Are Links from Homepage safe?

[JohnPeters]

I have the option of getting a link from 2 websites home pages. My site is a financial service website.

I want to know if it is safe to do so.

The first site is a hotel site, so their content has no relation to my site

And the second is a Google News website about finances

They have offered me a section in the sidebar to have a sentence or 2 about my site with a link.

Can you tell me would these be safe to get? I don't want to be hit by any penalty

[tilenkrivec]

Make them relevant to the site & valuable to the users seeing them.

Don't make them just say "Click here for linkbest broker Seattlelink" but create something cool for the visitors of that site, like "Check out Johns 2 minute video guide to picking the best broker for your financial situation"

That way "link juice" from those sites will just be a by-product from doing this & you get considerable value with referral traffic as people actually click through those links.