I Bought AD on a site, am i being penalized for it

[Prime85]

Hello...

I have bought two ads on the site : http://goo.gl/nXnRA

If you look on the right hand column, you will see the top two images under the word sponsors are mine....

Am i being penalized for this?  are these ads frowned upon by Google?  I need guidance as my ranking for the words being used as that alt text have tanked, badly and i also received a letter from WMT about unnatural links.

If that site, and the ads (not links) i bought are fine with google, please advise what you think it may be... my site is : http://goo.gl/JgK1e

Please help...

Thanks

[Prime85]

How can i tell if a link is considered spam or not?  I have personally submitted my site to a bunch of social bookmarking sites, I don't know if that's considered spam or not.....

For instance, is this spam : http://it.savenkeep.com/anticipazioni-chrome/

I'm going through my backlinks through WMT and half of the sites have been deindexed or taken down, but the ones that remain scraped articles i wrote for article submission sites and added it to their sites... why would G penalize me for this... i have no idea who these people are.... for instance : camelcrochet.info  <--- who are these people, how did they find me, and why are articles i wrote posted all over their site?

Thanks for the help...

[Prime85]

Thanks for your help... What would/should I be looking for in the back link audit? I'm not sure what is considered spammy and what is not. Thanks again

[NakulGoyal]

I agree. As others have noted, I would worry about your entire link profile. If you are concerned about certain image ads or other advertising, you can always have the webmaster add the rel="nofollow" in which case you are telling the bots not to pass any link juice to the linked site (even though it does pass some value).

I would recommend doing a complete backlinks audit and see what you can do to plan a long term natural link profile.

[Prime85]

Also, what is this and where did you find it? :

Bug Out Bags

Sorry for the beginner questions

[Prime85]

Thanks for the quick reply... I have never bought links on any sites, other then the "ads" I just asked about... Any idea how some of these spammy links got there? Also, where and how did you find these? Thanks again

[Eavesy]

I doubt that those links are the reason you are being penalised, Google generally goes after text links, a few image links here and there will probably not do you any harm.

[bobjones]

Looking at your entire backlink profile, I think you've got more to worry about than just paid ads. This for example would be a big no-no

Bug Out Bags

Also, there's heaps of non-relevant footer links floating around on decent pagerank pages. A clear sign of link buying.

*update - I thought you said the top two images were yours, but your
site is the plastic one. Anyway, seems you're still buying other links
such as on here: http://www.knight-kit.com/kitchen-remodeling
/a-handy-instruction-concerning-storage-systems-for-the-residence-storage-area-office

That looks like a spammy link page, and it's not indexed in Google. Perhaps part of one of the linkfarms they're taking down at the moment?