Been offered a fee to put a link in my blog..

cormie

I've had a few emails similar to the below before, but this It hiink is the first within Ireland and definitely relevant. I'm also thinking, if there's a link to their site, maybe they will be linking to the article from their site too, which would be good for me possible if it's a big insurance website? What kind of fee do you think they'd be talking I wonder? Any negatives about going with such an agreement?

Thank you for replying.

I am looking to place a text link based advertisement rather than a traditional advert (such as a banner) and this would simply consist of a small sentence either on your homepage or within a relevant article; which would include a link to my clients site. My client is an Irish car insurance company which is obviously relevant to the content of your site and thus i believe the link itself will be beneficial to your readers. I chose the aforementioned article due to the relevance to my client's website who provide tips on safe driving in bad weather conditions.

This a really simple type of link that requires very little effort to place and is not required to be maintained or site wide. There are no graphics or banners which would take away any focus from the content of the article. I am looking for a 12 month placement and would be willing to pay upfront via paypal for this if we can come to an agreement.

Please let me know your thoughts,

The Apprentice

Been sending these emails out myself for the last few weeks i was working on a national insurer..

1. They will never link back to your site or blog article under any circumstances.
2. They will have a certain budget in mind, some can be very low some can be very high. Depends on your Domain Authority really (How long is a piece of string cormie :P)
3. Despite the national insurers, everyone in the game is doing this, even do its frowned upon by google... Anyone not doing it is sitting on page 3 and wondering why.
4. Less competitve websites will do ok with the standard low quality linkbuilding, but with insurance its HIGHLY competitive.
5. They will want a yearly link or permanent one similar to a guest post or article link from an internal page.

1. Negatives is that you will get caught, and google will spank your site. Highly unlikely.

Postives are you,ll be a few notes richer every year !! :P

cormie

Well I definitely wouldn't want to get my site blacklisted for the sake of a few extra quid.

Why wouldn't they link back to my site? hehe

So a few notes, are we talking 20eur, 200eur, 2,000eur, 20,000eur?

blue4ever

cormie

Under no circumstances accept that deal. If you’re in any doubt about the sh1tstorm about paid for links – zip over to the Google webmaster central where people who have tried to game the system for years have lost massive amounts of traffic because of paid for links, link farms and reciprocal links.

Here is one posted today: http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/webmasters/crawling-indexing--ranking/c8QJpMimQtA - yet another ‘webmaster’ crying is his soup because he got caught, warned and penalised.
General topics: http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!categories/webmasters/crawling-indexing--ranking
This is a post for July from google: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ie/2012/07/new-notifications-about-inbound-links.html

The great thing here is that the company that links to and the site they refer to are both going to be hit. Fair and square.

What’s even “funnier” is that people in the seo sphere, who obviously don’t take heed of straightforward warnings from Google regarding the changes in the search engines thinking, are still telling clients that these paid links – or any links- are a good thing. Naturally, as independent contractors they can, after link farming a client to death, walk away and let the clients traffic plummet. No recourse, no indemnity, just a completely shot business model because of their incapacity to listen to want the biggest search engine is ‘suggesting’

Trojan

cormie wrote: »

What kind of fee do you think they'd be talking I wonder?

€50 and up, maybe even as far as 4 or 5 figures, and either once off or annually. Depends on how popular your site is.

cormie wrote: »

Any negatives about going with such an agreement?

Yes... if you hadn't mentioned it here where your site(s) are also linked then it wouldn't be so quite so dangerous, but you stand a good chance of getting a Google penalty for selling links if anyone reported your site.

Not worth the risk.

cormie

Thanks again for the feedback. Didn't even know about the penalties involved. Thought it was just like a regular advertising deal between two businesses but I guess they are only doing it for the Google linking. Anyway, I sent an email earlier today saying I've been advised not to pursue it and haven't heard back

The Apprentice

Trust me cormie.. your doing it already without getting paid for it lol ...

http://www.vantasks.ie/useful-links.html

Blue4ever -- every man and his dog is doing it in some form or another, just because you cannot see it doesnt mean it doesnt exist.
Your domain authority is 18/100 probably could get this up over 30 which is what some of the larger company's require. As trojan said i would ask for 50 -100 .. i couldnt see you getting any more than that concerning the DA of your site.

Also, how about a paid inclusion of Guest post ?? to the value of 50-100 .... bobs your blue uncle..

This forum is cool sometimes :S

cormie

Are you telling me having useful links on that page will put me at risk with Google, really?

What's the domain authority ranking, 18/100 doesn't sound too good. I didn't really understand the rest of your post

The Apprentice

No those links are perfectly useful corm.. but in googles eyes how could they tell the difference if boards.ie purchased that link or not ??

They could,nt. But there are morons out there that would make it plain for all to see that the link was purchased unlike the links you have. There is a right way and a wrong way to build links.

Some of the larger companies in ireland, if they were to purchase links from you just like this person that contacted you; their requirements are many.
1. MUST have a Domain authority of 30 or above..
2. Must be an irish site
3. Must be Football, Or Fashion related or whatever niche etc.
4. Must be Permanant link etc.. So an internal page such as guest post or perhaps Mention anywhere else on the site is ok..

So there are usually lots of these requirements to fullfill .. Again, just watch what your doing and you will be fine if your unsure ask questions or walk away.

http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/online-business-authority/ - Here is a pretty good explanation of what domain authority is. I suspect yours is so low because of the lack of Diversity in the Incoming Links from other domains.

Rollo Tamasi

Don't accept it. It's lazy link building from that SEO guy and it's lazy money on your part if you accept it. Why risk your site and your reputation for a few small euro?

cormie

Thanks again

Definitely won't be accepting it anyway. This whole SEO and Google thing is a mindfield, I thought I was on top of it at one stage, maybe I was, I had a score of 97 I think on the hubspot website grader. Who knows what it is now!

The Apprentice

Although I cant agree with rollo on some of his points, its easy money on your part imo.

in hindsight from my behalf putting your link up while helping you with the backlink while good- could be foolish to put up that link now while your profile is visible for google to see so publicly is bad.

Probably for this one to pass would be a recommdation but on other sites i would sincerely look at it with different goggles. There are some sites commanding five figures a year to get a link up so most definitely look at the income stream !

cormie

Thanks again, is that not a case of just being a bit greedy though? If my site is doing good enough to warrant a 5 figure sum from a backlink, then surely it's successful enough that I should be making money off it anyway and not need to risk that main revenue stream of what my site is actually about, rather than an additional stream of a paid link?

The Apprentice

Na man, i just cant agree with any of the above points..

If you get **** scared just convert the link into a banner on the home page - ? Theres more than one way to skin a cat and all your doing is leaving money on the table. Those moaning that google shut them down for paid links i could nearly be 90% it was a reciprocal link that was plain as day for all to see.
It takes a manual look from google you must remember so unless you were pointed out by someone i shouldnt think you will ever have problems.

cormie

Thanks again for the input!

Vurnon San Benito

Major overreaction to link placement on this thread.
Won't affect your site very much to be honest, just agree a term and remove it after.

As well as that, the insurance link would be relevant to your site if that VanTasks one is yours..

cormie

What do you mean about the link being relevant?

The Apprentice

Insurance - van insurance related ..

cormie

Ah ok, so more likely I voluntarily put it there for the benefit of my readers?

Vurnon San Benito

cormie wrote: »

Ah ok, so more likely I voluntarily put it there for the benefit of my readers?

I mean that it's not a blatant ad - like placing a casino link in one of your articles or something like that.
Insurance is very much related to vans and something you'd expect to find on a site like yours.

You're hardly going to be thrown outta Google or punished harshly by having something your readers might be interested in.

Very much up to you regards taking the deal, but I certainly would - for the right price.

cormie

I think I'll pass, just incase, probably would have only gotten 20 quid :P

genieswish

Linking out is usually seen as a good thing - how would big G know you got paid for it, unless you have loads of them?

TsuDhoNimh

genieswish wrote: »

Linking out is usually seen as a good thing - how would big G know you got paid for it, unless you have loads of them?

In this case, a competitor of his would report his site for webspam (paid links) citing this thread as their 'proof' and if/when it's reviewed (many are, some aren't.. sadly) the site would be penalised for selling links.

As for how they do it in general (assuming it isn't posted on a public forum or reported by other users), they look at the information they have available and use that information to build up profiles of suspicious activity. Thresholds will occur where sites (potentially) engaging in questionable activity receive an automatic algorithmic penalty (so a drop in rankings - check out discussions for Penguin penalties for more info on this type of scenario) or receive a manual penalty following a review by Google (check out the changes over the last year where Google provide more detailed information on manual penalties via webmaster tools).

If a site is engaging in questionable activity in their link building, what else are they doing that might flag Googles attention? If your site is found to be linking out to them, or to a variety of sites with questionable profiles, that will bring negative signals and negative attention on your site. So if you don't know what you're doing and understand the potential consequences of it, it's an area that's best to avoid completely for safety. So I fully agree with cormie's gut reaction and would be the only advice any could give in good conscience.

In reality, as The Apprentice has been going to pains to point out, it's extremely difficult to accurately identify (most, assuming it's done smartly - some are blatantly obvious) paid links. Are you linking to my site because I helped you fix your car last weekend, is it because my site has great value for your users and you genuinely love it, because I'm your brother in law or because I slipped you €100? Without going into private investigation on hundreds of thousands of site owners it's impossible to know in the majority of cases.

What makes it obvious and what makes it a poor choice with obvious signals, someone like The Apprentice could spot in a heartbeat. So that's not a major risk for him and would go a long way to explaining his belief of it being 'fine'. He has seen it a million times, has done it (probably from both sides of the fence) and knows enough about the industry to make an informed decision weighing up the pros and the cons. For an average business owner, they just don't have the knowledge or experience to make a judgement call like that so anything other than a clear and unequivocal "Don't do it" just isn't sustainable advice.

In reality, this is just lazy SEO (personally I'd go as far as to say it's not SEO, it's search engine manipulation that many market as SEO... but that's a different debate and going off topic slightly).

If the marketer in question had used the effort put into the paid link attempt (which failed, and will fail with a large number of high authority sites and site owners) into a genuine outreach (I'm not sure of your social presence cormie, but I'm sure I'd have been able to make contact with you via various different online channels - if they saw your activity on boards, that would have been a very good way), had invested the proposed 'paid link' budget into producing a little content that was exactly what would benefit your type of user (which is also that insurance companies target market), then used the outreach to ensure you were aware of it (either in a subtle or a completely obvious way), they more than likely would have had far more success.

In that case, they'd more than likely have gained a link from your site (due to high quality content that you genuinely would have wanted your users to see), have had genuine content that others would like and appreciate (so other incoming links and social sharing) and be doing it all completely above board.

While I can't disagree with The Apprentice that the risks (assuming you hadn't posted this publicly) in this specific case were minute and it could have been easy money, I also fully agree with cormie's choice to say no and would advice any business owner to do the same. If you don't have enough knowledge of the ins and outs to make a decision without heeding a warning such as mine, then the warning not to do it is the only answer than anyone in a position of knowledge should give.

cormie

Very good post, thanks for the contribution

worc

Hi cormie,

There's a divide out there on things like this - blackhat vs whitehat SEO (black = bad to the bone, white = you're an angel). But what some define as black, others don't see the problem.

Some SEOs are really good at the black stuff or inbetween (grey) stuff but in the long run personally I keep with the white stuff and it's been paying off well for me. To be fair as well, you've also posted this on a public forum so if you went with it you could be outed by someone else - Google have a report feature to allow others to report sites they think are bad to the bone.

You could do well to read some of SEOMoz's blog posts (recent whiteboard Friday gives a nice whitehat breakdown of good practice) but there's Aaron Wall's SEOBook which can be very insightful about some black/grey hat areas. Pretty sure Aaron got stung a few years back with black hat SEO and got penalised, so as you might gather from some of his posts he doesn't like Google too much.

cormie

Thanks for that worc. I'd definitely be one to keep to the white hat stuff myself too. I just don't want to take the risk of jeopardising my site/business. I believe if the service I offer is good enough and gets enough recommendations and people talking about it, then this along with angel SEO will be enough to keep it going strong. I don't do any fake reviews or anything like that and I wouldn't take any risks with things like SEO, just to get a few more clicks in the short term.