Welcome to the Q&A Forum

I'm going to suggest a different alternative: Do both. That is to say, put the link on the home page as you suggested, but only link either the Site title or the keyword, not both. (And which will be determined by the brand/keyword mix of your overall link profile - don't want to overdo the keyword anchor text.) . Then also add it to the sidebar, but no-index this sitewide version and only use one link. The second link would be superfluous anyway. The thinking here is that the home page link is designed to legitimately offer some ranking influence across to  the new site. The sidebar links are not designed to (nor would they be effective for) sending link juice, but instead are designed for actual human eyeballs to send referral visitors to the related site. (This is assuming the new site is in some way related to the topic of the original site) By no-following the site-wide sidebar link, you tell the search engines it's not on every page for manipulative purposes, but because it's potentially of use to the visitor- functioning much like a paid ad would, and protected by the no-follow in the same way.. Best of both worlds - some link juice from the home page link, and hopefully some referral traffic from the sidebar. Does that make sense? Paul

The value of any one link is tough to measure, and it's often not what we'd hoped for. I think Google tends to look at the entire profile and often depreciates new links, adding in their value over time. The days where a couple of strong .edu or .gov links would make all the difference are in the past, IMO. I don't know the company or offering, but this focus on .edu and .gov links and $500/link just makes me uneasy. You mention the links are contextual and that education/government are relevant to your business, but my gut reaction is that this may not be money well spent. For the price of a few links, you could build content that might attract hundreds of links. Valuing any given link is an educated guess at best, but Rand had a decent post about it a while back (post is from 2009, but much of it is still relevant): http://www.seomoz.org/blog/17-ways-search-engines-judge-the-value-of-a-link

I'd tend to agree - you're basically putting out copies of your own content. Google can index those PDFs, which may end up looking like low-quality duplicates or some kind of article marketing. That could get you into Panda territory, or it could just devalue the content on your own site and boost the other sites. It depends on the situation, but you'd almost be better off just syndicating the content as regular web-pages and then making sure it links back to you (or has a cross-domain rel=canonical). Otherwise, this spun off content is going to be seen as very low-value.

Thank you very much!

Thanks Masoko, Great advice, would you be willing to share a freelancer recommendation to me via private message? Always good to get a recommendation of someone with first hand experience Michelle

But do you not think that marketing this keyword any more would damage the domain, and that I should concentrate my linking building efforts to domain and brand for a while to even out the percentages. Because replacement keys is far higher than the domain with the amount of domains linking.

Hi Jan Like Michael says Pinterest has "nofollows" attached to it so you wont directly benefit from having been pinterested 25K-56k times in terms of link juice. The benefits that you are getting from  the pins is the passing of your brand through out  all these various Pinterest Accounts and then for all their followers seeing your brand as well. There are some interesting tips on Pinterest here http://socialmediatoday.com/malharbarai/1182326/5-seo-tricks-pinterest Hope that helps.

Hi Lilac, This is an older thread, and it's probably best to start a new question on this topic rather than add to this older question. Thanks!

Here's an good article on anchor text & over optimization.  ... exact match vs partial match. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/beyond-exact-match-anchor-text-to-next-generation-link-signals-whiteboard-friday I have a client that has been penalized for over optimization.  We've been focused on partial match links for a while.  We've even used a few links that were the actual url, and 'click here'.  Anything that makes your link profile look natural.

So my perspective is similar to what everyone else here is saying, but I still feel like I can add something to the conversation. If you believe that the future of links has to do with co-citations (as described by Rand in this WBF) then language HAS to be a factor. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/prediction-anchor-text-is-dying-and-will-be-replaced-by-cocitation-whiteboard-friday We already knew that anchor text was being devalued,  but the words surrounding that anchor text will also have an effect. Having said all that, those links would still signal some kind of authority, right?  For example, CNET probably has links from 50 different languages.  As long as the sites are authoritative that has to be a positive signal on some level. I'd say, as long as the link doesn't cost you anything, go for it.  It won't hurt.  And if you write a great  landing page in Italian it could be a good long-term investment.

Thanks for the advice... Do you think that moving the text from the top of this page into the sidebar will negatively affect my rankings?  I am asking since the text (content) won't be the first thing seen by the search engines... Any thoughts...

Thanks, Andie!

Thanks!

I just came across this and I wanted to let say it is a great answer and thank you

I agree with Tom.  Backlinks can be from anywhere as long as they don't appear to be blatant spam.  I tend to agree that a backlink serves a greater purpose than just link juice and may actually send relevant traffic and business to your company.  I would try to target as many local links as possible, but branching out to a global mindset won't hurt at all.

so in short seo wise not worth it, only worth it if there is real traffic. its had no traffic in 4 years, so not worth it thanks

It seems that there are really good answers already in the Q/A: http://www.seomoz.org/q/has-anyone-use-this-source-to-submit-articles http://www.seomoz.org/q/are-there-any-good-websites-to-submit-articles-to http://www.seomoz.org/q/ezine-articles http://www.seomoz.org/q/what-are-the-best-article-sites-to-submit-to http://www.seomoz.org/q/is-it-safe-to-submit-the-same-article-to-multiple-sites http://www.seomoz.org/q/do-links-to-blog-articles-help-that-much And, the short answer is that you should avoid submitting articles in such directories. Sometimes it will even harm your site. Also, I noticed that my article on Ezine is copied to a bunch of low-quality web-sites. Of course they removed my on-page links.

Thank you

I do this in the homeschooling niche.  The only precaution I take is to allow them to write whatever they want, and to not specify the anchor text they use when they link to me.  That way the links look natural, and they're lower risk for triggering any over-optimization penalties. Not that a search engine can read intent (yet), but I don't do this for rankings; I do this for the traffic that comes from the post.  Since we're an education site, and lots of homeschoolers write about us anyway, so the relevancy of our site to the blog is high.  Also, a few sponsored posts don't look unnatural when there are also many natural posts and links about. These blogs often have other sponsored posts and reviews, and a lot of them also do giveaways that I've participated in.  I haven't had any issues myself <knock on="" wood="">.  However, you never know when there could be another animal being released from the Google zoo!</knock>

Whilst I do agree with Federico, it is also possible to 301 those old sites to the new one and enjoy about 85% of the linkjuice they had. There are perfectly legitimate reasons why one might do this - indeed I once closed 4 separate websites and 301'd them to my new site in order as the business we being consolidated. None of this was about building a private link network at the time...that's just how it worked out. Anyway, my new site went from PR0 to PR3 at the next toolbar PR update and has been fine for 3 years+ Just my 2 pence...