What is the general opinion on the value of WordPress footer links from sponsoring WP themes? Does Google see these as "paid" links and thus discount them somewhat? It seems like a good way of getting a lot of links but it also seems likely that the influx of links may appear very unnatural which has me concerned. How many of you sponsor WP themes?
I personally think it is a waste of time. I heard something a while back that google penalizes sites using them, but even if they didnt, alot of people remove the links, and the few that don't are just fly by night and don't provide any value. For me personally I have only gotten a few good links from sponsoring themes. Not worth the time.
The whole purpose of sponsored footer links are for SERPs. Anyone thinking it is for PR should have their head read. Google certainly penalises the PR value but the SERPs and traffic is GOLD in value.
i heared both but i think it's a good thing. If you can afford it, go for it, one thing, it's better to have wpthemes created for you and have the only one link in the fotter yours rather than buying a link there along with other 2-3 links.
What if you purchase all of the links? Also how do you feel about the encrypted footers? I am definitely interested in this only from a SERPS stand point, I'm not interested in PR as I think it's useless unless you are a link seller (which I'm not.)
I've found there's some merit to it, and in the process of building a good lot of new sponsored themes for just such purpose. I thought I'd mention that the 'official' WP theme site is no longer accepting sponsored themes into their directory though, which makes distribution a little more difficult; likely making for fewer downloads, and requiring some alternate methods for getting them out there in the first place.