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I just had someone email me asking how much it would cost for a paid post with a link? It would be 300 words and provide a link to his website. Is this common and what's it called?

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I edited your question to keep it from being closed as either too localized or not constructive. Asking for help determining pricing is not acceptable here. – John Conde♦ Mar 4 '12 at 21:48

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It's called buying a link and it's a great way to hurt your website. Google very much frowns upon this as it is done solely to manipulate their search results. Sites that sell links and do not use nofollow on them, which is assumed since they paying for a link that has SEO value, are punished by Google and deservedly so.

If you are going to do this make it very clear to the buyer that the link with be nofollow and on the page with the article you should state that the post was paid for (aka an advertisment).

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Thank you for the response. By no follow do you mean rel="nofollow" or is it a link reference with no hyperlink? Does rel="nofollow" not hurt your SEO or is it just the lesser of two evils? – Graham Mar 4 '12 at 21:58
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I think he means rel="nofollow"; it hints to Google that you're not vouching for the quality of the content on the other side of the link, so you should be able to use it without penalty. – Ewan Heming Mar 6 '12 at 8:47

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