Paying For Links and Google

By Vickie Scanlon

Thinking about paying for links? Before you think about placing some hard-earned cash on the table for links you might want to be aware of the Google turmoil that is etching it’s way throughout the net-and what you should be aware of before moving forward.

Paying for links

According to Cutts, Google have no objection to having the paid links, if they are identified-citing the FCC ruling that states that sponsored or advertisements must be clearly labeled. And per Google, one additional factor- it does not pass on page rank. If it does pass on page rank – you could be penalized, or worse yet, you may find many of your pages not being indexed.

So how do you go about doing this? Google suggests the following remedies.1. Redirect through URL blocked by robots.txt2. Redirect through URL using 3023. Use JavaScript to direct the link4. Apply rel=”nofollow” attribute to the link5. Add to the page header

It is probably wise to take notice, because according to this report from Sphinn,
(http://sphinn.com/story/4415 ) Google has been taking notice of the paid links and some have suggested that Google have manually penalized certain sites (delisting their website pages) vs. algorithmically doing so.(Per WebProNews-http://archive.webpronews.com/2007/0906.html)
Many advertisers may, and have bulked at some of these suggestions, indicating that it is stealing. However, I guess each Webmaster must decide for themselves - To be indexed, or not to be indexed.

The next question may be- how do you handle a request for a paid link to your site from an outside source? Same rules apply.

To conclude, though the situation is not in the webmaster’s favor, if you want a website, and if you want Google to index your site, then you’ll have to put the “nofollow” to your paid links as to not violate Google’s quality guidelines, or choose to pay for ads from siteswhere Google knows the webmaster follows Google's guidelines.

Vickie J Scanlon -- Visit her site at: http://www.myaffiliateplace.biz for free tools, articles, ebooks, how to info, affiliate opportunities, travel and tech accessories, software and computers for the online business. Or check her blog – My Affiliate Place Blog (http://myaffiliateplace.blogspot.com/).