Being approached by link buyers

[Azzopardi]

Karima Affiliate club had the best advice.

The way i approach such questions is:

1) see who is buying (company - site content & relevancy - etc)
2) use your common sense: if it is too good to be true it often is, settle for a smaller amount with a more reputable company
3) will MY visitors benefit from it

I've been doing SEO for a very long time and I don't know anyone who got penalized unless they made it obvious. If you have 20 internal links and 3 outbound links than it's a good ratio. If you have 5 pages with 20 outbound links than it's obvious you're doing something wrong.

People link to external websites all the time, not just for money, that's why it's called the world wide WEB. Use your common sense.

[universal4]

I think this point is the most important.

will MY visitors benefit from it

If you do decide to sell a few links...make sure the keywords match the content being linked to and that the keywords are relevant to the page.

Linking a blackjack page with blackjack keywords FROM a blackjack page seems relevant...but linking a roulette page or site using blackjack terms from a bingo page isn't a very good match....

Rick
Universal4

[RyanTheRave]

There is an amazing post here that you should read; http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-n...teboard-friday

At the bottom it explains the topic that is being discussed and it's VERY useful.

[Azzopardi]

Linking a blackjack page with blackjack keywords FROM a blackjack page seems relevant...but linking a roulette page or site using blackjack terms from a bingo page isn't a very good match....

Rick
Universal4

Yes and no

I think the volume of outbound links and where they are landing is a much more important factor, because a natural gaming site might cross promote another igaming product.

However if it is a bingo site as you say and has 30 outbound links to casino/roulette/blackjack pages on 1 page, well that's obviously not natural and could be easily be detected as link selling.

Be creative and open about link buying as it's not as easy to detect if you're smart about it. Look at it this way, if you sponsor a conference and they put a link to your website from theirs, is that link buying? How is it different from sponsoring a blog post and have the words "Sponsored by" CasinoXyz.com?

[PokerSpnsor2-0]

None at all look at pokerlistings - http://www.pokerlistings.com/poker-directory these guys are one of the dominators of the aff business and rank for hundreds of keywords.

Just make sure that your directory isn't the main focus of your site and you have plenty of other content. Also verify the sites you link to by running a website grader or similar to make sure that you link to quality sites.

Don't worry about PR it no longer means what it used to, I saw a PR5 with 4 pages of content and doesn't rank for any keyword and then I had my own site at number 1 when I was a PR0. A few years ago PR meant everything and now it does not have so much of an influence on rankings.

[lovelysms]

i have been also sold links at my casino sites even at blogs.I sold link at PR 0 sites only.From it i learns that if my site has rich content and good quality backlinks then our site has a good traffic and useful for other who buy links.

[Doolally]

If you have some links out to good quality sites then Google isn't going to discredit you and you might even gain some kudos for it.

[BingoHouse]

Just stopping by to echo what's been said by a lot of posters already: just be discriminating about who you link out to, and only consider placing links if the referral site works in the context of what you're offering.

Also, good look on posting that SEO Moz article - even nofollow links can be beneficial, as they suggest link diversity.

[jannes]

Don't sell textlinks there is also a risk. Search engines know when there is a online casino buying links all over the internet. Especially Google is penalizing webmaster who sell links, it is against there regulations. And yes your the boss of your own website, but when you get a penalty you aren't happy either. I discoverd this for my own experience, just try to rank better and better and you will receive enough money from players instead of ad buyers.