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Warning About Selling Links

by Steven Wagenheim
12 replies
  • SEO
    • |
A friend of mine had a great web site with a great PR. Then he sold links to
people to put in the site and his PR fell through the floor.

Google, for whatever reason, frowns greatly on this.

I don't know if this is old news of not because this is something I just
recently found out so please accept my apologies if you already know this.

For those who don't, please be careful about selling links on your web site.
#links #selling #warning
  • Profile picture of the author BigHef
    Yep it's pretty old news Steven - but another warning surely can't hurt!
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    • Profile picture of the author steve39
      In Google's eyes, the only thing worse than buying links is selling them. They will hit you hard once they find out. In fact, they have set up a very easy way for anyone to report a site suspected of buying/selling dofollow links - and it's completely anonymous.
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      • Profile picture of the author tonywarrior2
        which was at the back of my mind when I posted this:

        http://www.warriorforum.com/adsense-...good-idea.html
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        • Profile picture of the author steve39
          There is a big difference between paying a webmaster directly for dofollow links, and paying someone who can point out legitimate links. Even though you may not be thrilled that hundreds of people are leaving anchor text on your site, I doubt that Google would consider it a "paid" link.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mickm
    There's another problem with paying for links.. if you stop a months payment and the links are removed that's gonna hit you pretty hard in terms of rank, but then if you start paying for them again Google is gonna spot it straight away and well.. you know the rest.
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  • Profile picture of the author intelinside
    I don't know whether your friend got bad PR because of selling links or due to 'bad neighbours'. It is rather difficult to judge the paid links but it is far easier to judge a bad neighbour by G.
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  • Profile picture of the author SoundsGood
    What's a bad neighbor?
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  • Profile picture of the author DeanJames
    This particularly applies if people are using code from a link broker. Usually the PR tanks to 0 but a site can still rank well with absolutely no PR so it's a case of whether you mind losing the ability to pass link juice if going down this route. I'd say it has more viability if you have a high PR site that isn't doing so well on the traffic front. It's been common knowledge for a good while that Google hits sites selling links if it finds out about it.

    Dean
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    100% FREE Download - Click HERE
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  • Profile picture of the author Black Hat Cat
    Banned
    Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim View Post

    A friend of mine had a great web site with a great PR. Then he sold links to people to put in the site and his PR fell through the floor.

    Google, for whatever reason, frowns greatly on this.

    I don't know if this is old news of not because this is something I just
    recently found out so please accept my apologies if you already know this.

    For those who don't, please be careful about selling links on your web site.
    Here's another little tidbit.....correlation does not equal causation.

    His PR could have dropped for any number of reasons, the least of which is his selling links, unless he was blabbing all over the internet that he had links for sale.
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  • Profile picture of the author luc85
    What is the difference between selling links and selling advertising on your website? Does Google view both of them negatively? Thanks for any info given.
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    • Profile picture of the author 4morereferrals
      Its only wrong if its NOT Google Adsense Links ... because only they can tell us all how to place PROPER relevant links on OUR OWN web properties. Think about that for a second.

      One day we'll figure out how to take the freakin internet back from the mofo's behind the google algo's. Who decided they should be the Masters of the Internet for all to bow before?

      And everyones panties are in a twist over microsofts draconian biz practices.

      Originally Posted by luc85 View Post

      What is the difference between selling links and selling advertising on your website? Does Google view both of them negatively? Thanks for any info given.
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      • Profile picture of the author dburk
        Hi Warriors,

        Google has absolutely no problem with people selling and buying links for website traffic. They only have a problem with people selling links expressly for the purpose of PageRank manipulation.

        That is one of the reasons that they implemented the nofollow attribute for links. Use it on all the links you sell and you'll have no problems!
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        *         Don Burk Advertising & Marketing - www.donburk.com

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  • Profile picture of the author AndyBlackSEO
    Google usually devalues outbound links that has words like 'our sponsored' or 'resources' or 'partners' etc. The best thing to do is to set up links that are positioned like this.

    Also, if you have words such as 'buy links now' or 'text links for sale', on your site you're asking for trouble.
    Also, it's best not to link out to other sites too much from your homepage. This restricts your pr passing through to your inner pages. It's best to link out via 2nd tier pages, and also from within content. Wikipedia style.
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