6 replies to this topic

[GirlGeek]

I've noticed sometimes with paid links, what we're getting is not a direct text link to our site, but a redirect through the referrers site. How do the search engines view redirected links? Do they actually help rankings or are they a waste of money?

Annette

[Jill]

It depends if it's a 301-redirected link or not. 301 would be fine as the link pop would eventually get to your page.

[torka]

... assuming, of course, that the site is "allowed" to pass link pop in the first place.

If it's a site that's known to be selling links, their links may not pass popularity (in Google at least). Not sure about what the other SEs think about paid links, or how they handle them, but Google has been known to block the passing of link pop entirely from domains they know sell links.

My : buy links based on the traffic they will potentially bring, not for supposed/possible SE ranking benefits.

--Torka

[Alex Choo]

GirlGeek,

torka gave wonderful advice. Please do not buy links for the sake of google juice. the better strategy is to buy links in sites that are similar to yours, in the hope that their readers will visit your site.

Then you have to ensure that you have good and fresh content so that these readers will also become your regular readers. When they link to your site from their own blogs/sites, then your google juice will (hopefully) increase

Go for quality traffic, and prepare quality content for them. Everything else will take care of itself.

[jammin' Jake]

Torka and Alex, I couldn't agree more with what you've said about purcahsing links for the sake of traffic and not so much page rank purposes.

I've identified a very targeted vendor directory that is part of an excellent industry resource website in our niche market and have contacted them about getting listed in their directory. While I was looking at the links on the site in the page source, they are structured as follows:

<A HREF="/rd/Clickbounce.cfm?url=www.VENDOR'SSITE.com">

While we will likely advertise in this directory as the site is a great hangout for our target market, I am curious if this would also pass some link juice on to our site. The contact person from the website said they could put a direct link to our site if we insisted upon it, but if we'll get credit for the link anyways, I'm not going to bother with it.

Is this what Jill was referring to as the 301 redirect stuff?

[chrishirst]

depends on how it redirects on to your pages.

Is this what Jill was referring to as the 301 redirect stuff?

Yep

[Jill]

You'll want to check if that redirect is a 301 or a 302 as I think it could be either.