Links on your site and "Easy Money"!

Last week, someone forwarded an email to me regarding an email they'd received from a company who wanted to use their site for advertising. This company was willing to pay them up to $100 to add a short paragraph. This paragraph would even be placed on an obscure page on the website. The company told them which page they wanted, what the text was, and what the links were. Sounds okay, right?

Not exactly. The links went to sites that "looked like" legitimate sites up front, but in fact, were nothing but "link farms". People who go there, inevitably end up on sites that they probably wouldn't go to in the first place, all because of an ad on YOUR site. They trust you now. But will they if they end up on some viagra site from your site? Or worse, a malware-infested site bent on grabbing every bit of info on your computer?

Probably not. So reason number one: you'll lose your friends.

Number two has to do with page rankings. Your site has your content, and it's content of a certain style. Because of this your keywords may show quite well on sites like Google, Bing or Yahoo. Search engines are very aware of links of this matter, and this could end up getting you bumped down or even off the search engine. Again, ask yourself, is $100 worth getting kicked off of Google, Bing or Yahoo?

Not only that, but websites like SiteAdvisor or Web of Trust may not take a kind stance with your website. Do you really want to risk that for an "easy" $100?

Probably not. So reason number two: you'll lose your page rankings.

Be SURE to do your research when approached by people or companies offering these services. Know any companies like that? By all means, tell us about them and your experiences.