Text Link Ads - have you worked with them?
-
I work with a large group of community sites and we were approached by a company called Text Link Ads to purchase links on our sites for SEO purposes. This means we can't add "nofollow" and the resulting page is crawl-able. This goes directly against Google's policy but I think it would be tough to find out exactly what we're doing. It could be a great revenue source and this company has many, many sites they work with. That said, this sounds like what you say right before something bad happens.
So, two part question: Has anyone worked with this company before? And should these links be avoided or are they not so bad?
Thanks in advance!
-
A good call Josh, one that you'll surely benefit from in the medium to long term by not participating in selling links. Glad I was able to help you reach that decision
-
Thanks for the insight, that's really helpful. It sounds like it truly is a trade-off, in some cases you're just trading your ranking for money, not what we really want to do.
-
Great answer, Simon, thanks for taking the time to type that out. This was the direction I was leaning on this and it's good to hear an honest reply.
Paid links, in my mind, are at the lowest end of the "bad things to do" spectrum. It's still on the wrong side of the tracks but you see so many people getting away with so much, you can't help but to think, "hey, it's not that bad."
I think I've made up my mind, thanks for the push in the right direction!
-
Hi Josh, I've been working with them as a client and have experienced both positive and negative outcome of buying links over there. Text link ads are hiding your site details till someone really buys a link on it. The link becomes visible for the advertiser only if he/ she has purchases it. We have had successful campaign in the past. However the value for the advertiser changes in time as it is based on the actions of the publisher. If the publisher decides to place many links on a particular page they might cannibalize the results for the advertisers and also get deranked by google.So as a publisher you have to decide for yourself if you are going to make more money for a shorter period of time as your web page might loose some rankings or you can reduce that risk by getting a smaller sum for a longer period.
Also don't forget that Text Links Ads will be getting a large share of the money from you as a publisher. If I was at your position and if you have your own resources to manage the sales and link implementation I will definitely recommend it. However if you have the scale of sites but don't want to spend the time on it you can simply outsource it to Text Link Ads or another link brokerage platform. They are a good company that won't run away from business.
-
Hi Josh
This is a great question to ask and I will try to answer it as best as I can for you;
I understand the temptation here, which is as you've said, could be a great revenue stream. However with this comes a significant risk of devaluing your large group of community sites by selling out for a quick buck, which in all fairness is the measure of this.
Google's Web Spam team have many extremely bright people working hard on detecting this type of activity, that's what you'd be up against. I wouldn't fancy my chances of getting away with it unnoticed for any lengthy period of time and I believe that for any credible website, it's too high a risk to take, that's the revenue vs the risk of penalty for selling links.
Yes many sites take this risk and many have so far gotten away with the extra revenue with no downside, however logic says that it's only a matter of time and come that time, a lot will regret their original decision to sell links.
You're perfectly entitled to do this, just bare in mind the harm that a severe ranking penalty could do to your group of community sites and weigh that up against the extra revenue you could make.
(I haven't worked with the company that you mention or any similar company, though I do know people that have and I do know the risks associated with doing so. I'm not risk averse, I just don't like gambling when the chances of loosing are too great).
It also depends how you feel about ethical SEO, which is basically not trying to play against the system, not trying to manipulate the search engines. There are those out there that do love to, the so-called grey hat and black hat SEOs and sometimes, they suceed. It's just personally, not something that I'd feel comfortable doing, I much prefer to play the game fairly, which takes longer to get there however is far more sustainable.
Again though, it's a calculated risk that everybody is entitled to make, if it fits in with your strategy and goals, maybe it's the right thing for you to do. That's your call.
Hope that helps in your decision process,
Regards
Simon
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
-
Sitewide links
Hi there, We operate about a dozen websites that are part of the same parent company. All these websites are in the same vertical, and link among each other in the footer section. The anchor for each link is the brand name, so we are merely doing it to show what other products the parent company has to offer. My question is: do you think this is still advisable, or it might trigger a penalty? Also, what would you choose between: Sitewide footer links from each site to the other sites. A single footer link on the homepage from each site to the other sites. A presentation page on each website, one click away from the homepage, which presents the company's other websites. Thanks.
Link Building | | propertyshark0 -
Gathering links
There are numerous "Ultimate Guides" to linkbuilding, outreach, etc., and they are all written to teach you the art of linkbuilding. The only thing these guides don't tell you is that following them takes a massive amount of time and doesn't guarantee to get good links at all. We're all in online marketing, and maybe we online marketeers are familiar with linking to other websites, posts that we like, etc. and maybe that's why we can write these guides but in other niches it really doesn't work that way 🙂 I'm wondering what techniques/tactics/strategies you guys are using in less straightforward niches to get quality links to your blogposts. To give you an idea, we launched an article a couple of weeks ago targeting a very competitive keyword. The article got shared over 100 times on LinkedIn/Twitter/etc. and already ranking pretty good, but REAL backlinks are still missing. How to get people to link to that article?
Link Building | | jorisbrabants0 -
Links from sites with iffy link profiles?
So the site http://www.cadenas.de/ appears to have good decent scores from the various Moz ranks, but when I check out the site in OSE there are a lot of really sketchy links that jump out, online pharmacy/drug type links. I should also add that the negative links are seemingly going to a weird blog deep in the site and only appear when I select all links to the root domain in OSE. Everything about the site appears very legitimate except for the link profile which has me nervous. Would you guys pursue a link from this site?
Link Building | | CJ50 -
Links from same server or not?
Hello, I make websites so every website I make has a backlink to my website. Currently all my websites are hosted on server A, but my OWN website is hosted on server B. I plan to move my website to server A too. This will indicate that all the backlinks I have currently are from a difference server, now all these links will come from the SAME server. Will this have any results on my positions? Is this something that you have to take into account? Jeroen
Link Building | | conversal0 -
Does This Link Have Value?
Hi Mozzers, A client paid to publish a white paper, thinking that the link to the web site is beneficial. The link does redirect back to the web site, but is in a format that I've never seen: http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001YdyyLrzOQJxM87SJZkJYVbQKSdCmFpwqg1fuX3yqVqpGboUjdSaHv9IdW5HsQpgmvwOrg5N4T3DNHYV8e1UVe_YCua_XQCFykoSJvu1HzDyb-3x-aFcPU-ER-vwWxq4- Does this link have any value?
Link Building | | waynekolenchuk0 -
The No of Sites linking to www.apollopowersystems.com is 50 as per Alexa, but Moz shows that the no of sites linking is 23\. The no has increased in Alexa but in Moz the no is 23 since 3 months. Why is this Difference?
Hi There, As I am new to SEO, so the problem that I am listing below may seem very naive. Please help me out. Please explain me the difference between the no of backlinks of the website, www.apollopowersystems.com as per the websites below. The nos are completely different as per the websites below: As per www.moz.com the no is 23 As per www.ahrefs.com the no currently is 586 As per www.alexa.com the no is 50 Please tell me why these nos are different. Looking forward to hear from you at the earliest. Thanks in advance.
Link Building | | KDKini0 -
"gimme links" = easy to fill out profile/personal reputation links that offer a do-follow anchor text flexible link
I'm doing some SEO for small niche service sites...and aside from niche directories and some light article marketing and local search directories (yelp, etc) there really isn't a budget for content generation. I really only have a budget for profile/submission links. What are some sites where you can quite easily fill out a personal profile with an anchor text variable link that may not be THAT juicy but will stick (i.e. not a spam/fake profile type of link, but something like Linkedin). I'll start with giving away 1 www.istockphoto.com Any others that aren't obvious?
Link Building | | ilyaelbert0 -
Where do you buy your links from
OK which brokers / sites do you use to buy your links or gain links from and why.
Link Building | | therealmarkhall0