If you're selling text links on your site, you're going to need to protect yourself from Google deindexing/penalizing you. Why's that? Well for one, Google's battle against paid links is finally out in the open, with no more dickering. Here's my mini-guide for people looking to protect their sites from Google if they sell text links.

(Hat tip to Matt) 

 

Well, if you consider Google's history and how it's dealing with different sites, you can figure out how to protect yourself. Essentially, there are two main ways.

First, get your site branded as much as possible. When sites like BMW's got banned years ago, it didn't just reflect badly on the car manufacturer, but on Google too. They were less relevant for not including the beemers. Similarly, Stanford's student newspaper could not be dropped out of the index because it would heap ridicule on Google. (Perhaps the fact that Google's founders went there also gets them preferential treatment? I wonder if Yale, MIT, or Harvard's sites sell links...) Danny Sullivan's article (see the above SEL link) has another example of a branded site getting the same treatment (a drop in PR but still being in the index).

Second, and this is for the people who like to play on the bleeding edge, don't sell links. Sell choice anchor text (the link is free but if they want to choose anchor text there's a cost). Or sell reviews on your blogs with no links, but let potential review buyers know that if your review finds them good enough (and be honest here), they'll have a shot at joining your blogroll for as long as they keep up the quality of their site - ergo, sell your attention and writing; offer the link as a potential bonus. Basically, sell proxies for links, and ideally proxies without a guarantee there's a link going to come through. It's similar to directory editorial review, except that people have a reason to care about your blogroll and might click on its links.

Third, find alternative traffic sources to Google. The reason you're reading this is because you're interested in selling text links and not getting hurt by Google. Well, they can only hurt you if you rely on them/let them hurt you. Granted, it's easier said than done, but the internet existed pre-Google, and it exists outside of Google because not everyone starts their browsing with a search. Syndicate your content to portals like AOL or industry sites (check out my stuff on Pandia and BrandCurve ), get your links into Wikipedia, promote the hell out of your site OFFLINE, network with other bloggers (the true value behind commenting), etc.

On a related note, I'd like to take this opportunity to throw some mud at Google for its hypocrisy. Matt et al, you consistently argue that others only need to follow your rules if they care about being on your search engine. Yet, at the same time, you've got a near monopoly on search share and you keep on buying out companies to maintain and increase that monopoly. You use AdWords and your own SERPs to get people using "Google customized" IE7 when you're not paying people to go with Mozilla. I used to agree with the argument, but it's occurred to me that its validity decreases with each point of search share you grab from your competition.

It's like if Bell (Google) back in the day told people that they could only use their telephones (no link selling) if they wanted to use their network (get traffic from Google). Well geez, what other network am I gonna use when all my buddies are connected to Bell (searchers use Google)?  It's like I said, Google sucks! (Yes, I realize that link is nofollowed... I'm hoping some kind soul there in Seattle will be convinced by my argument and remove the nofollow to my blog.) (And am I the only one who thinks that our tech speak is ungrammatical? Remove the nofollow? Double negative?)