I have a client who is sponsoring a major event and we'd like a link from the event site. The event site is not in the practice of selling links, but with the client being a sponsor, could this be seen as a paid link? A bit ambiguous i admit, but any advice warmly appreciated.
no if you put there as sponsored links..........................then it is paid ............................. if featured then it can be free..............................
not every followed links is paid link @TS as long as your client site is relevant to the sponsored site i think its fine.
Client will be fine. You'll only get penalized if its really irrelevant, eg. a website about gardening linking to online casinos and dieting.
Ok thanks all. 2 for vs. 2 against. Thought this would happen - He he I'll try and clarify the sponsorship bit. This is a large, high profile, real world event. The client sponsors one of the major awards at the event. The event site s very relevant to my clients. As the client gets a mention on the event's website, makes sense to get some relevant anchor text... So I guess technically its a paid link. But thats like saying every agency that links to a clients site in their portfolio without nofollow is potentially opening clients up to penalization - money changed hands. But I guess the event site does not practice selling links, my client does not buy links, so maybe I'm being a bit paranoid...(perhaps a knock on effect of banning my entire office from using Google today because of my SEO Quake tool bar! LOL!)
Haha SEO Quake did that to my office too. You just have to tinker it a little bit so it doesn't pull every little info about a site in the search results. But don't worry about the paid link issue. It's only bad if you're buying links JUST for SEO on sites that a lot of irrelevant links.