paid text link advertisement

[writer51]

I had a webmaster ask to place a paid text link advertisement on my site. My questions are:

1) What do I need to consider when complying with Google rules on the paid text link advertisement,since I have Adsense on my site.
2) Would it affect my ranking with Google?
3) Or is it best to forget and move on.

[jimbeetle]

Welcome to Webmaster World, writer51.

There's a lot of discussion about that all over the web again right now. I'm not sure how far afield the current WebmasterWorld thread [webmasterworld.com] on the topic has gone, but you might be able to glean some insight by browsing through it.

[martinibuster]

Welcome to Webmaster World! :)-Y

1) What do I need to consider when complying with Google rules on the paid text link advertisement,since I have Adsense on my site.
As long as it doesn't resemble AdSense it won't break their TOS.

2) Would it affect my ranking with Google?
If you're linking to relevant quality sites, it might actually help you rank better.

3) Or is it best to forget and move on.
That is a question only you can answer. Selling advertising is but one of many strategies for monetizing traffic.

[edited by: martinibuster at 8:22 pm (utc) on Sep. 6, 2007]

[writer51]

Thanks for the link. I'll take a look.

[writer51]

I've read some of the comments about paid advertising links in the thread discussing paid links, and it's seems to be a really gray area that in most cases favors Google-since they know more of what they are going to do then webmasters.

Maybe I should hold off until the mud clears, and find other avenues to monetize my site that is more acceptable to Google.

[brevetoxin]

Writer, If the advertiser doesn't mind you using rel=nofollow on the link, then go for it. If that's a problem, then you may wish to stay away from selling links. However, if the link is a relavent link (related to the content of your site) and you put it with other similar links, then there really is no way it can be detected as a paid link.

[writer51]

I never thought about using the rel=nofollow. And the idea of putting
the paid link with similar links is a strong possibility. I will present
that to the advertiser and see if he will agree to that.

If I put it with "like" links I wouldn't have to put a sponsor tag on it, correct.

[fom2001uk]

The advertiser will withdraw his sponsorship money quicker than you can say "link juice", if he hears you will be using no-follow ;-)

[sbb1982]

man. putting nofollow on such link is cheating, i think.

[vincevincevince]

Google have hinted that they are able to 'rel="nofollow"' from their end. Perhaps you could please both sides by emailing them the details of the link and have them not count it, but not have to mark it as nofollow in your source.

In fact, I'd be glad to see that as a feature of webmaster tools - facility to list URLs which you link to for which you are paid.

[Crush]

Any link I paid for would be definately need to be counted in Engines.