Is paid content a good or bad thing
-
Hi, over the past couple of years we have turned down thousands of request from companies to have paid editorial on our sites, I have always turned this down but i have seen some sites accept this and would like to know your stance on this.
In newspapers and magazines which i have worked in both, they have paid editorial all the time, so i am just wondering what google thinks of paid editorial.
look forward to hearing your thoughts
-
Thanks mememax,
I see what you mean, now.
The site I was talking about was a nice-looking news site, and a few years ago, I would have written about them, and I still may, but I'm not going to link to them, because that might suck me into a bad-link vortex, and I've got enough troubles of my own, so I don't want to add to them. (not that I've ever paid for any incoming links, but "something" else is wrong, that nobody seems to be able to diagnose.)
-
Hi loopyal, sorry for my bad english maybe I got you confused.
I'm exactly saying what you state above, even if someone pays you in the street, google may know it's been a paid link, but not because they got a radar on all of us but just because you've replicated a process which get your content recognizedas a paid link.
You're doing great on studying about who're you're linking because bad neighbours which are linking you may create or not issues but surely if you're linking to a low quality site this will give you problems.
About the site you're speaking, what I recommend is to create a valuable post for your users. If that site is in your nihce and you think they may give a valuable service to your users why not writing about them? And if you get paid is better. But beware I'm not encouraging on having content from them and publish it, but evaluate their product, ask for free accesses, make a REAL review. In that sense this review will be helpful focusing on your users and their interests. They're your "clients" and you have to always think about them, sorry if I got misunderstood I'm not saying it's easy, but just that sometimes we complicate the picture asking on how google can recognize a paid link, because they don't; they just recognize the apparel of that link which is following the same structure of paid ones, so even if it's not paid you may be penalized too.
In short. If the site writing you is a good site, with a good product, offers you to use their product, write a content about them and link to them if you find their product useful, I don't think it would be a bad thing linking to them. Just try to have the possibility of writing about their service in the most free way.
-
Hello mememax
You are only seeing a small picture, but you must remember that search engines see a much larger picture.
If it was easy, most of us would not be here, trying to work out how to stop being destroyed.
You suggest that you can buy or sell a link on the street and search engines will not know.
That is not true. If the person who paid you for a link has hundreds or thousands of paid links from other places, you just accepted $5 and what you did was place a massive target on yourself. It may have been your first link, but the other party is unknown to you, so you just damaged yourself unknowingly, because you didn't understand how the system works. My guess is that hundreds of thousands of people have been damaged because of things like this.
You can't control who links to you, but you can control who you link to.
Yesterday, I was asked for a link from a good-looking website. It was in my niche. I told them all of my advertising links are NOFOLLOW. They said that might be OK if the price was right. I checked their site, and I saw they had FOLLOW links to about 10 other sites, and some of them were outside the niche.
RED FLAG.
I don't even want to sell them an advertising link.
What would you do?
-
I know that this may be off topic but I would like to spend two more words on this
Just wondering how google would know the difference.
Try to move your focus away on humanizing Google. Google doesn't mind if you've REALLY paid or not for a content, don't think that if someone stops you in the street and ask you for a link for 5$ google may be aware of that, because it doesn't and I think that it also doesn't care about the REAL truth.
Google only cares about what IT thinks. Even if your link is natural and free, if it comes from a link network which sold links but in your case not, then you've paid that link too. Google is a private entity, which plays on its own rules, not bad nor good but just its own rules
Bear in mind that Google is not human, it's not under the human law of being truth when evaluating links, condemning the paid ones after demonstrating that they've been paid showing an invoice as a proof.
So when you analyze your backlinks (or trying to achieve new ones), try to understand if those links may be paid or not under google eyes not yours.
About being paid for a review you can create good content even being paid, just say to the one who's paying you that you will be writing a review but not publishing their content. You'll use their services and then write a review, so you're compelling and writing soemthing really useful for both users and google.
-
cheers loopyal, just replied.
-
Be vewy careful !
Obviously, it has to fit your theme or your general area of coverage.
ditto your style. It has to fit with your standards and ethics.
If it is paid advertising, you should say so - check to see how other sites do it.
Here is an Australian story: Crikey where they talk about how standards have changed over time.
BTW: I sent you a private message too.
-
so i am just wondering what the difference is from here to paid editorial. Just wondering how google would know the difference.
Yes, you might have even paid these authors and simply give a link to their website and blog so interested people can find them easily.
-
Just wondering how google would know the difference.
I honestly don't know. Many sites already sell editorial space with links. Not all get caught. But some clearly do: http://tinyurl.com/csxu84l
Behemoth sites like Forbes can recover from getting whacked. I've seen smaller sites that never did. Like I said, you go down this road at your peril.
-
I think the reason is down to principle. I have worked in newspapers and magazines and never agreed with it then, when the advertising department were like, we need you to write about this company and we were like why, and they would say because they have paid for it.
-
I think that you need to be wise. You don't have to turn everything down nor everything up. I think that being paid for an editorial post may be good but always be sure that what you're writing is useufl for your visitors.
You don't want that your users think that you've sold your content. I've never been paid to publish content on my sites just because when I found something useful I will write about it and link to it even for free. HOwever if someone's contacting you offering money and you think that it is a good product why not accepting an extra money?
-
very interesting. I have always turned down paid content, but what has got me thinking is, we have just started to accept some guest bloggers as long as the content is informative and well written and we have allowed a maximum of two links in the article, so i am just wondering what the difference is from here to paid editorial. Just wondering how google would know the difference.
-
Content -> user experience. If you need to hire help for content that is okay. Just make sure they are "your" industry savvy.
Don
-
If it's just paid editorial with no links (or links that are no-followed), that's straightforward advertising and you're on safe ground.
However, I'm guessing they want a followed link. Do so at your peril. And don't just take my word for it:
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Product descriptions, when do they become classed as duplicate content, how different do they have to be?
I look after 3 sites which have a lot of crossover on products. We have 1000s of products and I've made it a requirement that we give each it's on description on each of the sites. This sounds like the right thing to but it's very hard for our content writers to write three different versions descriptions, especially when we have variations on the products so potentially writing unique product descriptions for 4-5 very similar products on three separate sites. We've worked very hard to create unique content deep through the site on all categories, subcategories and tag combinations and along with the other SEO work we've done over the last couple of years is producing great results. My question is now far do we have to go? I'm busy writing some product descriptions for a 3rd party site for some of our products, the easy thing to do is just copy and paste but I want Google to see the descriptions as unique. Whilst all SEO advice will say 'write unique descriptions' from a practical point of view this isn't especially useful as there doesn't really seem to be much guidance on how different they need to be. I gather we can't just move around the paragraphs or jumble up sentences a bit but it is easier to work from a description and change it than it is to start from a blank slate (our products range form being very interesting and unique, to quite everyday so sometimes tough to create varied unique content for). Does anyone know of any guidance or evidence of just how clever the Google algorithm is and how close content has to be before it becomes classed as the same or similar? Thanks Pete
Content Development | | PeterLeatherland0 -
Need advice on Paying for content?
Hi, We would like to attracting more readers onto our blog by accepting guest posting from external bloggers. Could anyone refer any good artricles on MOZ about the best practices on managing the activities and what would be the normal KPIs and ROI?
Content Development | | LauraHT0 -
Reposting My Original Content
I wanted to know how I should repost my original content from my blog to other sites, obviously quality ones and legacy style content. I don't want get hit with any duplicate content or spam type penalties, but want to further spread some of my content from my blog to get it noticed and drive traffic and leads. Do I submit the posts as is, then put a link to the original source and if so, how many sites can i safely repost the same piece of content too? I am not trying to do anything sneaky, just want it to spread my best content to a good amount high authority sites. I already do social bookmarking and Facebook, twitter etc.
Content Development | | photoseo10 -
Is there a way to set up a wordpress site so that the content is changed based on a location?
I have a site I am building that has information that shifts based on weather conditions and location. Is there a way to have information sort based on a users geographic location? I am trying to figure out the best way to do this.
Content Development | | Ron_McCabe0 -
Blog Content
I keep reading that a steady stream of new blogs from my site is a great way for getting inbound links to my site. My question is... Does the content of my blogs have to be relevant to my site? My site is www.marblerenovation.com. If the blog should stay relevant, I am finding it pretty hard to create engaging content around cleaning marble floors. Also, does anyone know of a good place to find bloggers to help create this content? Thanks in advance everyone Dave
Content Development | | david.smith.segarra0 -
Is this dulplicate content causing me problems
Hi, i am going to try and explain this as best as possible as i am not used to working with k2 that much. What i have as an example is a page which is here http://www.in2town.co.uk/Cheap-Flights-Ryanair-News This page is news about ryanair now because i am working in joomla and i am working with k2, and i am also making each landing page a front page, i am having problems. For people who do not use joomla i will explain. For the ryanair page which is a front page, i have to make a category and that category for all my content to go into is called ryaniar-news. Now i have the page above which is for ryanair news but the problem i have got is, because i have a category it brings up all the content as a blog format. so for example here is the category section in blog format. http://www.in2town.co.uk/news/ryaniar-news Now i have managed to make sure that the articles are not showing but it brings up the title of the pages and i am worried that this will be seen as duplicate content and will damage the main page of http://www.in2town.co.uk/Cheap-Flights-Ryanair-News I may have set everything up wrong i am not sure but if i have i would be glad if someone can tell me the right way to do it. I do not like the blog format and that is why i use a front page set up so i can have my layout the way i want it. Can anyone please explain if my set up will damage the main ryanair news page or what i need to do to sort it out please.
Content Development | | ClaireH-1848860 -
How to organize content for ecommerce site
Hello, We've decided to create 24 articles of content for our ecommerce site, everything from an FAQ to history of the products to 10 articles on the top 10 products. Really useful to the user. How do you suggest that we make our content visible to the users? We could put a nice button on our right banner that says "Extensive Help Session" or we could put a banner on our home page or we could make it a tab at the top of the screen. We could additionally make a well organized footer with links to the articles. Or we could do all of those but that might be overkill. What do you suggest?
Content Development | | BobGW0 -
Tools to Eval Blog Content - Rate your Fav tool
Ok, so I know that is has been covered in depth and at the risk of being sent to “google it!” (Which I have done with no success) I thought that I would ask your opinions on the topic. What are the best content marketing evaluation tools? By this I am specifically referring to tools that evaluate the content of Blogs, etc and not the performance of the blog, etc. I’m eager to hear your thoughts of what works and if you care to share what tools did not. Thanks
Content Development | | Questionmana0