Sponsored Posts
-
Hi
I'm a little curious as to what the lastest guidelines are for sponsored posts by Google?
The writer blurb at the bottom of an article is of course ok, but what about companies who pay money to another company to have a fantastic piece written "with a link" but with no evidence who the writer is?!
Thanks
Gary
-
Hey Gary,
The Google stance is that anything paid like what you outlined in #2 and #3 should have nofollowed links on it. It's the same story for giving free stuff to bloggers in exchange for reviews. The official stance can be found here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en.
The reality is that there are still plenty of people getting away with this behind closed doors. The ones that are subtle about it can likely keep doing it for a long time with low risk. The ones that are blatantly doing it are much more at risk for being penalized or losing the value of those links, however I haven't seen many public stories of paid link penalties for awhile.
If you choose to do this, do so with the understanding that it carries some risk, and your competitors are going to be happy to report you to the webspam team if you make it obvious that you're doing it.
-
Thanks for your help guys.
I want to make sure our link building campaign is done within Google's guidelines. Here is currently what we are doing, or intending to do;
1. We're producing unique content on our site and sharing this with key influencers organically on Twitter, Facebook and G+ communities. This so far is working well for a new start up.
2. Writing guest posts on authoritative sites (with only our author bio at the bottom, branded link to our site with social links) sharing knowledge or interesting content which readers would want to read. Sites like HuffPost, The Guardian would be great although we're starting on authoritative well maintained blogger sites with the industry to begin.
3. Reaching out to industry influencers who may like to review our products. Many of them have got back to me stating that they "can" run commissioned posts (normally requires a large fee) which carries a followed link, branded or unbranded. Although we may have initially contacted them, and money could be exchanged, in the eyes of Google wouldn't this appear as a natural post?
Please let me know your thoughts on this? It would be great to gain more of an understanding exactly what I can or cannot do when it comes to developing high quality links for our business! I would like to be more pro-active.
Your feedback (sharing any examples if possible) would be truly appreciated.
Thanks
Gary
-
My answer might not go by the book but reality is if they didn’t get caught, its fine but they got caught, the game is over J
Hope this helps!
-
Hi Gary,
While I wouldn't advise dabbling in black hat (the things you mention are all against Google's guidelines), my experience from cleaning up other SEOs' messes has always been that doing things like this won't get you in trouble if you do it right.
2 factors to keep in mind:
-
Don't do it at scale. 1 Sponsored Post may help, but if you try to do 100 of them, you're creating a clear pattern that Google will pick up on sooner or later.
-
Don't do this on sites where they disclose that the post was sponsored (either on the post itself or on an "advertise with us" page. Google can crawl that text and thus knows right away to discount those links.
Again, this is ALL black hat, but if done right in the past, I wouldn't even disavow because the link may actually be providing value.
Let me know if you'd like to discuss further!
Mark
-
-
Hi Gary, what's up?
I found this video from Matt Cutts from a year ago: https://youtu.be/zupIbMyMfBI but I don't know if it will answer all your questions.
Regards,
Luis
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
-
Displaying 10 blog-posts from website homepage: Any loss in-terms of link juice?
Hi community, We started showing 10 blog-posts from our blog on our website homepage. Will this hurts us anyway by taking away link juice? Thanks
Link Building | | vtmoz0 -
Getting links to a blog post
Hi, What is the best way to get a "good quality" link to my blog posts? Thanks
Link Building | | Studio330 -
Selfgrowth.com - guest post opportunity or useless article site
Hello, Is anyone familiar with if selfgrowth.com is safe to put an article on, or is it a useless article site? Thanks.
Link Building | | BobGW0 -
Backlinking post penguin
Does anyone have any effective strategies about how to backlink for a new website. I'm just really cautious of this new penguin update and don't want to submit to too many directories or do anything that will get penalised, seen as the website is new.
Link Building | | AAttias0 -
Should I invite people to guest post?
I'm a little confused about the benefits of inviting people to guest post on my site. I've just read http://www.seomoz.org/blog/using-passive-link-building-to-build-links-with-no-budget which suggests that by inviting people to guest post on my site I can build a relationship with them and eventually ask them to post a guest post of mine on their site. If both posts have a link back to the owners site doesn't this amount to reciprocal linking? Or am I missing something? Is a reciprocal link only classed as such if the link points to the exact page where the article is or can a reciprocal link point to anywhere on the site and still be classed as reciprocal?
Link Building | | SamCUK1 -
Looking for services to publish articles or blog posts with everlasting links.
I'm looking for link exchanges or something like this. Where you can pick web sites or blogs and place articles with your links in there without monthly payments, but with single fee.
Link Building | | Ujindo0 -
Posting "similar" blog posts to multiple blog sites seems "shady", does it work?
I've read a lot of info here in the Q & A tonight and there was a thread that stated it's potentially a good thing to post content on multiple blog platforms such as: blogger.com posterous.com wordpress.com tumblr.com I've also been trying to figure out how to deal with my blog as a subfolder instead of a subdomain. That research in Q & A clearly indicates that Google treats subdomains basically like separate websites and links from my blog to my main website will not be as valuable if i stay the course with my blog on a subdomain short term. Given that, if the 4 blogging tools above all require the use of a subdomain, then how am I actually taking advantage of the seo value of blogger,posterous, tumblr? In my case my domains would be: steripen.blogger.com posterous.tumbler.com steripen.wordpress.com steripen.tumblr.com Just not adding up to being viable given what I read states these would be treated as new websites, not to mention I worry these posts, even slightly differentiated, would be suspect. Who am I truly benefitting by doing this? Users?
Link Building | | Timmmmy0 -
Do you think it's a good idea to try to find synergy between clients for blog posts/citations/links, or should you keep clients away from each other?
Say you have for example three (in this case) clients, and: Client A sells red widgets Client B is a doctor Client C sellls blue widgets With some research, you find that: Red widgets (A) can make the process of blue widget creation (C) even more effective. Red widgets (A) can protect you from harmful things that doctors (B) are qualified to recommend that you stay away from. Furthermore, there are things that doctors (B) recommend that you do in order to maximize the benefits of red widgets (A) Blue widgets (C) carry with them certain potential health risks, which according to doctors (B) can be minimized using the following means Sometimes blue widgets (C) can be used to effectively repair red widget (A) factories ...and so forth. Sure you're really writing these articles to generate links and exchange authority, and frankly you started with "how can I find synergy between these clients?" rather than a with a great article subject that needed a citation which luckily happened to be another client, but the citations are legitimate and the clients are qualified to speak on the subjects where their expertise and interests overlap. Would you consider going ahead with this? Does anyone have any experience doing it? I could see potential pitfalls if clients were to interact with each other, but keeping yourself as the intermediary might well work and overall it seems like a decent way to grab low-hanging fruit as they say. What do you guys think?
Link Building | | PathMarketing0