Would linking out to a gambling/casino site, harm my site and the other sites it links out to?
-
I have been emailed asking if I sell links on one of my sites. The person wants to link out to slotsofvegas[dot]com or similar.
Should I be concerned about linking out to this and does it reduce the link value to any of the other sites that the site links out to?
Thanks,
Mark
-
I would not unless your site is about gabling or casinos as stated. I would not link out to non-relevant content.
-
Hi Mark,
I'll try to be ast straightforward as possible and say that the practice of buying/selling links with the intent of passing link value (a.k.a. pagerank, linkjuice) is against Google's quality guidelines.
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356
Unfortunately this is not uncommon, but there are some things you can negotiate that are within Google's quality guidelines.
If they want to purchase a link, it should be considered as advertising. If it is considered advertising, you should abide by Google's guidelines and add the "nofollow" tag to the link which essentially does not give the link any value. The only value is potential traffic from your site for the buyer(s).
Most likely, the buyer(s) will not agree to this as they are probably buying a followed link in order to pass pagerank from your site to theirs - in order to manipulate search rankings.
Would I do it? Nope, not worth the risk. However, I would be more favourable to link to them if they advertised with me. I would only link to them if they had relevant, related and good quality content that I genuinely wanted to refer my visitors to.
I'm guessing you're not a casino site, so you might want to steer clear from this transaction.
Regarding your second question:
Linking to "bad neighborhood" or poor quality sites can also affect your rankings - this is a known fact. Have a good look at their site:
- Is it a link farm
- Poor content, tons of ads/adsense
- Questionable material (adult etc..)
- Malware, spyware
- Thin affiliate site
- Do they have business contact details clearly visible
- Is it easy to contact them
- Is the content on their site being scraped from another
I think you get the picture, definitely have a read of what Rand said a few years ago:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/more-on-nofollow-at-seomoz-and-how-bad-outbounds-can-impact-websites
That post is still very relevant and sums up the point quite nicely.
Be cautious and good luck.
Cheers,
Dave
-
Yes, it might potentially harm you. And I believe that once you link to a gambiling/casino site, less people will be willing to get links from you again as some don't want to be associated to gambling/casino sites (bad neighbourhood).
-
-
Never admit to thinking about selling links
-
Working in gambling, I've seen a lot of paid for links to gambling sites burn the pages they're on if it's from unrelated content (sigh, I shouldn't be honest, just going to make my job harder). Usually this'll just burn the PR of the page it's on, but sometimes can do damage to your whole site.
-
In the interests of disclosure (and as mentioned above) I would technically be a competitor working in the same sector, but if I approach you for links you should probably turn me down too
-
If you page is about casinos or slots or games or probabilities or something related then you might consider giving them a link, but again, don't admit to selling them, especially in a public forum. Linking out to relevant content isn't as bad (paid is still bad). If it's a body building site though (just going by your user name) I wouldn't.
-
If it was an advertising link you would have to nofollow it to adhere to Google guidelines, however I doubt the person wanting to buy it would agree.
-
And yes adding any extra links slightly reduces the value of the links you already have.
-
-
My site is fitness/health/sports related if that makes any difference.
I understand your point about link dilution, but thats not what I mean, will it harm the rankings of my site or the sites that my site links out to?
-
Well if you're site is about casinos and gambling that can even be useful for you - it can help as google said that linking out to similar content can even help your ranking by showing users quality similar content.
If not for sure it won't help and more then that it can even harm you.
if you post the link in the footer of the page for example it won't even help them and more then that it can hurt you as they can smell a paid links in many ways.As for the other links of the page, a new link will dilute the link juice. (10 links out -> link juice / 10 for each one, adding a new one will mean link juice / 11 - even if y ou use no follow for one or more links)
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
-
Are links on sites that require PAD files good or bad for SEO?
I want to list our product on a number of sites that require PAD files such as Software Informer and Softpedia. Is this a good idea from an SEO perspective to have links on these pages?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SnapComms0 -
How/Why do I have so many Spam backlinks?
I was looking in GWT yesterday and found we have several thousand "spam" backlinks...I am curious why this happens and how this happens? There are some links from websites/domains that are not mine that appear to be spam. However, we own a large group of domains and have noticed some of the links are coming from 2 of those sites/domains we own to my main site. The sites/domains are not active, we just own them. I am wondering how someone could access these domains that are not active and create spammy backlinks to my main website? (They created about 20,000 links). Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | carlystemmer0 -
Disavow links leading to 404
Looking at the link profile anchor text of a site i'm working on new links keep popping up in the reports with let's say very distasteful anchor text. These links are obviously spam and link to old forum pages for the site that doesn't exist any more, so the majority seem to trigger the 404 page. I understand that the 404 page (404 header response) does not flow any link power, or damage, but given the nature and volume of the sites linking to the "domain" would it be a good idea to completely disassociate and disavow these domains?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MickEdwards0 -
[linkbuilding] link partner page on webshop, is it working?
Hello Mozzers, I am wondering about the effect of link building by swapping links between websites and adding a link partner page to the web shop containing hundreds of links. I have this new competitor coming in to the SERP of Google competing on the keywords I am targeting. The competitor has way more links than our web shop. The competitor has a page with hundreds of links to other web shops witch on there turn has a link to there web shop. (not all off them link back btw) I always thought it is no use sharing links with other websites this way in creating a huge page with hundreds of links. it is of no benefit for neighter website to do this. Still it does seems to work (?) and tis strategy is used by a lot of web shops in the Netherlands. How are you guys looking at this?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | auke1810
Witch of you guy's are using strategy like this?
Should I pick up this strategy myself?0 -
Switching site content
I have been advised to take a particular path with my domain, to me it seems "black hat" but ill ask the experts: Is it acceptable when one owns an exact match location domain eg london.com, to run as a tourist information site, gathering links from wikipedia,bbc,local paper/radio/sports websites etc, then after 6 - 12 months, switch the content to a business site? What could the penalties be? Please advise...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | klsdnflksdnvl0 -
External links in a global footer
My company runs a real estate site (http://yochicago.com) that features editorial blog and video content. In our footer, we feature links to some of our client sites. That footer is global, i.e., on every page of the site, of which there are thousands. One of our clients has been hit by Google for unnatural links. While I am very aware of them using a network of junk sites (http://www.seomoz.org/q/can-our-white-hat-links-get-a-bad-rap-when-they-re-alongside-junk-links-busted-by-panda), could we be contributing to the problem? Our site has the most links into the troubled site.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mikescotty0 -
Partners and Customers logo listing and links
We have just created a program where we list the customers that use our software and a link to their websites on a new "Customers" page. We expect to have upwards of 100 logos with links back to their sites. I want to be sure this isn't bordering on gray or black hat link building. I think it is okay since they are actual users of our software. But there is still that slight doubt. Along these same lines, would you recommend adding a nofollow or noindex tag? Thanks for your help.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | PerriCline0 -
Is this site penalized?
So I am working on a potential new client and they run several very well established and well ranking ecommerce sites. They have 1 site which is new and underperforming which they want me to "start" on as a trial. The idea being that if they like the progress I would take over SEO on the other sites. After a little research I am concerned that this site may be have a penalty. The site is www.discoverhookah.com The MOZrank and MOZtrust are actually pretty good considering the site is 6 months old, but if you look at the links they are ALL junk. They seems to be some reciprocal linking as well. I believe this is something they have done on their other sites and been ok with because they are 10+ years old and very trusted, however for a new site this link profile worries me. I do not have their analytics yet but looking at their traffic in compete.com shows a HUGE drop off shortly after the site went up (like from 2500 to under 100 visitors). I dont really trust compete.com's numbers outside of being and good indicator for trends, but it has me concerned. The client did tell me they are getting virtually no traffic. I am waiting on the crawl report to confirm its not a crawl or onsite problem but i dont think it is. I have 2 concerns: 1. I am taking this site on the cheap in order to establish a successful project, so I can work on their other sites, and I dont want to walk into a losing situation on the cheap! 2. I believe their webmaster is following some misguided SEO strategies but she has been with them for a long time. I dont think she wants to do theor SEO anyway, as she is very busy with maintenance and development, but if I could prove a penalty it would go a long way in helping me win the whole account from an SEO standpoint.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BlinkWeb0