Sponsored Directories & Blog Posts

[cmaddison]

In your opinion, is it worth paying for sponsored links in directories like http://www.dmegs.com, rather than the standard free links?

I'm also curious about sponsored posts on Blogs (such as http://www.lovemydress.net/blog/sponsors/) where links are dofollowed, but clearly marked as sponsored.

Will Google penalise me for purchasing these links? Are the links de-valued in any way?

[StalkerB]

Sponsored links on directories may mean that you get up a category or two from normal (from /cat/sub-cat/location/site to /cat/ say) and as such more likely to get indexed on that site.

Sponsored posts may have the blog they're on devalued or links not pass juice but really shouldn't be a big risk (in so far as getting a penalty) to you, but may end up being a waste of money.

[Getz.pro]

yes, as links devalue as they iterate through the page as I understand it. This depends on how much it cost to be sponsored. Also if you have many, many pages of links, usually sponsored links are on the first page and therefore not so deep that SEs can't find them.

[KeriMorgret]

Hi cmaddison, did one of these responses answer your question, or do you still have more questions? If you could leave a reply or mark a helpful answer, that'd be great!

[kwoolf]

After sitting through some of SEOmoz webinars and other SEO videos, I gather that search engine technology has advanced to the point where certain sites will get treated differently than others when it comes to linking. Google does have a policy of nofollowing paid links (ads) and does "try" (was the word used by Matt Cutts) to identify sites that sell links and deal with them accordingly. So if the sites you're talking about are selling links, and I don't mean membership that allows linking, it stands to reason Google could catch on, which makes your investment a rather risky one. I would pass, but I'm a really conservative white hat guy.

[KeriMorgret]

Just wanted to leave a quick note saying that SEOmoz has upgraded our Link Directory! You can view a post Cyrus wrote with more information about the directory update and link building via directories at http://www.seomoz.org/blog/seo-link-directory-best-practices