An idea - A method of increasing link value

Since starting my foray into the world of SEO I have come to realise that probably the most important factor is inbound links. I have also realised that getting these links, without gaining a reputation as a spammer, is somewhat difficult and exceptionally time consuming.

So I recently put my thinking cap on and came up with an idea. My SEO experience is, shall we say, somewhat limited - so I would appreciate any feedback on the following.

To fully understand the idea a little background information will help....

Around a year ago and for no particular reason other than it being new and shiny I decided to install vBulletin blogs on my site. At the moment there are a few members that use them but in the main they are generally underused and the quality is somewhat poor. In order to promote the blogging system I am thinking of allowing members to put their own Adsense banners on to their blogs and therefore earn revenue from it.

Now you are probably wondering how this is relevant to incoming links...

The idea is that members will actively go out there and promote their blogs, not because they have any interest in site SEO but rather their desire to earn a higher revenue from Adsense. However their promotion will increase the amount of links to the site.

In addition and for the same revenue increase reasons I am hoping that the quality of blogs will increase. This I hope will also increase incoming links, keywords etc etc.

So that's the plan, now tell me what the fatal flaw is?

EDIT: One fatal flaw is that as yet I haven't been able to get an official/authoritative response from Google regarding the following questions:

1) Can a single site run multiple Adsense account on different pages (one account per page and still keeping within the maximum blocks limits) - This I assume to be OK as there are quite a few revenue sharing sites out there, but assumption is the mother of all....

2) More importantly, if the blog owner is rogue and clicks their own banners this will obviously result in the termination of their account, but will it also result in the termination of all accounts linked to the domain?

I wish Google had Adsense telephone support, because they aren't answering these questions on their forums.

Yes the idea is sound, i've been running the same setup for years using Wordpress Multi-User where users can add their own Adsense to their blog and the whole shebang is on a single domain.

The site builds backlinks on it's own, from users promoting their blog to build extra revenue.

It's somewhat a gray area with Adsense, thousands of sites are doing it but Adsense are pretty unpredictable at times. I had Adsense banned from a forum running the stock vB theme, using the built-in Adsense Hook template for "Displaying Adsense in a floating box or frame" which was rubbish.

I sent them the HTML of the page, saying it's default vBulletin code there's no floating box or frames anywhere. No reply, down $900 a month.

What i would do is rewrite the users blog to subdomains, these are treated as separate domains (like fred.blogspot.com) and the user can just allow fred.yourforum.com in his allowed sites list.

You should request the vBulletin team to contact Google on your behalf. Since they have a direct relationship, they should have an account manager who can look into it for you.

You should not be losing your incoming if it's a default vBulletin setup that Google has already approved for them.

I'm not too concerned about it Joe, i was not impressed at all when it happened considering it was default code and pasted in to the vB's built in ad_navbar_below template.

My whole account wasn't banned, just ad display on that forum. However it's Google's loss, i was doing over $1,000 per day on Adsense at one stage but after that incident Adsense started dropping off my sites like fly's and being replaced with other revenue models.

Best thing i ever done, it made me realize Google were ripping me off and i could monetize my traffic in much better ways.

unless you have a webmaster related site, odds are 99.9% of your members won't have an adsense account

Originally Posted by sweetfunny

Yes the idea is sound, i've been running the same setup for years using Wordpress Multi-User where users can add their own Adsense to their blog and the whole shebang is on a single domain.

Excellent, it seems that this might be worth implementing

It's somewhat a gray area with Adsense

Ain't that the truth, I have been trying to get an answers from Adsense for a few months now and so far nothing, nada, zilch - well apart from other adsense user saying "we think"

What i would do is rewrite the users blog to subdomains, these are treated as separate domains (like fred.blogspot.com) and the user can just allow fred.yourforum.com in his allowed sites list.

Thats not a bad idea, however would that not defeat the point of the backlinks? A member would promote the blog by posting their URL, i.e. fred.yourforum.com. If I understand correctly this wouldn't add any value to the top level yourforum.com domain.

Originally Posted by briansol

unless you have a webmaster related site, odds are 99.9% of your members won't have an adsense account

If which case they would apply for one.

Originally Posted by mreyes

Ain't that the truth, I have been trying to get an answers from Adsense for a few months now and so far nothing, nada, zilch - well apart from other adsense user saying "we think"

Just getting a reply is mission impossible, they normally just point you to the Adsense guidelines that don't answer your questions.

Thats not a bad idea, however would that not defeat the point of the backlinks? A member would promote the blog by posting their URL, i.e. fred.yourforum.com. If I understand correctly this wouldn't add any value to the top level yourforum.com domain.

You add default links on the users blogs to your top level domain, and to a few of your important internal pages of your board. If you look at Wordpress.com a lot of it's PR9 is attributed to all the subdomain blogs linking back to the root domain. You do lose some weight by channeling it from links>>blogs>>forum but it keeps the Adsense accounts separated.

Google owns Adsense and Blogger, so doing it this way replicates how Blogger runs having user blogs with Adsense on subs so i personally feel it's safer.