Thread: Sponsor links on wordpress templates- is it spamming?

Hello all

I have seen so many Wordpress templates freely distributed all over the internet which have several sponsor links on the footer. Is it spamming? I read somewhere that it is spamming but forget where I read it. Is it considered bad in Cutts guys' eyes?

If not, I am planning to do so in here

Cheers

So this is allowed in here then??

No it is not considered as spamming. However, Google states that all advertisement links(within which the sponsor links count) should be marked as nofollow. If this is done, then i see no reason why it should be marked as spam.

Originally Posted by digitalservice

Is it considered bad in Cutts guys' eyes?

Yes, it is considered bad, especially if the sitewide links lead to penalized web sites (called "bad neighborhoods" in Google terminology) or unrelated web sites.

Matt Cutts has identified unrelated footer links as a possible reason for a site getting de-indexed. De-indexing happens when a penalty is imposed across an entire site. In other words, if Google does not want your site in their index, they will de-index the site.

Here is an old (2006) Matt Cutts blog post where he mentions the issue of unrelated links. Check out the section called "Reading current feedback."

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/indexing-timeline/

This post is related to both de-indexing and getting banished to the supplemental results index, which is a secondary index of web pages deemed "unworthy", which means that they only rarely show up in normal search results. Supplemental results affects individual pages, while de-indexing can affect the entire site.

I would never consider using a theme or a template that contains links to sites other than that of the original designer.