4 Ways to Determine if a Paid Link is a “Paid Link”
Not all paid links are “paid links” (the kind that can get you in trouble with Google). But how are you suppose to know which ones are okay and which ones can result in your website being penalized or banned! There are four criteria you can use to evaluate any paid-linking opportunity to determine if the link is a good opportunity or one that you should avoid:
1. Your Intention
2. Compensation
3. Editorial Control
4. Advertising Labels
Your Intentions
Let’s talk about your intentions first. Whenever I place a link, it is always to fulfill my three-fold mission as a link builder: 1). Increase visibility, 2). Drive targeted traffic, and 3). Boost search relevance. Having all three goals in mind when your are looking for a linking opportunities will help you steer away from paid-linking opportunities that are risky. If your only concern is boosting your rankings, you are more likely to place links on pages that search engines will flag as suspicious or that will result in a penalty.
If you are considering buying a link, ask yourself these questions: will the link increase your visibility for a targeted keyword or phrase? Is the linking webpage/website relevant to your webpage/website? Will the link drive targeted traffic to your website? As long as you can answer “yes” to two of the questions, at least your intentions are good.
Although, regardless of how good your intentions are, a link purchased solely because it increases your visibility and drives targeted traffic to your website can still result in you being penalized.
Compensation
Another obvious factor for all paid links is if the link is, well, paid for. Direct payment involves a very clear understanding that in exchange for payment, a link is placed on a website. This may seem simple enough, but direct payments are not the only way to pay for a link. There are other indirect methods to consider as well.
Indirect forms of payment include any exchange of value for a link, such as:
Donating money or services to a charity
Offering “free” services to an institution
Gifting bloggers for a post
Giving away free articles
Giving away free gifts
Doing interviews
Speaking at conferences
Entertaining guests
Where indirect payments cross the line is when the exchange of the value for the link is explicit and required. You donate services in exchange for a link, or you gift a blogger a free $400 software package in exchange for a positive review. No link. No services or gifts.
In order to remain legitimate, do not require a link in exchange for value. But if the website owner offers the link, well that’s just good karma returning to you. Donate services to a charity with no expectation of a link, and gift a blogger free software with no expectations of a link. Then wait and see if they offer the link.
Once an offer is made, you are certainly well within “ethical” practices to request a certain type of link—but only to make a request. The more forceful you are in trying to strong-arm an individual to change a link to fit your needs, the more of a “paid link” the opportunity becomes.
Editorial Control
Another big factor to determine if a paid link is a “paid link” is who has editorial control over the link. Search engines use links like votes to determine which websites are more important and relevant for a given keyword or phrase. The links that search engines value most are links that are organic—in other words, links that an individual created because he thought your content was compelling. Links that he controls, choosing where to place the link on his website, what to link to on your website, what anchor text to use, and whether the link is “NoFollow” or not. True 3rd-party validation.
As soon as you start to control the link, requiring a certain placement, target, anchor text, etc., the link becomes less legitimate. A great example of the loose nature of editorial control and how it can affect a link are paid directories.
On the one hand, you have a directory like Yahoo! that charges money to review and place a link in its directory. It’s a paid link. However, Yahoo! asserts complete editorial control over the link, choosing what, where and how the link will appear in its directory. For this reason, even though you are paying for the link, Google regards the link as a good link. The search engine respects the autonomy that Yahoo’s editorial guidelines establish. They in fact recommend placing a link in the Yahoo! Directory.
On the other hand, there are directories that basically turn over complete editorial control to you if you pay the asking price. This is an example where Google would discount and possibly penalize all the links in the directory, because they are “paid links”.
Advertising Labels
Advertisements are another form of legitimate paid links. What makes a advertisement a legitimate paid link versus a bad “paid link”? If the link is properly label as an advertisement so that both individuals and search engines know it is an advertisement, then it is a good paid link.
The best method for doing this is through a “NoFollow” attribute in the link. By adding a NoFollow attribute in the link, you are instructing the search engines to discount the value of the link for some reason. There are several reasons you might include a NoFollow attribute in a link, but in this case, it is because you want to clearly indicate that the link you paid for is an advertisement.
The NoFollow attribute is completely invisible to people and will not affect you ability to create visibility and to drive targeted traffic to your website. It does, however, affect your ability to boost your search rankings—as it should.
Other forms of labeling include using well-established advertising tools, such as AdWords, Yahoo Marketing, MSN AdCenter, AdBrite, etc. Most search engines are able to easily recognize the code snippets from these advertisers and discount them without penalizing you.
Paid Links Strategy
If a link you are considering buying breaks many of these rules, whether it is called advertisement or not, buyer beware. You may think you are making legitimate business decisions, but the search engines don’t see it that way.
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