Back links off the back of a paid sponsorship deal
-
Hey Mozzers,
I am in need of a bit of advice please?
I work for a Gyms chain in the UK and we are sponsoring a major sporting event next month.
As part of the deal we get a dedicated webpage and backlink from their high authority website.
We do not have a logo and multiple backlinks in the footer on every page of their website, so to my knowledge Google will not necessarily regard this as a paid backlink right?
Is there anything in the algorithm that is able to distinguish between the aforementioned backlink and a natural one?
Just wondering if our domain is linking to receive the equity or not?
Regards
Ben
-
Hi Ben,
Sponsoring events is a great link building tactic. As the link will come as a side-effect of the sponsorship rather than from direct payment, Google will not penalise you for this. Imagine the reverse - companies would be far less likely to sponsor events, support charities etc if Google were to start penalising them.
Here are a few posts you can look to for reassurance:
http://moz.com/blog/5-link-building-tactics-to-improve-your-local-rankings
http://www.wordtracker.com/blog/33-seo-experts-share-their-most-effective-link-building-strategies
http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2064922/131-legitimate-link-building-strategies -
We will be supplying the content for our dedicated page on their webpage so will be completely unique and relevant to our domain's subject.
Thanks for your reply.
Ben
-
I'd be more concerned about duplicate content, actually. I've seen may instances like this where the event website simply grabs content off your website and links back to you with no regard for duplicates. That's the only thing I see the algorithm picking up. I wouldn't be concerned it would be tagged as a paid link from your description, especially since the link isn't what you are paying for, it's the sponsorship. You can see numerous examples of this when you look at sponsor profiles on all kinds of websites - even SEO conferences The link is a benefit for sure, but not the primary thing you are paying for.
This article from Search Engine Watch gets pretty detailed on what Matt Cutts considers a paid link: http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/news/2332787/matt-cutts-shares-4-ways-google-evaluates-paid-links#
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
If someone were to link to our site on now on an old article (dating back 1-2 years) is that still beneficial if all other variables are good?
I'm trying to build up our external links and am finding lots of opportunities, some of which are on older articles dating back to 2014, 2013 etc. These pieces are relevant to our site and have high DA, I'm wondering if the post date of these articles matter? Thanks!
Link Building | | Postable0 -
Spammy links
Hi Guys, I have a case which seems to occur more often for our customers. The websites of our customers seem to receive tons of backlinks from websites all over the world (China, Russia, Ukrain, etc). It’s spam we never asked for, we didn’t buy any dodgy linkbuilding packages or anything. Do any of you guys have experience with this matter? We try to disavow the links but it takes too much time and we will never manage to disavow 100% of all links. Examples are www.keukensduitsland.nl and www.m2beveiliging.nl Hope anyone has experience and maybe even solutions for this matter. Thanks!
Link Building | | Happy-SEO1 -
Best Tool For Diagnosing A spammy Back Link Profile
Buongiorno from the river Wharfe 🙂 With Googles crusade to penalise sites with dodgy backlink profiles I'm looking for an automated tool which could flag up any dodgy links. Yes ive used Open Site Explorer but I really am after something that gives me a simple "yes theres a problem and heres where it is" type solution. Any inights welcome 🙂
Link Building | | Nightwing
Grazie tanto,
David0 -
Penguin Recover: Remove links vs Burry Links
The best is to do both. However with those with limited resources, would building more links with branded and naked URL anchor links be a better solution than painstakingly asking every webmaster to remove links.
Link Building | | reprisemedia10 -
Changing links
Hi guys i wanted you views on changing the anchor text of links. I have quality links coming in but with year terms such as 2012 in there, if i want to change them all to 2013 for example would it be badly seen by Google? I cant say i feel comfortable about doing it but they are my links and are related to our products. Any advice much appreciated.
Link Building | | pauledwards0 -
How do I back track Broken Links?
SEOMOZ is great, it told me all the pages with 404 errors, however what would be more useful is if it told me where those links were located? Is this not available through this site, or am I just not seeing that information? If anyone knows of a how to, that is easy to moderate in difficulty to back track broken links I would appreciate it.
Link Building | | ENSO0 -
What to do with some good links I have?
I have some pretty strong links from relevant sources linking to the homepage of a site I deal with. The links are usually from a PR3-5 pages and display specific result about the linking site. Sometimes they come from badges. We offer several services, so sometimes the page is about one service and next time about the other. Currently all of my pages link to the homepage. Would it not be better to link to the specific product page related to the page I have? Also I can do a canonical to the service pages? Which would be best?
Link Building | | Svetoslav0 -
Whats with these links
I have a competitor
Link Building | | AlanMosley
that has shot up lately taking number one spot for various keywords when I look
at his links in Open Site Explorer I find many links that are links to downloadable
objects, not web pages. A few
examples, if you click on them, do not open who knows what they are. But what
the story, how are these links to his site, anyone know anything about this. Thanks http://wolfet.co.uk/etmain/mitchelldown.pk3 http://www2.dupont.com/Tyvek_Weatherization/en_US/assets/downloads/cad_fluidapplied/FA-S-201.dwg?Action=livre_or&start=24750&forum=alainfrancois http://mobile.earthcam.com/download/EarthCam%20Mobile%20v4.0.msi?faq&page=39560