Hosting 'Paid for' articles that include links

[mr16]

I have been approached by a company wanting to put some articles on my site. They will pay me to have them there. The articles contain a number of links to their sites. If I accept and put the articles on, will this affect my Google PR? If so can I counter this by adding the no follow tag (presuming the company is ok with this)?

[tedster]

If Google decides that a site is selling links that pass PageRank, then yes, currently Google may devalue PR for such sites. The rel="nofollow" attribute stops the PageRank from passing and is one of the approaches that Google suggests. There's no negative action from Google if the purchased links do not pass PR.

You could also use a robots meta-tag of index,nofollow for the whole page, or pass the link clicks through a script before forwarding the user to the click's eventual destination.

[defanjos]

If the articles are relevant to your site, how is Google going to know you did not write those articles yourself and linked to some resources on your own?

This fear of Google is getting out of hand.

[mr16]

Tedster thanks for that. I thought as much. Will have to check if they are happy with the 'no follow', if not then if they still want the articles on the site they need to pay me a nice big chunk of cash - somehow don't think it will happen but nice to dream.

[tedster]

Just so we're clear, I was reiterating how Google behaves today IF they identify you as a link seller. It certainly can happen that a given execution goes undetected. Whether to go that route is an individual business decision, which should be made on the basis of knowing Google's publicly stated policies.

So what I'm saying is first study the landscape, and then run your site wisely.

[mr16]

Defanjos, I did think the same, but am not sure. Company that writes the articles seems to have a lot of links on other articles out there. Just wondering if it culd look a bit dodgy. It wouldn't bother me, but i have been doing a bit of stuff and have seen abig improvement on my SERP for some key terms.I'm not where i want to be yet though and dont want to jepordize any future gains - unless of course i get a serious amount of wonga.

[europeforvisitors]

I'd guess that context, the "sponsored editorial" buyer's history, and the hosting site's level of trust from Google might come into play. If you had an established, authoritative site about Bible study and the publisher of the Revised Whatsit Version placed a one-shot sponsored article on the topic of Bible translations (which included subtle plug and a link to the Bible publisher's Web site), that might be less likely to trigger an alarm than a keyword-optimized, link-packed, off-theme sell piece for quack medical cures that was also running on a dozen other sites.

[Philosopher]

If I understand you correctly, the links are within the article? So words from the article in it's natural flow are hyperlinked to another site.

If that is the case and Google started penalizing for THESE types of links, that would be insane.

I can understand the penalizing of sites that have the obvious "Sponsored Sites", "Advertising", etc. sections, but if they start tagging sites that are linking to other sites within the natural content, they are on a VERY slippery slope and I just can't see them doing that (especially since this could not be effectively automated).

[edited by: Philosopher at 4:21 pm (utc) on Dec. 14, 2007]

[europeforvisitors]

If that is the case and Google started penalizing for THESE types of links, that would be insane.

Not necessarily. It could make perfect sense, if the site ranked in the yellow or red zone of the "shadiness meter" in other respects. Would users be hurt by a policy that equated suspected link buying or selling with low quality, and that resulted in a penalty or a devaluation of "PR juice"? That's the only question that matters from the search engine's point of view.

[Philosopher]

Could user's be hurt? Sure.

The issue is, in-content links can't be proven to be paid. A "sponsored links" or "Advertisers" section is obvious. Those links have paid to be there.

You can argue that they can look for "shadiness" levels, but that doesn't equate to selling and that is specifically what Google is looking for..."paid" links.

Unless you can KNOW that a site has been given money to either host an article with embedded/in-content links or add in-content links to an existing article, you can't tag it as paid or there will simply be too much collateral damage.

Remember, this isn't about finding low-quality links, it's about finding paid links.

The OP asked if this could hurt his site. From a paid links perspective I have yet to hear of ANY site having an issue with in-content links and I don't see it happening for the reasons I mentioned above.

That being said, it has always been the case that, if you link to what G considers a "bad neighborhood" it can affect your sites ranking. This is separate from a paid link penalty, but also something to take into consideration.