Would linking out to a gambling/casino site, harm my site and the other sites it links out to?

[Markus111]

I have been emailed asking if I sell links on one of my sites.  The person wants to link out to slotsofvegas[dot]com or similar.

Should I be concerned about linking out to this and does it reduce the link value to any of the other sites that the site links out to?

Thanks,

Mark

[eyepaq]

Well if you're site is about casinos and gambling that can even be useful for you - it can help as google said that linking out to similar content can even help your ranking by showing users quality similar content.
If not for sure it won't help and more then that it can even harm you.
if you post the link in the footer of the page for example it won't even help them and more then that it can hurt you as they can smell a paid links in many ways.

As for the other links of the page, a new link will dilute the link juice. (10 links out -> link juice / 10 for each one, adding a new one will mean link juice / 11 - even if y ou use no follow for one or more links)

[Markus111]

My site is fitness/health/sports related if that makes any difference.

I understand your point about link dilution, but thats not what I mean, will it harm the rankings of my site or the sites that my site links out to?

[StalkerB]

1. Never admit to thinking about selling links

2. Working in gambling, I've seen a lot of paid for links to gambling sites burn the pages they're on if it's from unrelated content (sigh, I shouldn't be honest, just going to make my job harder). Usually this'll just burn the PR of the page it's on, but sometimes can do damage to your whole site.

3. In the interests of disclosure (and as mentioned above) I would technically be a competitor working in the same sector, but if I approach you for links you should probably turn me down too

4. If you page is about casinos or slots or games or probabilities or something related then you might consider giving them a link, but again, don't admit to selling them, especially in a public forum. Linking out to relevant content isn't as bad (paid is still bad). If it's a body building site though (just going by your user name) I wouldn't.

5. If it was an advertising link you would have to nofollow it to adhere to Google guidelines, however I doubt the person wanting to buy it would agree.

6. And yes adding any extra links slightly reduces the value of the links you already have.

[NextDigital51]

Yes, it might potentially harm you. And I believe that once you link to a gambiling/casino site, less people will be willing to get links from you again as some don't want to be associated to gambling/casino sites (bad neighbourhood).

[DaveSottimano]

Hi Mark,

I'll try to be ast straightforward as possible and say that the practice of buying/selling links with the intent of passing link value (a.k.a. pagerank, linkjuice) is against Google's quality guidelines.

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356

Unfortunately this is not uncommon, but there are some things you can negotiate that are within Google's quality guidelines.

If they want to purchase a link, it should be considered as advertising. If it is considered advertising, you should abide by Google's guidelines and add the "nofollow" tag to the link which essentially does not give the link any value. The only value is potential traffic from your site for the buyer(s).

Most likely, the buyer(s) will not agree to this as they are probably buying a followed link in order to pass pagerank from your site to theirs - in order to manipulate search rankings.

Would I do it? Nope, not worth the risk. However, I would be more favourable to link to them if they advertised with me. I would only link to them if they had relevant, related and good quality content that I genuinely wanted to refer my visitors to.

I'm guessing you're not a casino site, so you might want to steer clear from this transaction.

Regarding your second question:

Linking to "bad neighborhood" or poor quality sites can also affect your rankings - this is a known fact. Have a good look at their site:

1. Is it a link farm
2. Poor content, tons of ads/adsense
3. Questionable material (adult etc..)
4. Malware, spyware
5. Thin affiliate site
6. Do they have business contact details clearly visible
7. Is it easy to contact them
8. Is the content on their site being scraped from another

I think you get the picture, definitely have a read of what Rand said a few years ago:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/more-on-nofollow-at-seomoz-and-how-bad-outbounds-can-impact-websites

That post is still very relevant and sums up the point quite nicely.

Be cautious and good luck.

Cheers,

Dave

http://www.bad-neighborhood.com/

[Getz.pro]

I would not unless your site is about gabling or casinos as stated. I would not link out to non-relevant content.