Yes. You were right. My bad. I think I had tunnel-vision when running through the posts in this thread. What do you mean by 'done too much'? That is like saying it is okay to do, but not all the time. It is either all or nothing. I do know that Wordpress have officially removed all sponsored themes from their sites, as well as others have.
I wouldn't sponsor themes at all due to the risk/reward, but I would guess that sponsoring a theme with pictures of doctors in the header image would be okay if you were a medical site, but not if you owned a casino affiliate. At least then the links are more than likely going to be at least a little related. I would also only use a link like "sponsored by domain.com" rather than "site design by spam keywords spam phrase garbage"
Like they'll turn a blind eye to it once or twice, same with paid links. But if you take the piss they'll take action. That's the idea I get.
I have a network of 250+ blogs and other sites all with varying topics and all with pr2 or higher and a thousand or more backlinks to each. They are all on seperate c-class ip's also. When I put a link on each one to a site currently ranked high in google (my last example was ranked three for a top phrase). Once I place the links from every site to that site the serps drop for about two months and then recover to being higher than before. Now I didn't place the links all in one day but over the course of a month. So it didn't look unnatural as I am consistently building links. Hope this helps a little.
I believe unrelated one way links to your website will never hurt. but if you do a two way link exchange, for example a computer hard drive website to a website about tea cups it might not do any good at all, especially having a lot of them might even hurt
Can someone maybe have a look at these backlinks and see if they are okay, please?? http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.co...i&bwmf=u&bwms=p&fr=siteexplorer&fr2=seo-rd-se Thanks in advance for your replies... T
There you go: A quick look at the backlink profile shows a small number of backlinks with a focus on social-media websites, relevant website directories and relevant websites. There are also an article and an irrelevant forum link (from DP). Many anchor texts are relevant and useful, although many of the backlinks are not followed and another substantial portion does not have an anchor text at all. I put the results in a CSV-file that I converted to the attached ZIP-file.
Chios is right. You won't be penalized, but google may just ignore them. Anyway, I think it's a percentage thing. If you are getting all or most of your links from non-topical blog signatures and the like, chances are they won't count for much. But if you are getting decent, topically relevant links along with the others, that can help. I've seen link profiles chalk-full of off-topic links ranking top five in SERPS.
Just wanted to say a big thank you to all you wizards, iall the tips have been so helpful.. Theresa x
Since site owners have no control over who links to them unrelated links won't have any negative effects.