link / buying link question

[sparky]

Quick and simple question that I would like to peoples input on.

if you goto dresses it takes you to a familiar type of page "there seems to more and more of them everyday" that only has sponsored links on it.

My questions are.

1. Is this type of link counted as a paid / bought link by the SEs?
2. Does this type of link help your IBL and PR?
3. Is this type of marketing like Ad-words "throwing your money away" or does it help / work?

[thindenim]

They add absolutely no value to googles index, so I wouldn't bother adding your link. They will be filtered out sooner rather than later.

[sparky]

Thank you for the reply. With the growing number of such pages I was not sure if there was something to them I was missing.

[mjtaylor]

There is no SEO value to these sorts of pages, if that's your question. If you look at the code you will see the links are indirect so there is no PR or link value of any sort passed. And the SEs don't have any issue with them; in other words you would not be risking any good standing with Google buying them because they are clearly paid ads.

These are pay per click links on a network, analogous to Adwords or Yahoo but on a network of domains rather than on a portal. Networks like this generally rely on direct traffic (people typing dressshop dot com, for example, into their browser) or PPC campaigns of their own. Yes, they are a legitimate source of traffic. Look at who is advertising: Victoria's Secret, JC Penney, Ann Taylor. If brand names are using a network like this (and there are *many*) I would have confidence in their legitimacy. And for $50 you could test whether the network works for your site.

Hope that helps.

MJ

[thindenim]

Of course MJ is correct, if the links can generate decent direct traffic to your site then go for it. As this was in the google forum however I assumed you were wondering if they had direct SEO benefit.

[bijan814]

u might get some traffic from it, thats about it.

[sparky]

First I would like to thank everyone for replying.

I run several retail sites. For a while I was using google adwords, but I was finding that I was getting irrelevant hits due to where my ads were appearing. My conversion rate for my adwords was very low. I have done away with my adwords account. My number of unique visitors has dropped. I am down to a low 500-600 a day, but my sales have not dropped off. Looking at this type of marketing, I was unsure if it did pass the PR or count as IBL's, but looking closer, yes mjtaylor is absolutely correct in everything that she said and that it does not help my PR or IBL's. My adwords also did not count toward PR or IBL's either, but do you feel that I would get more of a relative search result using this type of network? My adwords were appearing on adult sites and all over adsense sites. This type of marketing seems to be more keyworded towards my products. Again I have never used this type of marketing and do not know anything about it. I am looking for advice and professional input to decide if it is worth the $50 or would it behoove me to spend the $50 elsewhere. As all of you know, especially running a small business, money is always tight, and I am trying to stretch a penny into a dime and not throw it away as I was using google adwords.

I was not questioning the legitimacy of this company or its network and yes I was wondering if it did have direct SEO benefit. I am trying to find new ways to market my sites.

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by sparky

1. Is this type of link counted as a paid / bought link by the SEs?
2. Does this type of link help your IBL and PR?
3. Is this type of marketing like Ad-words "throwing your money away" or does it help / work?

1. Yes if they find it as a paid link.
2. Could if they dont filter as a paid link.
3. I would avoid it. MFA pages like this are crap and the SE's dont like them in their index.

[sparky]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

1. Yes if they find it as a paid link.
2. Could if they dont filter as a paid link.
3. I would avoid it. MFA pages like this are crap and the SE's dont like them in their index.

Thanks I'm going to avoid this and find other avenues.