Text Link Ads - have you worked with them?

[joshcanhelp]

I work with a large group of community sites and we were approached by a company called Text Link Ads to purchase links on our sites for SEO purposes. This means we can't add "nofollow" and the resulting page is crawl-able. This goes directly against Google's policy but I think it would be tough to find out exactly what we're doing. It could be a great revenue source and this company has many, many sites they work with. That said, this sounds like what you say right before something bad happens.

So, two part question: Has anyone worked with this company before? And should these links be avoided or are they not so bad?

Thanks in advance!

[SimonCullum]

Hi Josh

This is a great question to ask and I will try to answer it as best as I can for you;

I understand the temptation here, which is as you've said, could be a great revenue stream. However with this comes a significant risk of devaluing your large group of community sites by selling out for a quick buck, which in all fairness is the measure of this.

Google's Web Spam team have many extremely bright people working hard on detecting this type of activity, that's what you'd be up against. I wouldn't fancy my chances of getting away with it unnoticed for any lengthy period of time and I believe that for any credible website, it's too high a risk to take, that's the revenue vs the risk of penalty for selling links.

Yes many sites take this risk and many have so far gotten away with the extra revenue with no downside, however logic says that it's only a matter of time and come that time, a lot will regret their original decision to sell links.

You're perfectly entitled to do this, just bare in mind the harm that a severe ranking penalty could do to your group of community sites and weigh that up against the extra revenue you could make.

(I haven't worked with the company that you mention or any similar company, though I do know people that have and I do know the risks associated with doing so. I'm not risk averse, I just don't like gambling when the chances of loosing are too great).

It also depends how you feel about ethical SEO, which is basically not trying to play against the system, not trying to manipulate the search engines. There are those out there that do love to, the so-called grey hat and black hat SEOs and sometimes, they suceed. It's just personally, not something that I'd feel comfortable doing, I much prefer to play the game fairly, which takes longer to get there however is far more sustainable.

Again though, it's a calculated risk that everybody is entitled to make, if it fits in with your strategy and goals, maybe it's the right thing for you to do. That's your call.

Hope that helps in your decision process,

Regards

Simon

[myclicks-163603]

Hi Josh, I've been working with them as a client and have experienced both positive and negative outcome of  buying links over there. Text link ads are hiding your site details till someone really buys a link on it. The link becomes visible for the advertiser only if he/ she has purchases it. We have had successful campaign in the past. However the value for the advertiser changes in time as it is based on the actions of the publisher. If the publisher decides to place many links on a particular page they might cannibalize the results for the advertisers and also get deranked by google.So as a publisher you have to decide for yourself if you are going to make more money for a shorter period of time as your web page might loose some rankings or you can reduce that risk by getting a smaller sum for a longer period.

Also don't forget that Text Links Ads will be getting a large share of the money from you as a publisher. If I was at your position and if you have your own resources to manage the sales and link implementation I will definitely recommend it. However if you have the scale of sites but don't want to spend the time on it you can simply outsource it to Text Link Ads or another link brokerage platform. They are a good company that won't run away from business.

[joshcanhelp]

Great answer, Simon, thanks for taking the time to type that out. This was the direction I was leaning on this and it's good to hear an honest reply.

Paid links, in my mind, are at the lowest end of the "bad things to do" spectrum. It's still on the wrong side of the tracks but you see so many people getting away with so much, you can't help but to think, "hey, it's not that bad."

I think I've made up my mind, thanks for the push in the right direction!

[joshcanhelp]

Thanks for the insight, that's really helpful. It sounds like it truly is a trade-off, in some cases you're just trading your ranking for money, not what we really want to do.

[SimonCullum]

A good call Josh, one that you'll surely benefit from in the medium to long term by not participating in selling links. Glad I was able to help you reach that decision