9 replies to this topic

[rolf]

First, let me clarify. We're talking a no-follow plain as day advertising link, that will not in any way be trying to deceive the engines, so I'm not asking about anything covert here.

Now we've got that out of the way, on with the question...

I've been approached by a somewhat well known PR company, who have said they are working for a very well known chain of shops in the UK and they would like a text link from our home page - we all know why they want such a thing, so we don't need to go into that.

Currently we don't allow any advertising on the site. Every link is a genuine organic, non-paid link to something we feel is worthy of our visitors' attention. Some are reciprocals with friends or associates, but that's all.

That aside, we like money and we like being able to pay our bills, so if a major firm wants to pay for an advert on our site, we're not entirely against the idea - but how would one price such a thing?

[Michael Martinez]

If anyone were to approach me, I would start by asking for $1 million. If they agree to those terms, they can do whatever they please with the site.

[Jill]

LOL @ Michael. I like that answer.

How can we really say how much it would be worth to you, Rolf? Charge whatever you think you can get, if you don't mind having the link there.

[rolf]

I Like Michael's answer too

Thanks for the feedback, and I agree with both answers. Now I just need to figure out how much it's worth to me!

[rolf]

Update:

I contacted the company and was just up front about the situation - "we don't currently have advertising but we're not entirely averse for the right price, what's your offer?" (paraphrased)

They sent the HTML through and it's entirely tasteful and appropriate, and they have made an offer which is nowhere near a million pounds (I wish!) but if they can be bumped up a little then we will seriously consider it.

The text, plus the position and on-page context, makes this obviously an advert with no deceit, however, however the HTML doesn't include the nofollow attribute.

The money they are offering is not enough to warrant risking a slap from G so should I insist on nofollow? Is a lack of nofollow a deal breaker for you?

[Mikl]

... if they can be bumped up a little then we will seriously consider it.

Rolf, I'd work on the assumption that no-one opens with their best offer. Ask for a bit more, but don't be too dogmatic about it.

Mike

[Jill]

The money they are offering is not enough to warrant risking a slap from G so should I insist on nofollow? Is a lack of nofollow a deal breaker for you?

It's not up to you to know that Google suggests that paid ads have nofollow. What about all the millions of people with websites who don't follow the SEO community?

In my opinion, it's fine to have the ad and not have it have nofollow. Google has things in place to determine if something might be an ad and then not count it, if they so choose. They can't really penalize for stuff like that as they are in the ad business themselves and it would likely be illegal in that they would be trying to monopolize the ad selling business.

[rolf]

I'll have to have a bit more of a chat with them about the terms but this sounds like it could be workable.

Thanks for the feedback, always good to get such level headed opinions. Cheers

[Michael Martinez]

I think if you want to consider taking advertising, there are less risky ways to do it. Based solely on your brief summation of their contacts with you, it sounds like the other party is a typical link broker looking for previously untapped resources. You're just another piece of meat in their grinder and they probably won't continue to pay you if they conclude your site has been penalized.

Losing that ability to pass value to other sites through your links -- is that really worth even 100 pounds a month? There IS a stigma (albeit a small one) attached to having a search engine penalty.

[rolf]

Based solely on your brief summation of their contacts with you, it sounds like the other party is a typical link broker looking for previously untapped resources.

I agree, you're probably right.

Losing that ability to pass value to other sites through your links -- is that really worth even 100 pounds a month?

Well, that's a difficult question to answer fully. We don't in any way rely on our ability to pass link juice for our income, so that's not particularly useful to us, however, we do rely on hard won (and ethically won) SE traffic for a good portion of our income and we don't want to risk that.

That aside, I take your point.

We talked through all the options within the company and the ways we could do this and we just weren't comfortable with what they are asking for.

Ultimately we've decided that we just aren't prepared to take risks so we have nothing to loose by asking for exactly what we want under the terms we want, so that's what we've done. They will probably say no, but like I say, we have nothing to loose if we're going to say no to the current offer anyway.

Thanks for the input everyone.