Is a scholarship seen as buying links?

[DemiGR]

We work in the student loan debt industry, so providing a scholarship for our viewers makes total sense for our business.  Would links to this page be seen by Google as buying links? Does this fall anywhere into gray-hat tactics?

My gut tells me no because helping people with student debt is what we do. The scholarship really synergizes with our business model, but who knows..?

[Andy.Drinkwater]

"My gut tells me no because helping people with student debt is what we do"

Well, is it being done for links? This is something that is quite a common link building tactic, so Google are probably already on to it. That said, you can always request any links to be nofollowed - that should stop Google seeing it as a link tactic.

It does fall within the darker side of link building as it isn't really an editorially gained link - other sites have been penalised for 'buying-links-in-a-not-really-buying-links' manner before.

-Andy

[CommT]

Thank you Andy - you've struck a chord with me here. Good point, well made!

[DemiGR]

The organization revolves around helping people with their student loans.  We offer resources on how to avoid student debt, how to take action on student debt, and other tips for college kids.  The scholarship is something we would have done whether we got 5000 links to it or zero, so we arent doing it for the purpose of getting links.  That being said, its a really nice side benefit because we are getting some good links from it.

The scholarship helps promote our business and out commitment to helping address the student loan crisis in the USA. We could request the links be no-followed, but that seems to be drastic unless its clear Google penalizes this, no? Its not as if we are an auto repair shop offering a scholarship.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

There is no telling if Google are going to see this as a problem or not - until it's too late.

If you are doing this only for the fact you want to offer a scholarship and not expecting links, then the safe thing is to ask for the links to be no-followed. It's hardly a drastic step and it keeps you safe.

Remember, Google aren't going to have a conversation with you about what you are doing - it will either happen or it wont.

-Andy

[lautman]

I agree with Andy.  Google is probably aware of this tactic.  Although the links aren't completely "editorial" in the purest sense, if you are chasing links from universities or colleges, many of them won't link to your scholarship page unless the award you are providing is relevant and valuable to their students - eg faculty of medicine linking to an award for med students.  Many of the bigger schools don't even list awards below a certain amount.

This issue has come up for discussion in the Q&A before:

http://moz.com/community/q/creating-a-scholarship-for-seo

http://moz.com/community/q/is-providing-a-paid-scholarship-to-schools-and-receiving-a-back-link-classed-as-a-paid-link-scheme

http://moz.com/community/q/link-building-with-a-scholarship

and on YouMoz (promoted to main page):http://moz.com/blog/5-link-building-tactics-to-improve-your-local-rankings

**Take home message: **Scholarships can be a part of your link building activities but make them legit and make sure that it isn't the only thing that you are doing.

[Chris.Menke]

As I see it DemiGR, if you have an event such as the giveaway of a scholorship and you promote that event as any legitimate event might be promoted--via social media, via press release, via your website, via press--and others recognize the value in promoting it themselves and they link to it (or not) as they see fit, it seems it would build brand awareness and awareness for the event and I don't think there is anything wrong with that.  Promote the event, not the link and if the right event is promoted in the right way, links may happen.

[DemiGR]

Thanks for these links.  Lots of useful info I should have searched first i guess.  I agree with your take home message.

[DemiGR]

Thanks Chris for the response.  I agree with you as well, I think the links are coming only because its a legitimate scholarship opportunity from a business that focuses on helping people with their student debt issues.  If Google see this as spammy, it seems to me they would be making a mistake on how our particular business should promote itself.  I dont know what can be said about our commitment to the student loan disaster than "We really do want to help our users, to show that here's $2,000 to help pay for school".

A couple larger universities shared our scholarship on FB and Twitter and got us a lot of traffic and new links as well, seems pretty authentic to me and I believe google should look at this way as well.

[KempRugeLawGroup]

Am I missing something? From the why you described it, I really don't see how this can be considered "buying a link" at all. If you told University X, we will do a scholarship specifically for your students, onliy if you link to it, then, sure, that makes sense. However, if the scholarship isn't directly tied to a particular school, then I don't see the problem.

If this is considered buying links and can be penalized, then wouldn't that mean any contests, give-a-ways or sponsorships that a site creates, and then that someone else links to would be violating google's guidelines?

• Ruben