5 replies to this topic

[madams]

I have been approached by a company that wants me to add a small banner to my site and pay me for it.

In addition, they want me to publish their articles, also paid for.

The content is "themed" to my site's content and may be of interest to the visitors. The articles are well written with 2 links to their site.

My question...

With all this "No Follow" stuff that I read Google is asking for, are there any issues with accepting the offer from the company?

Can any damage be done to my site by this partnership?

I have always been so I dont want to end up by mistake!

I've worked many years, and thousands of hours to get where I am and I don't want to screw it up in ignorance.

[Randy]

You'd need to put a nofollow on those links if you want to make sure you steer clear of Google's campaign against paid links. Otherwise you run a risk.

Of course it goes without saying that you'll want to make sure the other site is a quality one that hasn't and won't attract penalties. Because if they get labeled as a bad neighborhood and you're linking to them all over the place, the penalty could pass back upstream to you.

[madams]

Yes Randy, the sites are top quality, every day well-known names.

But what I dont understand is how G knows if a link is paid for..

I would quite happily link to HR because everyone here has helped me and others and it´s a great site.

That dont mean Jill is paying me $??? per month!

And even if she was, who could tell the difference.

Most of us, at some time, pay google for adds, and the internet is not owned by G, so why, when we try to make a bob or two, do we have to abide by G¨s rules?

I know we dont have to but as G is the most used SE, to compete, we really do have to

By the way, how will it effect the company thats paying me if I use a Nofollw on their links?

[1dmf]

By the way, how will it effect the company thats paying me if I use a Nofollw on their links?

it will affect them by not passing any PR from your site to theirs!

And remember you don't have to follow G!'s guidlines, it's your site not theirs, you just can't moan when they ban you from their index, as it's their index not yours!

[jen.bas]

I agree with Randy, implement the no follow method and make sure that their site is of high quality or else you'll mess up the whole thing..

[Captain_Planet]

I agree with Randy, implement the no follow method and make sure that their site is of high quality or else you'll mess up the whole thing..

If you do this you should check with the websites you are selling this to as they will likely be doing it for SEO reasons, they won't be happy if it is no-follow! Google won't ban you if you don't put nofollow on the links, for stuff they cannot be sure of they won't usually do anything drastic. Sites which make it clear you can buy links and they have links not in the body of the text linking to something different Google may pick up on this, but if you don't advertise the fact you can buy links on the site they have no way of knowing, they are clever aren't mind readers!

If they banned every site that could possibly be offering paid ads their results would suffer far more than any improvement from discouraging these kind of links.

Probably your biggest danger is if you are linking to a bad site, but as you say these are reputable so don't worry