How should I link to a site that I have a personal relationship with?

[disenowebmadrid]

disclosure, disclosure, disclosure...

[indolesman]

Thats actually a great tip! I watch all your videos, keep up the good work!

[MichePurses]

God i love these videos.

[hankkarl1]

A natural place for a small business to get links from is from customers and suppliers. Generally, its easier to get them to link to you if you link to them, and a few lines of text will help.

But the text would be "xxx is a great accountant and we like the way they ..." ; it would be a recommendation that starts to look like an ad.

In general, the sites will have nothing in common except that they _may_ be geographically located close to each other

What's the best way to handle this?

[Webnauts]

And what is about web designers adding links back to their site in the footers of customers web sites?

[texxs01]

Why would he do all that? It 's not his competitor he's worried about it's Google! You guys need to chill with the whole paid link crusade please.

[tafnaj1]

I'm amused that the company, who is so secretive about its search ranking algo, advises "Full disclosure" on why we choose to place a link on our site. Got double standard?

[SEOMofo]

Matt,

I think the assumption that it would only be one link is unrealistic, and your solution is impractical in most situations. One of the most common methods of linking to the site of a friend/relative is to put the link in a global element, such as the footer or a blogroll in the right nav. In these cases, it would be inappropriate to surround the link with explanatory text, especially since that text would end up on every page of the site. What should we do in those situations?

[migimedia]

What happened to rel="me" and all the other definitions in XFN?

[traxdata2k]

Eh? Interpreting Matt's videos is always fun. So... use context, don't have more than one link (from an unrelated site) and competitors will be understanding and do what? Not report you to google? Can you even do that? I found this answer perplexing to say the least.

[almightyvegeta87]

I though he would say use a nofollow attribute :)

But how does Google bot understands that link is not a paid link but from a personal contact. Google bot can't understand the text !

Come on computer programs aren't that smart yet.

[sayweb]

very good.

[boukevanderbijl]

Very nice explanation

[rtsownage]

Duh - It's google! :)

[boukevanderbijl]

@rtsownage Yeah, and it is Matt also :P