Some badges will be sitewide, is that OK

[BobGW]

Hello,

We are making badges to hand out to our alumni.

Some of these links backs are probably going to be sitewide.

Is this tactic still good with respect to the recent G updates?

Thanks

[mememax]

Hi Bob, I think that badges are really helpful to build a brand and get renowned in your niche, as more alumni use them the more exposure you'll achieve, however I discourage the usage of this kind of backlinks in your seo linkbuilding strategy since they're not editorially made, and since the link is embedded, it doesn't reflect an user real willing to link to a website. In this video from Matt cutts you can see what I am speaking about. IMO it's still fine to use this kind of links but only if you do the following:

1. put a nofollow in it
2. don't use rich anchor texts but only your brand name

In this way you'll be sure that no penalty may affect you in the future. Just a general guideline always try to achieve editorially made links. Hope this helps!

[jws8118]

I agree you are ok to include links in a badge but the main objective of the badge should be to build brand credibility not build links for the search engines.  If you nofollow and stick with branded anchor text I think you are safe.  It's a no harm no foul approach erring on the side of caution.

[BobGW]

What if we only gave out 30-50 badges to our elite alumni and had them all have different anchor text?

[jws8118]

This sounds like a cautious approach.  If you are only issuing 30-50 anchor text optimized badges and you vary the anchor text I think you're safe as long as relevancy remains intact.

[BobGW]

Here's what we've decided to do. We'll send out 50 badges to the first 50 alumni that wants them. Then we'll email them a custom embed script. We'll have 50 different alt tags.

Does that work or do the image filenames have to be different as well?

Also, is this safe on into the future of Google?

[mememax]

Hi Bob, take into account one thing. Google wants links to be manually edited. Editorial link is good when you hide a link in a widget/badge to receive a link which is not editorially made you're "gaming" the algo. That link is not natural under google eyes. (further listening here).

The idea is good, the implementation not so much. Why not get in touch with your top 50 alumni, ask them to put the badge without any link inside and then ask them to write a post about their happiness of being considered a top alumni or their experience in your school? There they can link back to you (or not!) but it would be definitely higher quality, relevant and moreover editorially made!!!

Also I won't be making heavy linking tests while the next, huge Penguin is in the air

[jws8118]

If you can get the editorial links by all means go for those first b/c then you can get followed links and have zero risk of penalty.  But the response above is correct in that you probably don't want to roll this out before the next major google algo update comes supposedly on Friday.

http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-on-upcoming-penguin-panda-link-networks-updates-151273

[BobGW]

Sounds good, we'll stick to editorial mention.

We could offer the badges to alumni with blogs that have written a post about us and linked back to our site.

Our relationship to our alumni is very delicate, how can we frame this proposal so that it comes across more mutually beneficial? I don't think in our case we can contact our blog owning alumni and ask a lot of them. Is there a way to make this sound better?

[jws8118]

I'm not sure what business you are in but you could take a different approach.  Instead of asking for links you could do your own editorial "features" of some of your authoritative blog owning alumni.  You could push that on your own blog and then collaborate with them about covering the piece on their site with links back to you as the original source.

Might work but it does really depend on your niche and the relevancy of these blog owning alumni.

[BobGW]

I like it, but wouldn't that be reciprocal linking?

[jws8118]

Well it is reciprocal by definition but when there is useful editorial content surrounding the link it's different than a page full of links just pointing back and forth at each other.

[irvingw]

use long tails that incorporate your main keyword, so it helps your main keyword, but of you get a penalty for some reason it wil lonly affect that long tail and not your main term

If you can get them on homepage or main LP only I would make them dofollow, but if sitewide I would stick to nofollow - and if you do nofollow then you can use whatever anchor text you like since it's a neutered and safe link.

[BobGW]

Irving,

Thank you for your comment. It sounds like we're stretching the limits here, when making them dofollow even if it's on one page. This is a long term, play-it safe site with high integrity.

What's 100% safe for the future?

[BobGW]

Irving, the Guru in who answered below, told me to never purposely do reciprocal links. He told me that in this question:

http://www.seomoz.org/q/a-few-reciprocal-links-ok

I'm open to suggestions on whether reciprocal links are OK and I really appreciate the great ideas.

[mememax]

Bob, there's nothing 100% safe for the future, Google is a private entity and they make the rules of their own game. However you can 99% sure that links will always be in their algo, just because is the inner nature of the www to have sites interlinked. I imagine that they'll become every day smarter in detecting patterns and automated links or human trying to manipulate the algo, but what they won't never control is human manual editing. It has no (huge) patterns and it's natural which is what they really want.

About your alumnis I don't have the compelte view of your market and situation but if I understand yyour position: they know that they're helping you but you're not giving nothing back to them. I think that since they've studied in your center they've been selected as top alumnis and been given a badge to demonstrate that. If I were them I would like to show it, so ask them to write a post, I think that the value for them here is intangible, jsut ego-boosting you need to play in that ground, I don't know how renowned you are in your market but someone is always happy to be endorsed by a structure (maybe you can offer special linkedin endorsemnent for a really short group with good websites )