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
-
Will google be able to crawl all of the pages given that the pages displayed or the info on a page varies according to the city of a user?
So the website I am working for asks for a location before displaying the product pages. There are two cities with multiple warehouses. Based on the users' location, the product pages available in the warehouse serving only in that area are shown. If the user skips location, default warehouse-related product pages are shown. The APIs are all location-based.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Airlift0 -
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 -
For those of you that used LINK DETOX.
Did you go ahead and remove all the TOXIC and HIGH RISK links? Just the toxic? Were you successful with the tool?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | netviper0 -
On-site links
Hi everybody, There's a lot of information about getting sitewide backlinks, but so few about on-site optimization. Is there a maximum of links to put on a page ? Is there a maximum of link that a page should receive ? etc ... ? So, what is the optimal strategy ? And I'm only concerned about on-page and on-site link, not backlinks commming from other sites. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DavidPilon0 -
Cross linking between categories
Is it useful for SEO to cross link between TOP level categories, let's say I have a Home page and then 2 sub categories, one about green widgets one about red widgets
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics
Should i create a link from the green widget to the red widget or should I leave those are separate silos ? I know that within a silo i need to cross link ( from green widget 1 to green widget 2 etc... ) but how about about from the main category to the other main category ?0 -
Do nofollow links affect link profile?
I've read that it's good to keep a natural link profile. Some naked links, some links going to our company name, some with anchor text, etc. Do nofollow links affect this link profile, or is it only followed links that are taken into account?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lighttable0 -
Why do i not receive google traffic?
over the 4-5 months i have published over 3000 unique articles which i have payed well over 10 000usd for, but i still only receive about 20 google visitors a day for that content. i uploaded the 3000 articles after i 301 redirected the old site to a a new domain (old site had 1000 articles, and at least 300visits from google a day), and all the old conetnt receives the traffic fine (301 redirect is working 100percent now and pr went from 0 to 3pr) articles are also good ranging from 400-800 words. 90 percent of them are indexed by google, most of them have been bookmarked to digg reddit etc website domain is over 10 years old - alltopics.com why google doesnt send me the traffic i deserve?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rxesiv0 -
Google Places / Google Analytics
I apologize first if this comes across as extremely novice, but I realized I really didn't know the answer and so - here I am. 🙂 Is anyone familiar with tracking google place traffic in google analytics? Is it possible? I'd love to know how many of our visitors are coming from our google place listings (we have several locations throughout the state.) Much gratitude in advance ~ Alicia
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Aaronetics0