and without rel="nofollow" attributes. If someone wants to link to someone else's site (for love, for money or for 'favours' ;-P) then they ought to be able to link in whatever way they choose.
Google themselves are the ones that created the whole 'paid linking' debacle by putting such apparent emphasis on the importance of inbound links - it shouldn't be for other people to adjust their behaviour to keep them happy, and this question is a classic example.</a>
- Adding a rel="nofollow" attribute to the <a>tag</a>
-
1. It depends on how many links you are going to get for your sponsorship/s
2. yes it will pass, if followed
If there are not hundreds of links, then it should be safe for you, but see at google's official view:
Paid links
Google and most other search engines use links to determine reputation. A site's ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to it. Link-based analysis is an extremely useful way of measuring a site's value, and has greatly improved the quality of web search. Both the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of links count towards this rating.
However, some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links that pass PageRank, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines and can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results.
Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such. This can be done in several ways, such as:
- Adding a rel="nofollow" attribute to the <a>tag</a>
<a>* Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file</a>
<a></a>
<a>Google works hard to ensure that it fully discounts links intended to manipulate search engine results, such as excessive link exchanges and purchased links that pass PageRank. If you see a site that is buying or selling links that pass PageRank,</a> let us know. We'll use your information to improve our algorithmic detection of such links.
- Adding a rel="nofollow" attribute to the <a>tag</a>
-
Good question, Daniel. It depends on what you mean by "sponsor". Is it like people sponsor sections on SearchEngineLand (which are really affiliate links)? Or is it an image that shows that you are a sponsor?
I agree that it's a grey area. Wil Reynolds always points out that if Google was going to penalize something like sponsoring a hospital and having a followed link back, then something has gone way wrong. I tend to agree with him.
Think about if it's adding value to the user and the organization. If it's like what Wil talks about, then I think it's fine. If it's labeled as a sponsored link in line w/ FTC guidelines, it should technically be no-followed. If it's an image that is followed, it will pass link juice (Matt Cutts said so last month in a Webmaster Video). I personally say that a sponsorship where your image is displayed is fine and it does not have to be nofollowed.
-
It's a grey area-- we've sponsored various students clubs before, and saw some great .edu links. The way to frame it is not so much you are paying them for links, so much as you are making a charitable donation to their organization, and they mention (and link to you) in order to recognize their sponsor. You can do the same thing with sponsoring scholarships, or making donations to non-profits like charities, libraries, and museums.
-
If they are followed links then it violates GWG.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Can Google bypass an AJAX link?
On my company's events calendar page when you click an event, it populates and overlay using AJAX, and then the link that is populated in that overlay then takes you to the actual events page. I see this as a problem with Google because it can't follow the AJAX link to the true event page, so right now nothing on those pages is getting indexed and we can't utilize our schema to get events to populate in the Google rich snippets or the knowledge graph. Possible solutions I considered: 1. Remove the AJAX overlay and allow the link from the events calendar to go directly to the individual event. 2. Leave the AJAX overlay and try to get the individual event pages directly indexed in Google. Thoughts and suggestions are greatly appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MJTrevens0 -
Internal Linking
Hi I've been looking over my pages and it says for this page for example http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/1-6kw-halogen-heater I have too many links, I think it was about 178. These links are from the menu and bottom of the page - how much of an issue is this for internal linking structure? I wouldn't want to remove the menus or change them too much. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Does Google take notice of nofollow links?
Does Google take any notice of nofollow links, they seem to count for something but don't know how much.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman10
Any experience?1 -
Content Internal Linking ?
Should we internally link new content to old content using anchor tags (keywords) related to pages from all new blogposts or should be keep rotating the blogposts like link from some blog posts & not from others. What ratio should we maintain. Right now i keep 2 links maximum from a 300 words posts or 3 in 500 words posts maximum. But linking from each new blog posts will be good?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | welcomecure0 -
Video SEO for Google
I was wondering what the prime factors were to make something rank for a video on Google. Does anyone have any suggestions? I think that length may be important, but I don't know what the ideal run time is. Hypothetically for local SEO, would I be better off doing a tag like "Mercedes Buffalo NY" or do individual tags of "Mercedes" and "Buffalo" Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | oomdomarketing0 -
Will Google View Using Google Translate As Duplicate?
If I have a page in English, which exist on 100 other websites, we have a case where my website has duplicate content. What if I use Google Translate to translate the page from English to Japanese, as the only website doing this translation will my page get credit for producing original content? Or, will Google view my page as duplicate content, because Google can tell it is translated from an original English page, which runs on 100+ different websites, since Google Translate is Google's own software?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi50 -
Will a Google manual action affect all new links, too?
I have had a Google manual action (Unnatural links to your site; affects: all) that was spurred on by a PRWeb press release where publishers took it upon themselves to remove the embedded "nofollow" tags on links. I have been spending the past few weeks cleaning things up and have submitted a second pass at a reconsideration request. In the meantime, I have been creating new content, boosting social activity, guest blogging and working with other publishers to generate more natural inbound links. My question is this: knowing that this manual action affects "all," are the new links that I am building being negatively tainted as well? When the penalty is lifted, will they regain their strength? Is there any hope of my rankings improving while the penalty is in effect?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | barberm1 -
Does the number of links on a page metric include repeated links?
Just wondering if the number of links on the page metric includes links that are repeated? So, if I had 100 links to one page would this count as 100 or 1 link?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cornwall
If it's the former does this mean more links to one page adds weight? Thanks0