Is providing a paid scholarship to schools and receiving a back link, classed as a paid link scheme?
-
I've always wondered if it is classed as paid links in Google's eyes?
-
I don't think Google would want the negative PR from penalizing people for creating legitimate scholarships.
An alternative to creating a scholarship is to curate a list of relevant scholarships in your niche. There are scholarships for almost anything you can think of. Then go to sites that link to scholarships and let them know that you curated a comprehensive list of X scholarships.
-
Reading Google's link guidelines here, I would say that it could not be classed as a paid link scheme with some caveats: If it's a legitimate scholarship and not a façade or fraud being run by the school or manufactured by the link purchaser then the link is product of the scholarship and not a direct "purchase".
I would have thought that launching a decent scholarship would also generate additional, positive PR and links to the scholarship provider as a result.
Regards,
George
-
Scholarships, product reviews, etc are all in a fuzzy area.
Best advice: use them all, don't abuse or rely too much on them
-
There has been talk about scholarships on the Q&A before, you might want to do a quick search. While I don't know about the paid link aspect, I do know that one of the concerns brought up before is making sure the scholarship is legal for both the school(s) its being offered for, and in the states its being offered to, that there isn't any discrimination and the like.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Links not showing
Hi, we have been putting links to our website www.caffeinemarketing.co.uk from other sites we are connected to. Although these sites are up and running and have been crawled, the links are not showing up on mot. What else do I need to do? Is it anything to do with whether I put http://www. or just www. Please can someone advise.
Link Building | | Caffeine_Marketing
Thanks0 -
Is there an extra SEO benefit for linking to pages that link to you?
Currently working on a link-building strategy and have gotten a few mentions. Just curious if there is any SEO benefits of linking back to the pages my site was mentioned and linked on? Would love to hear your thoughts, thanks!
Link Building | | Derrald0 -
Paid Directory Links
To my surprise, I couldn't find a clear answer to the questions "Do paid directory links violate Google guidelines?" I know Matt Cutt's recently had a video on paid links, but it didn't really cover paid directory links. Are well-curated directory sites that charge for inclusion violate Google's guidelines? A good example would be the business.com directory.
Link Building | | RickyShockley0 -
Free tool which includes a link back to my site
On one of my sites I provide a free tool to other webmasters to use that allows them to copy some code to use the free tool on their website and under the tool on it says "Powered by: mysite.co.uk" with a link to "mysite.co.uk". Now I have no real control over which sites can come and use this free tool (a tool to test how fast an internet connection is), on the whole though it is aimed at a specific niche but a range of sites do use it which means good or crap sites can pick up the free code to place into their sites. The link to mysite.co.uk is now always mysite.co.uk as the anchor text, I used to use the websites name (which is the actual name of the URL - link to site at end of post) so the links were keyword rich but only to my sites genuine name, however I now just leave it as the URL to my site. I am not aiming to do anything untowards with the linking other than to get the acknowledgement that it was provided for free by my site, however I'm wondering if google etc will be able to tell they are natural and not dodgy? My site is: http://bit.ly/MsNQwS (n.b. a new improved test is being created before anyone says it's not accurate). 🙂
Link Building | | Wardy0 -
Should you always link back?
I am asking this for two reasons: Courtesy: Is it common courtesy to reciprocate with a link back if somebody has linked to your site? SEO: Does linking back affect your rankings at all? A blog has linked to one of my clients' sites as part of a round-up of "top 100 best" within their industry. They have also sent us an email suggesting that we add a link from our site saying that we've been listed. Of course, I understand that it is in my clients' interest for us to advertise on their site that they've been listed in a Top 100 list... However, it got me thinking (as more of a general question) - does reciprocating a link ever affect it's value at all? ie. Is two-way linking ever considered part of a link exchange in the eyes of Google, and does it penalize you at all for that?
Link Building | | WiredCanvas0 -
Is a no-follow link/sponsored link a good editorial link?
Ok maybe this is a dumb question. I really need some better, more quality backlinks pointing to my site. There is a site that has domain authority of 72, page rank 5 that is offering me a sponsored blog post. Do sponsored posts count as a good editorial link? Also what if they are no-follow (and how would I find out ahead of time), does that still give me link juice?
Link Building | | tutugirl0 -
Is it worth it to link to sites that link to you in guest posts?
Suppose you published a guest post on a quality site and you link to a previous guest post you have written for another site (which links to you). In theory you could send link juice to the page that links to you for a second order effect. Has anyone seen results from this tactic?
Link Building | | ProjectLabs0