When does selling links start to effect your site negatively?

AhFreshMeat

AhFreshMeat

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Does anyone have any info on selling links? How many is too many and when it starts affecting your site negstively.

I’m really looking for some kind of discussion or resource on the topic, but then I thought… well BUSO might be the best place to ask.

Scenario: I have hundreds of posts (400), great traffic, dr 60+, and I want to sell maybe 10 follow links a month; mostly new guest posts or niche edits. In this scenario the sites I am selling/linking to look very reputable, have traffic, are highly related to my site, and they pass a deep dive on ahrefs.
 
I wouldn't say that selling links on your site "starts" to affect your site. It'll happen all at once with either an outbound link penalty or your site will become distrusted to where none of your outbound links send any page rank juice. They will be ignored. The problem with that 2nd scenario is that you'll never know without constant testing.

The move is to make it look natural. You need an already existing outbound backlink profile linking out to sites in your niche of low, mid, and high authority. You need to mix up your anchor text usage too, preferably never being optimized to the point of exact match keyword usage.

And as you said, you need to be very selective about who you sell a link to. If you sell to CBD, Casino, Essay Writing people you'll stick out like a sore thumb. It doesn't mean that those get you penalized. It's just that those webmasters are more likely to be doing dumb stuff that causes Google to crawl up their butts with a fine tooth comb, where they'll find you, too.

I don't think you need to ensure the sites you sell links to have some massive amount of traffic. Just make sure they aren't spammed to death with links, have a clean design, and have clean non-AI-trash content. It's more about what they will do in the future, which can be signaled by what they're doing in the present.
 
This was super helpful. The exact match anchors and using signals to help understand whether a site has a non-spammy future or not.
 
Following up on this. in my case if I have 400 posts. DR 60+, would selling 15 outbound links be too many per month if all of the above guidelines that Ryuzaki mentioned is followed to a T? Or will a site have a surprise penalty or lose link juice passing as mentioned.
 
No one can say if its too much or not. 15 links for 400 posts does sound like quite a lot to me.
 
bernard said:
No one can say if its too much or not. 15 links for 400 posts does sound like quite a lot to me.
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If those links are going to relevant sites with contextual content then why would that matter? In other words, if every article on your website links out to a relevant article to support the content that you're writing... is that a bad thing?

AhFreshMeat said:
info on selling links
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In my experience, the money just doesn't make sense. But, maybe I'm wrong. How much are you looking to charge for a backlink?

Also, you said your site has good traffic. Can you qualify that a bit more?

Ryuzaki said:
...outbound link penalty or your site will become distrusted to where none of your outbound links send any page rank juice
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If this were to happen, would removing all of the outbound links (and waiting) result in the penalty being removed?
 
Smith said:
If those links are going to relevant sites with contextual content then why would that matter? In other words, if every article on your website links out to a relevant article to support the content that you're writing... is that a bad thing?
Click to expand...

If you can keep it relevant, that is.

My experience is that those willing to pay consistently are usually those you don't really want to link to. At least the big time outreachers, those are typically gambling, crypto etc.
 
Keep in mind that 10 links per month adds up real quick after a year or two and each of them removes more doubt about whether or not your site is selling links. Each link, even if it's to a relevant target, is still you linking to a link buyer and those link buyers will all have links from plenty of other sites that also link to link buyers.

Also, each of those links is a chance for the agency/buyer to add you to a list of sites that sell links. Those lists get passed around. Agencies send those lists to their clients. Clients send the lists to their buddies. They get posted publicly, too.

If the links are relevant, they won't stand out to the average person browsing your site or even someone poking around manually to look at what you link to.

But to a company that specializes in crawling the web and noticing patterns when it comes to links, who can zoom out, I just don't think you're going to be able to avoid the risk of easily being identified as a site that sells links, even if the links are all relevant.

How much this matters to you will depend on how much you care about this site, and how much the link sales are worth to you. There's people who live in a stranger's attic for months and steal their food at night and never get noticed. There's also kids who get screamed at for cutting through someone's yard on their bike one time. Will you get noticed right away, will it matter if you do? IDK, but if you care about this site as anything other than a place to sell links, it's probably best to not sell links.

Picture a huge heatmap that groups sites based on who they link to and who links to them. Once you start selling links, no matter how relevant, it's going to skew your location on that map drastically. There's only so many sites buying links, and there's only so many sites selling links. Compared to whatever the baseline is for a "normal" site, it really can't take much for you to be red hot.

Linking to something relevant is like, being a helium balloon and avoiding Thumbtack Alley. You gotta do that, 100% if you want to survive. But I think the real concern is that every link you sell is going to turn up the thermostat a few more degrees, and then... well, whatever happens to helium when it's heated.
 
@Potatoe thanks for the great explanation. If, as you said, a site does link out and "turns up the thermostat a few more degrees" do you think this can be reversed by simply deleting all of the outbound links?
 
@Smith, in most instances Google recrawls and re-evaluates, but in some cases where trust is lost they have a very long memory. If reversing having sold links is a concern, it's better to not do it, period. You shouldn't be selling links on a site that matters to you in that regard, I say.
 
@Ryuzaki thank you for chiming in.

Do you see any difference between selling links and engaging in link exchanges? I'm not talking about casino/adult/crypto/essay/etc. But just normal sites that contact site owners for backlinks. And in this case, I'm talking about a site that the site owner wants to keep around.

Also, if you see risks with selling links (again from a site the site owner cares about) do you also see risks with buying links for the opposite reasons?
 
I don’t think it’s an all-or-nothing scenario. Selling links to clean sites or businesses in your direct niche can be fine if you aren’t selling a zillion of them. Same with trading links though I see no difference between the activities. It’ll look similar in a link graph. But do either of those look that different from the results of aggressive marketing?

The difference comes from staying away from certain nodes in the graph. The most egregious buyers and sellers are who you avoid (CBD/Essay/Casino/Crypto/etc.)
 
Ryuzaki said:
@Smith, in most instances Google recrawls and re-evaluates, but in some cases where trust is lost they have a very long memory. If reversing having sold links is a concern, it's better to not do it, period. You shouldn't be selling links on a site that matters to you in that regard, I say.
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Personally, once I start selling links, I come to terms that the site is going to be sold or allowed to fade out.
 
I suppose a more direct/better question is... what rules do you guys go by to keep it safe... one sold link per every 12 articles you're producing?, assuming the sold link adheres to the requirements this thread already went over (Ryu's initial reply)
 
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