Is it okay to sell text links?

[Dani]

Is it okay to blatantly sell text links in a sidebar or footer as long as they're nofollowed?

[BroKeN]

well they say so if you made them a nonfollowed likns not sure cuz i lost trust in google anyway ,
but may be this link can help you click here
and you can remove the link later if you want .
You can read every thing :d there is a big fight about it so enjoys it :d :d

Best of luck

[seotogo]

According to Google if you don’t want to see a drop in PR, then nofollowing your paid text links is the way to go. Now, good luck on selling text links to customers with the nofollow tag on them.

[Dani]

You could sell text links without nofollow. You just can't sell them just with the pitch that they'll help search engine rankings. Then again, I'm still holding onto a text link I bought a very long time ago that has since been nofollowed and drives very little traffic. I'm afraid that if the link suddenly comes down right after it was nofollowed, Google will realize it was only up there for the past two years for the link juice and will penalize me even more.

[seotogo]

That is an interesting point whether or not Google, Yahoo and MSN treat old trusted links that have recently been nofollowed differently than new links that are nofollowed.

I tend to think though that websites that sell off-topics links that have not been nofollowed are more likely to be penalized than link buyers, since the sellers have more control over this attribute than the buyers.

[Dani]

Interesting point ... basically, the purpose of why I started this thread. In other words, I used to have 10 sitewide bulleted links in the sidebar I sold for seo purposes. Then, when Google cracked down, I added nofollow to them. But they were still 10 sitewide bulleted links in the sidebar. I just recently removed them afraid that they would still be looked at distastefully, and I credited the advertisers with other placements on the site that actually drive real traffic.

[lajocar]

I have implemented links from Linkworth on my homepage of one of my sites and last week my PR dropped from 3 to 0.

I have these link for almost a year now on homepage

[lajocar]

amazingly my pr dropped from P3 - P0, but my traffic is still the same

[seotogo]

Yes, I don’t think a drop in PR correlates with a drop in the rankings. I think the penalty is to prevent sites that sell text links from passing PR along to those sites and not penalize them in the SERPs.

[snowbird]

It is not good to buy or sell followed links. Either could hurt your rankings! Nofollowed links bought or sold are fine, according to Google.

[Curt8888]

yes - spend the time to do quality link trades. A few really good links can do a lot for your website. And as you get more popular-the better ranked sites will approach you to trade links and you won't need to waste as much time looking for potential partners. Buying or selling isn't worth it.