This would not be considered selling links would it?
-
I have a site that is an informational site about a particular market segment. It is not a directory at all, but as part of the site I have pages for the various vendors, and have "states" pages that list which vendors sell in those states.
The site makes very good money on adsense. But I see opportunity in getting the vendors to pay to be listed in our site. At a minimum, grandfather in those already there, and then charge for new companies to be included. Most of the new companies are second-tier players anyway, and if they decode not to pay and get in, it's not to a detriment ot my site. But I do have companies lining up wanting to get in.
Of course my first thought, is what will Google think? I would of course make any link out to one of the vendors NOFOLLOW, so even even though they pay for inclusion on our site, I am not selling links for page juice.
Google loves us in search right now, so they have a favorable opinion of us. The site has lots of content, and new blog posts and comments all most pages hourly.
So, is this going to be okay with Google? I don't see how it breaks any rules, but thought I'd better check.
One further worry: If I change the new guys for inclusion on the site, and don't charge the old ones, that means I'd have the new guys NOFOLLOW, but the old ones would still be DOFOLLOW if I don't change them. I don't want Google to be confused thinking I might have sold those existing DOFOLLOW links as well. So, should I change them all to NOFOLLOW? And if I do, does that then cause anything that Google would not like (I know they don't like pagerank hoarding).
-
I believe that all links are seen as 'leakage' but by having a nofollow it shows that you aren't trying to spam or sell links for the sole purpose of link building.
-
Hard to give a definite answer here but if you look at some of the most popular sites on the web, the majority of them don't pass link juice.
-
Does Google think any less of sites that have nofollow on most all eternal links?
-
I think you would be well advised to proceed with caution here, especially if your site is already making "very good money" from adsense. You say your site is not a directory at all, but then say you have State pages that lists vendors and are considering adding a paid option for these vendors... well, without knowing anything more about your site, it sounds a lot like a directory to me. I would set all as nofollow just to cover yourself because the last thing you want is to take a hit from Google and lose all that very good money from adsense!
-
Nofollow seems like a good option for you.
While link building I have come across a website that will only dofollow paid links and nofollow unpaid links, when i questioned them (just for my own information) they said it was to give more benefit to the paid links over non-paid but they wanted to keep the non-paid because they offer value to the website visitor.
-
That is fine.
You can create nofollow for the vendors just to be safe to show Google it is not to be manipulative but just business.
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
-
Internal Links from Blog
Quick question. In regards to linking to products from your blog. I've read recently that linking excessively between your site can be a bad SEO habit. So, I was curious if anyone else has heard of this. Plus, if you have a blog, how many internal links should you have going to you pages on your site - other blogs, products etc? Thanks.
Content Development | | Kdruckenbrod0 -
Are press releases that could end up being published with duplicate content links point back to you bad for your site ?
With all the changes to the seo landscape in the resent years im a little unsure as to how a press release work looks in the eyes of Google (and others). For instance, you write up a 500 word press release and it gets featured on the following sites : Forbes Techcrunch BBC CNN NY Times etc ... If each of these cover your story but only rewrite 50% of the article (not saying these sites wouldn't re write the entire artcile, but for this purpose lets presume only 50% is rewritten) could it be negative to your backlink profile, ? Im thinking not, as these sites will have high authority, but what if once your press release is published on these sites 10 other smaller sites re publish the stories with almost no re writing, either straight from the press release or straight from the article in the mainstream news sites. (For clarification this Press release would be done in the fashion of a article suggestion to relevant journalists, rather than a blanket press release, via PR Newswire, mass mail out etc. Although i guess the effect with duplicate content backlinks is the same.) You now have c. 50 articles online all with very similar content with links pointing back at you, would this have a negative effect or would each link just not carry as much value as it normally would. By now we all understand publishing duplicate content on our own sites is a terrible idea, but dose have links pointing back to your self from duplicate (or similar) content hosted on other sites (some being highly authoritative) effect your site 's seo ?
Content Development | | Sam-P1 -
Is Publishing Content from a Book to your Site Considered Duplicate Content?
It is a book we don't own, either. Would you need to somehow find the original and rel=canonical it? Or is this just all around bad to do? Thanks.
Content Development | | ThridHour0 -
If you were guest blogging would you prefer a link or revenue share
I am looking at ideas at the moment, we have been getting a large number of guest bloggers wanting to write for our site but i have to say we are turning down around 90% of the articles as they are low quality. So i am just wondering, to attract high quality articles, should we carry on offering a link in the articles or offer them revenue share by asking for their google adsense code and putting it somewhere on the page. If we did offer this, how would we impliment this, we work on a joomla website and have read about rev share but not sure how we do this correctly. Would like to know people's thoughts on this
Content Development | | ClaireH-1848861 -
How to encourage guest bloggers to link back
Hi, we have just started to allow guest bloggers on our site www.in2town.co.uk where we offer them two links within the articles, but what we would really like to do is to encourage them to link back to their articles. I am trying to find information on how we can encourage guest bloggers to link back and would love to hear your thoughts.
Content Development | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Keep or remove a link directory with 700 entries?
Hi, I've a site which has a link directory included. About 700 entries. Each entry has an own page with a title, description and of course a link to the extern site. The link is not marked as "nofollow". The site is only linking to similar / relevent other sites. Now the seo question: Keep the link directory as is? Add a nofollow to the links? Remove the link directory? (and about 700 pages) Best wishes, Georg.
Content Development | | GeorgFranz0 -
What are the advantages/disadvantages of a blog residing on a website as opposed to free-standing and linked to site
I have a cleint with a web site and with 3 freestanding wordpress blogs - should we be housing those blogs on the site? should we combine them (its an insurance compnay with several business units). thanks
Content Development | | thirsty30 -
Setting up a blog for client, should I build external links to the blog
I have a new client in the holiday industry and want to setup a wordpress blog, we will be writing the first few blogs and linking back to the relevant site page. But I am wondering how I should promote the blog so that the links are more powerful back to his own site. Blogging is not my forte and doesn't come naturally so I really need some good advice to how I can start offering this service to my clients. Thanks
Content Development | | iprosoftware0