Does selling links harm SEO?

I've heard that selling links on your site can cause google to push you further down in rankings (as they dislike it). Is this true?

I was wondering what sort of price people would pay for 125x125 image links or text links on my gaming blog if I started to sell the ad space? I sometimes big spikes of traffic (about 800 uniques a day) but on average get about 300 daily. It's PR0 though as it's only about 3 months old.

Would I get hit for this? Or would I be okay?

Should I sell link/ad space?

 

If you're selling it as ad space, add nofollow tags and there's no issue of selling links for PageRank.
Which you wouldn't be able to do anyway, as nobody is going to bother to buy on that basis from a page with PR0.

 

adding nofollow tag is best

 

Of course you should if you want to make money, ads are great! Besides this is technically what Google are, one huge ad network (besides the search)

One thing about the ads though... They need to be labelled up as "Ads" or "Sponsored Links" so nothing is missleading so it looks as though you're trying to bias the search results. If things are labelled up then this is fine, as for the links, they should also be set to "nofollow"

Where the hazy line is here is when people sell text links in their blog roll or links section and leave it set to "follow", this is seen as bad practice and if Google work out you're selling these links, you'll get penalised as it is seen as trying to effect natural ranking though $$$

Hope this helps.

 

And make sure also that your offer details is on another site...

 

I know your just asking and no it wont if your not selling links specificly for seo purposes.
Adding no follow is not necessery because google is not going to hold it against anyone for selling a simple banner space thats normal and always been done..

They dont like sites that sale links for seo purposes to webmasters who buy alot of links too boost their rankings.

What google suggests and what they actualy do is 2 different things. NO it will not hurt you unless you did something stupid like putting a big signup that says links for sale.






Email me your proof of stats to
and ill pay you 5$ a month for the ad spot but if its nofollow forget about it lol

 

Thanks for all your help and advice

Do you think people would pay for "no follow" ads though? Aren't people only interested in PR?

+Viktor, what do you mean by "make sure also that your offer details is on another site" ?
Do you mean I shouldn't advertise the Ad price on my site? As in try selling links on this forum?

 

People will pay for no follow ads if they're interested in the actual traffic, or branding potential from being on your site.

You shouldn't advertise the ad details on your site, because google will find it. And as for posting it in forums, do you really think no one from Google reads digital point?

 

I'm sure they do. That's why I just wanted advice before jumping into it. I want to know the right way to do things

(as in, the way Google would be happy with - I don't want to harm my site + rankings potential)

 

google will punish you if they decide that your link selling is intended to cheat the backlink algo.

 

You can of course sell link / ad space. Just use google's guidelines and use a rel=nofollow attribute for your anchor text.

 

Good call. You can really good serps and still follow google's guidelines, it's better for long term success as well.

 

nofollow tag will be fine

 

But ... advertisers don't like it

 

Just add NoFollow Tag to those links which you are going to sale..then it will be fine for seo.

 

for the price you can start at $50 and about the ranking issue,probably yes cause google hate it.

 

Paying for ads and paying for links is tow totally different things....

Yes companys will buy nofollow banner add space. Companies putting up banner ads do so 1) to get traffic and 2) just to advertise and create a brand. Most ads served up go through some redirector page (either locally or on an ad server network). The redirector page is usually blocked off from search engines with a robots.txt entry which means the links are nofollowed. Matt Cutts and others to refer to this as a "link condom" preventing you from passing PR to the target page of the ad.

Company's typically will NOT buy nofollowed links UNLESS they only want the link for traffic (like a blogroll link on some really popular blog). If they are buying the link to improve their search engine rankings, then adding nofollow will kill the deal.

You can learn more about it here: google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769 (pay special attention to the Quality Guidelines section). You should also see google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66356 where it talks about linking schemes and google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66736 where they specifically address paid links.

 

yes that's true Google like natural appearance of site as search engine wants to give most relevant search to their users. u can provide ad space...& no follow links are also good option but buyers dun't like no follow links.so dun't go against the Google...

 

Buying and Selling links are against the T&C of Google. If Google detects that you have been part of any paid link exchange there are high chances that your website get penalized.

 

Google has penalized many sites before for buying and selling links. Better not engage in such a linking scheme.