If you discount a subscription when the client links to you, does that classify as a paid link?
-
For example, we all subscribe to MOZ, but if we received a 25% discount on our subscription if we linked back, would that be considered by Google as a paid link, or would it be seen as a sales tool / promotion?
-
Hi Jonathan
Although Google's guidelines don't explicitly mention "discounts" I do feel this would be considered a paid or manipulated link as the company is offering a monetary benefit in exchange for a link.
Google's Guidelines state that any link that is paid must be disclosed in a machine readable format and nofollowed
-Dan
-
Technically, it is a paid link, but how would they know it is? Not really something you need to worry about as long as the "link" is done differently, so they dont leave obvious footprints.
Pretty sure lots of people will disagree with this, but it's the truth.
-
Basically yes. Any form of payment received in return of a back link is considered a paid link and will be penalized.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Backlinks vs External Links vs Referral Links vs Outbound links
Hello all, I was just wondering if you could explain the difference between all the links above? I'm confused as they all seem to be the same or similar and I would just like to clearly know what distinguishes them from eachother. Thanks for your help, Jayne
Link Building | | NCOREGSEO0 -
Link from a directory
Hi, im submitting a clients website to some directories. They are a dental practice and I'm adding them to this website http://goo.gl/Tvyabd Once i added the business to its directory it asked me to add a link (in so many words) back to its website from my clients website. Is this ok to do or is it seen as spam? Im confused about this as sometimes directories are free and sometimes they ask for a fee for it to be fast tracked to put it on the website. I always check the Domain authority of the websites and make sure they are relevant to the industry that I'm working in but again not sure if this would be seen as "paying" for links. Thanks Ade
Link Building | | popcreativeltd0 -
RSS feed links
Is this an RSS feed link? How was this page generated? http://blog.moregoodfoundation.org/category/technology/feed What causes it to show up as a backlink in open site explorer? And how would you go about removing these links? Lots of questions there 🙂 Thank you.
Link Building | | ThridHour0 -
Internal linking anchor text with automated ASP.NET link building
Hi Everyone I really need some help here, the problem I have must be one that many have. I have a simple e-commerce style website so 1 product page can in fact get 40-50 internal links to it. These links come from a mixture of: 1. The parent category pages that the product sits on (Rugged PDA) and in turn the 10 filter pages of this category page (Rugged PDA, ordered by battery size). 2. Alternative product list on other product pages, So many products link to each other as alternatives. From Google analytics we can see that visitors like to browse product to product seeing 5 alternatives on each page with titles like "Smaller", "more rugged" etc. 3. Manufactuer pages, so we have a link to each product from each manufacturer home page where we talk lots about each manufacture we resell. We also have links from images used in the website. So its a nice usable website but we're finding that Google is still telling us in Webmaster tools that it thinks some links are dubious and we're trying to find out why. We only now have 190 external links to the website, most are internal and from the website or our blog on a subdomain. The problem we think is that we generate the category and products pages all dynamically so the anchor text is looking the same. Will this potentially create issues for us? Dave
Link Building | | Raptor-crew0 -
Getting Links
Hi, Links from Directories are bad. Links for low quality sites are bad. Paid links are bad. Guest blogging is "maybe rumor has it" google's next big Penguin. Where and how is everybody getting all these great links from, is there anywhere left?? All advice welcomed as we really need good links quick! Thanks
Link Building | | Studio330 -
Outbound links
Hi there, i know inbound links are what hold the main value in terms of link building but if i have an inbound link from a big company such as ITV or BBC and they have put an article on their site linking back to mine, would it be beneficial if i made a comment on my site and then link back to their article or will this not really help? Sorry as you can tell im very new to seo! thanks anthony
Link Building | | anthonybriant0 -
Blocking spammy links
i have a client that that google has said in a reconsideration request has spmmy links. My question is can i simply block those request at the server, make the server drop the responce rather then go though the imposible process of getting them removed? Does anyone have any expirence with this? Thanks
Link Building | | AlanMosley1 -
.edu links
Hi mozzers, I've had some great success reaching out to many .edu webmasters. Often they are professors and such. My question is, i'm guessing during the summer holiday period, reaching out to these webmasters won't be so fruitful. I'm not in the US and was wondering when the US Summer holidays are for universities over there? Also, does anyone have experience outreaching to these webmasters over the holidays? Peter
Link Building | | PeterM221