Back links off the back of a paid sponsorship deal

[Bendall]

Hey Mozzers,

I am in need of a bit of advice please?

I work for a Gyms chain in the UK and we are sponsoring a major sporting event next month.

As part of the deal we get a dedicated webpage and backlink from their high authority website.

We do not have a logo and multiple backlinks in the footer on every page of their website, so to my knowledge Google will not necessarily regard this as a paid backlink right?

Is there anything in the algorithm that is able to distinguish between the aforementioned backlink and a natural one?

Just wondering if our domain is linking to receive the equity or not?

Regards

Ben

[taryn_s]

Hi Ben,

Sponsoring events is a great link building tactic. As the link will come as a side-effect of the sponsorship rather than from direct payment, Google will not penalise you for this. Imagine the reverse - companies would be far less likely to sponsor events, support charities etc if Google were to start penalising them.

Here are a few posts you can look to for reassurance:
http://moz.com/blog/5-link-building-tactics-to-improve-your-local-rankings
http://www.wordtracker.com/blog/33-seo-experts-share-their-most-effective-link-building-strategies
http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2064922/131-legitimate-link-building-strategies

[Bendall]

We will be supplying the content for our dedicated page on their webpage so will be completely unique and relevant to our domain's subject.

Thanks for your reply.

Ben

[gowebsol]

I'd be more concerned about duplicate content, actually. I've seen may instances like this where the event website simply grabs content off your website and links back to you with no regard for duplicates. That's the only thing I see the algorithm picking up. I wouldn't be concerned it would be tagged as a paid link from your description, especially since the link isn't what you are paying for, it's the sponsorship. You can see numerous examples of this when you look at sponsor profiles on all kinds of websites - even SEO conferences The link is a benefit for sure, but not the primary thing you are paying for.

This article from Search Engine Watch gets pretty detailed on what Matt Cutts considers a paid link: http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/news/2332787/matt-cutts-shares-4-ways-google-evaluates-paid-links#