Selling text links, harm your ranking?

[Spiderweb]

Hi all,
I intended to sell some text links spaces( for revelant sites only ) in my homepage to cover other ads for my site. But someone told me that by selling it will hurt my ranking instantly??? I am confused what would be happened then? another warning was If I sell more than 20 text links in my page, I also risk to loose my pr too.
Please advise me as I think I am not gonna sell anything if it harm to my ranking.

Thank you for your advises in advance!

[Harry smith]

that's true,
don't ever trade link ie ( buy or sell ) try to get link naturally, go for one way links only. Someday Google may find that these links are not natural but are traded then it may ban your site affecting ranking.

[Spiderweb]

anyone else have more throughts as I wonder how G can find out which links are traded or nutural, sure that they can not pick up by hand one by one on all website.

Thank you for your suggestions.

[stymiee]

They can tell. That's why sites like phpbb.com can't pass PR.

[sellingonline]

they do find it out, if the advertised domain is to be found on other known "i sell my links" sites & then you are flagged too, better don't do it

[Advertistic]

Yes, I would be careful with this as it has been hinted that Google have built this into their ranking algorithm.

If in doubt, don't risk it!

[stymiee]

Google just wrote a good blog post about how they are cracking down on link manipulation: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2006/12/building-link-based-popularity.html

Moral of the story: create good content, get quality one way links.

[Advertistic]

Excellent article, thanks.

[kristensguide]

I was reading http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/text-links-and-pagerank/
and my understanding of it was that if you sell links on your site, your site's ranking won't be hurt, but your links to other websites won't hold much weight. (That's not a big deal to me because I don't really care how my PR affects the sites I link to. I post links that I think my visitors will find useful.)

So that would mean that if I sold text links, my external links wouldn't count toward increasing my advertisers' page ranking. That's a good thing, though, because it would basically force advertisers to try to advertise in places that encouraged website visitors to actually click on the links rather than buying tiny text links at the bottom of a page to increase PR. This is the main reason why PPC text ads and banner ads seem more "ethical" to Google. Their goal is to generate clicks, not PR boosts. I think text links are fine as long as they are being positioned the same way PPC and banners are positioned, so that's how I sell them. Such links have been around before Google and PR ever existed.

I say, if you're going to try to buy text links, buy links that have a chance of being clicked on, not just for PR. If you're going to sell text links, position them for visitors to click, and use nofollow attributes if you really want to reduce the number of external links on your page.

[Alfredito]

Google just wrote a good blog post about how they are cracking down on link manipulation: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2006/12/building-link-based-popularity.html

Moral of the story: create good content, get quality one way links.

Very good article... i will defenetly bookmark this blog

[Sitemapper]

Just use no-follow links if in doubt, be sure to tell your advertiser though. They did bring down PR of many text link sell websites... However, they won't be able to detect 100% natural text links (even if bought) ... However, if they infiltrate an ad network... then... Well, weigh the risks. I would not risk it with a primary website.

[guinanie]

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogsp...opularity.html

It is a good article. Link baiting is a technique that I used today as to rank keyword and to drive traffic as well . It takes advantage of Web 2.0 social content websites

[kristensguide]

Just use no-follow links if in doubt, be sure to tell your advertiser though. They did bring down PR of many text link sell websites...

Yup, my PR went down one point. I'm not too concerned because I actually get more traffic now than I did before, but it's just an ego thing.

I decided to still sell text links, but not for PR, just for traffic. I use the rel="nofollow" tag on them and place them in a location where they are likely to get clicks. I had to reduce my rates because of the "nofollow" tag, but it wasn't a major source of revenue for me anyhow.

[sunnyday]

Thank you. I have learned sth. about link.

[platnumcn]

I did think sell the sitewide link will effect your pagerank.

[Kraai]

I am selling text links on one of my sites now for the past 6 months, and it did not hurt my pr at all, as a fact, my pr grows frequently, because of quality sites that links to me.

[lajocar]

good article

what does this include text link ads and Linkworth?

[selfhelpebooks]

Natural links and hard work are much more safe than selling!

[Sitemapper]

Your PageRank may get penalized. While it may not hurt your SERPs much, you will no longer be able to sell text links for as much.