Link building from top sites... possibility of link marketing penalty?

[guggi2000]

After years of no off-site marketing we started to do some online marketing again with some link building. We decided to cooperate with tourism and educational sites and are doing joint projects. Together we create new content for students who want to learn abroad.

Most of these partners agree to promote these joint projects and either blog about us or link to us with some teaser. We do not tell them how we want the link, but we tell them that promoting the joint project is important to us.

Some partners will be .edu but most of them will be .com. All sites are PR5 and above, or DA 50-80 and have a good trust rank. We do not check or tell them from which inner pages to link.

The new content is placed on Twitter and FB for social marketing, however the engagement is medium.

The purpose is to give
1. additional services to our users
2. increase direct traffic
3. get links
4. Eventually be covered by the media

There is NO CHANCE that the linking sites are spammers, but could getting links from highly trusted sites be a problem after not engaging in marketing for years?

[Robert Charlton]

The question Google is going to look at is whether the links were freely given editorial links, or whether they think there was "coordination" in the placing of the links.

I believe that the more you do this regularly, and you follow a pattern, the more likely it is that Google will see this as a coordinated link building effort.

[netmeg]

Isn't this the same question as this?

[webmasterworld.com...]

Then as now - Google doesn't know intent. So if you put off the same signals, you will get tarred with the same brush.

[guggi2000]

@netmeg Not the same question: In the other thread it was about CROSS industry link building with links from "normal" websites.

For this website it is about cooperating with governmental or university sites. The question is whether a sudden increase in links from .edu or high quality .com can also harm.

[guggi2000]

@RobertCharlton What exactly do you mean by coordination? For example, we do not tell universities how to link to us, but we tell them that they should link to the joint project. 90% they do it because it may be good for their users.

[toidi]

It is a sad day when webmasters have become afraid to create an educational project because links from universities might cause a penalty.

Guggi2000
won't the traffic from the links outweigh anything the google can offer?

[martinibuster]

There's nothing to be afraid of if the links are cultivated. If there's a doubt no follow.

I think the concern some members are showing is that the links are under the control of the OP. The OP says not so, the universities control where the link goes as well as whether there's a link or not. I am unsure if that's really editorially given, since this is a project under the control of and coordinated with the OP.

[guggi2000]

@martinibuster What is OP?

The link would be set by professors/teachers near the homework assignment or on a resource page.

[martinibuster]

What is OP?

Original poster [urbandictionary.com]

[guggi2000]

Example:
We create content together with a university professor (NYU.edu) for students who want to learn his subject abroad. The content is interactive and stored on our domain. The professor links to our domain because there is a lot of added value to him and his students. We love the content, the reputation and the links (as a great side effect).

As mentioned by @RobertCharlton we have to try to avoid patterns and as mentioned by @netmeg Google does not know intent!

One problem I see about the pattern is, that each content is linked only once! For example, the page we create for NYU is linked by NYU and the page for BostonU is linked by BostonU.

We thought of creating ONE single page where all our partners link to and we give each partner a URL parameter that loads his specific content (formulas, etc...).

1. Will Google see it as 2 different target URLs if each one links with a different parameter or as the same URL linked twice?

2. How about using Hashtags instead of query parameters?