I know some WP Themes designers do sell links at the footer of their newly designed themes. I need to know from those who have previously purchased such links whether it is beneficial to do so and in what ways. Thanks!
I think they are beneficial. Last design that I bought was downloaded more than 200 times within first couple of days. That means atleast 100 backlinks in which 25-50 would turn out to be good. It's not a bad deal. Specially if you are in competitive niche this is a good method to build backlinks. If you can sponsor a niche specific theme that might help you too.. like casino/gambling, car, celebrity or music
Thanks for the reply. I may be asking something obvious but would these links at the bottom really count as far as Google is concerned? What about the fact that most of the theme designers use the words "Sponsored by:..." ? That sounds like inviting a slap as far as PR is concerned.
I've been looking into this for a while nw but I havent dipped my foot in yet. Might do a few to see how the backlinks fare over the coming months.
It's just another form of spam. Think about it....You don't know what the sites are about that the links are going to be featured on. You don't know what the quality of the sites are going to be either. Before you know it, you will have 100's of backlinks coming from low quality spammy sites. Not a good idea in my book. Although if anyone has any success with the method then I'm all ears.
I no longer think this is a good practice. I would stay well clear of this as it is an obvious unrelated link in most occasions.
I could not disagree more, with the last poster. The key is to pick a quality theme that fits your niche, and ask the designer just to add suitable keyword text links in the footer. That way your links will appear on blogs which are 100% relevent most of the time. Often with pages with good PR. I added 11000 yahoo links in 3 months to one site using this method. Footer must be encripted and not all designers know how to do this. For quality themes with links at around $100 each, see jinsona posts on DP. I have asked this designer to create a specific theme that fits my niche and kept all 2 or 3 footer links for myself. Then you just need 1000 plus downloads and you're away. Cost is normally about $300 each theme.
I am starting to feel myself that these links are ultimately going to be considered paid or spammy links - maybe not now but in the future. If this is the case then they will all be devalued or worse IMO
This seems spammy and un-natural to me. Adding 11000 links in just 3 months, for the same thing in google you'd get one hell of a thump never mind the famous google slap.
google only gives you one link per domain as you know. Yahoo credits every page. Hold on I'll check the google stats for one of the main domains. There are 62 links creditied roughly 60% of which are as a result of one sponsored theme. The site searches top 5 for most keywords on google. PM me and i'll send you the url if you think this is spam?
It just seems un-natural to me though. It seems to go against every natural growth method know to man. It would be interesting to see whether this will have long term results, or whether it's just a temporary burst of link popularity that will soon wither away.
google doesnot like sponsored links and it has filters to filter such links so that they donot count as backlinks.
As of now, it's beneficial. You'll gain backlinks which will help you to improve your ranking. You can also expect some direct traffic but don't expect much. Somehow, I also feel the same
I don't think there is such filters which will filter out the links. Coz we designers will never assign any special values to those sponsored links. It will be the regular do-follow anchor link. So how can google differentiate those links ?
Thanks for the great discussion we are having here. Now, from what I gather here, it seems that many are of the view that it may not be desirable to purchase those footer links because there is the risk of it being spammy. But then again, what about those themes which are free for download but not up for sponsorship eg. those that appear in weblogtoolscollection and other "safe" download sites? How could Google differentiate the links which appear at the bottom of each and every theme that is being used assuming words like "sponsored" is not used? Does it then mean that Google keeps a list of "honest and goodness" designers and those which are not? It just does not make sense. I do agree however, that the users of the themes might have unrelated niche to your site and hence, it would be advisable to choose themes which seem to cater to certain types of blogs. "Pink coloured and cutesy themes more suitable for ladies?" or "Techie-flavoured theme more suitable and likely to be used by Tech blogs?" Another thing which I may need expert advice (since I am only a lawyer and not a designer) is how does the encryption thingy work? Does it render the links totally unremovable or tamper-free?
This is something I would like to know too. I read somewhere they are using php encode and some people says it is using ioncube/zend. The latter does not sound for me because not all host have those installed. A lot of people also claim that the footer can be remove if they knew how to code.
^ 90% of bloggers won't be knowing how to do that. Only the other 10% may know how to do that. But not all the 10% people will gonna do that, coz at least 5% of people will understand that they need to credit designers and sponsors