Could product sample giveaways be seen as 'paying for links'?
-
One of our main methods of advertising for my startup business is by sending samples to bloggers for review. I've read a lot of good things about this method and many of my competitors use it very well - I've even seen it suggested on the Moz blog several times in the past.
The one thing I do worry about is that Google may see this as a form of 'link purchasing', as I'm offering something in exchange for a link and some of the blog posts may reference that fact (or at least most likely use the word "Review" - Which could be some kind of footprint?).
We don't intend to ask for anchor texts, so at the very least that should look natural.What are your opinions? Could this be seen as paid linkbuilding or is it regarded as a natural marketing method?
[EDIT]:
One idea we had was to potentially offer bloggers the chance to earn a portion of their purchase back by writing a review on their blog. They'd buy from us and let us know they have a blog, then we'd reimburse them some credit towards their next order for every blog post they write about us. Does this sound like a good idea or is this potentially more dangerous than simply offering free samples? -
Hi Marie,
Can you please elaborate on what you think is a completely earned link as well as giving us some example?
I am in the same boat as azu25 - it is hard to earn links when you are starting off because no one knows you, so how do you go viral while avoiding link scheme penalties?
Other ideas I had:
1. Offering bloggers coupons that they can blog about. Their audience would be able to use the couple to buy form your store.
2. Offering free giveaways from your store. The blogger could blog about this. Could this be seeing as a "free" product form search engines??
What is your opinion on the two ideas above?
Like azu25 has stated, it seems that many domains with high authority do give away products to their bloggers, but are still ranking....it's hard to compete with 1000 monthly links.
Also, what is your opinion on building blogger relationship and asking for that blogger to blog about you once a month (recurrent blogs)?
Regards,
Carlos
-
Ok, What I'll have to try is our other marketing methods first and leave this to a kind of 'last resort' practise. If you think it's a bad idea, I'll steer clear as much as possible - It seems to be used by most of our competitors (especially our biggest one) so I suppose it's only a matter of time before they're penalised for this.
Thanks
-
I think what you are asking here is the same as saying, "How high above the speeding limit can I drive before I get charged with speeding?" If the limit is 50, then anything above 50 is breaking the law, but will you get stopped for speeding at 51? Not likely. 55? Maybe. 60? Some people can get away with it but you could get caught.
I think that if you are sending free product and hoping for a link you may get a few, but if you get enough links to start making a difference in rankings then you're probably crossing the line of unnatural linking. These days there are three ways to make links:
1. Completely self made links.
2. Completely earned links.
3. Links that are self made but you've tried your best to make them look naturally earned.
Google is very smart. If I were you I would not be risking a penalty but then I am biased because I work with sites who have been ruined by penalties.
I'm not sure that I have an opinion on the second part. It won't get you into linking trouble as no one is linking to you, so it sounds fine to me.
-
Thanks Marie for your feedback,
Obviously we want to be as squeaky clean as possible. Our biggest competitor is a very big and well-known company - they rank very well for some big keywords and one of their main sources of links at the moment is these product giveaways in exchange for a review and a link. I think any Googler could see that they are sending free products in exchange for links, as they're getting ALOT of links doing this.
I don't think I've seen that part of Google's guidelines about offering free products - I don't know how I've missed that!
It's a marketing method we can't ignore, so I'm trying to think of different ways we can do it so that it doesn't get too dangerous. Perhaps if we sent out maybe one free sample a week to a blogger who we know writes reviews, then rather than asking for a link, just ask for their opinions (as Chris suggested above) and hope for a review with a natural link, then that might be better, as there's no link being requested and it's not too aggressive on a large scale.
We'll try anything to make this method as natural looking as possible.Regarding the second note about reimbursing purchases - another idea we had for this was to do the same, but offer people the chance to write a review for us to post to our site. We could add a 'customer reviews' section to our blog and include those there, which of course would be more detailed and more engaging than the regular 'Write a review' section on the product pages. This doesn't involve links as the content would go on our site, so there's no risk of a penalty (that I know of, other than Panda, which we'd ensure it's good content first), so I was just wondering what your opinion of that would be?
Thanks very much !
-
Most of my work is on sites that have been dealt a manual unnatural links penalty. I have worked with a couple of sites who were penalized for exchanging free product for a review.
Here's one of the points in the quality guidelines under "link schemes"
- Buying or selling links that pass PageRank. This includes exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links; exchanging goods or services for links; or sending someone a “free” product in exchange for them writing about it and including a link
Now, there are ways that you can do this where an algorithm (i.e. Penguin) is not likely to pick up on what you are doing. But, if you want to be squeaky clean you have to build links as if you were comfortable with someone from the webspam team taking a look. To me, it's all about scale. If you have a small handful of links because you sent someone a product, this is probably ok provided you didn't ask for a link back. But, if you do it on a larger scale then it can easily look like a linking scheme and could open you up to a manual penalty.
Is it wrong to send free product to someone? No. Is it wrong to ask for a link from someone? No, provided you haven't exchanged anything for it. Is it wrong to send free product AND ask for a link? According to Google, yes. So the obvious question is, "How would Google know that I asked for a link? Couldn't I just send free product and hope that they write about it?" I don't know the answer to that question. But if I was doing this I would be careful. If there is any sort of insinuation that the free product comes with the expectation of a link then you're treading on thin ice. Similarly, in my opinion, if you send free product and ask for a review, you are essentially asking for a link.
"One idea we had was to potentially offer bloggers the chance to earn a portion of their purchase back by writing a review on their blog. They'd buy from us and let us know they have a blog, then we'd reimburse them some credit towards their next order for every blog post they write about us. Does this sound like a good idea or is this potentially more dangerous than simply offering free samples?"
IMO this is a paid link.
-
I might do a sort of A/B test with this kind of thing and see what happens - Ask 20 people for a review and ask 20 people (who I know already do reviews) if they'd like some free samples, to see how it goes. Probably a bit pointless, but if there's any way I can try to get our links looking as natural as possible then I'll give it a go
-
Understood. And I'm just saying that if you ask for their evaluation--without asking for the review--you may get the review anyway--especially if you're targeting those who have already shown they review or mention products online.
-
Hi David,
We'll be making sure to mix in plenty of other marketing so will hopefully be able to gain some links to water the 'sample-links' down a bit.
Thanks
-
Hi Chris, thanks for the response.
I actually meant that we would be asking for reviews, but just not for specific anchor text. So the reviewer could link to us however they want, or not at all - As long as we get our name out there.
We also had one more idea which I'll make a note of in the OP.
Thanks
-
I think you're OK if you're sending out samples but not asking for the reviews. Something like "here [blogger], I see you have an interest and an opinion on a number of similar products and I'd love to know your thoughts on mine."--kind of thing. The number of online reviews you get without asking might not be that different than the number you get with asking, depending on your niche. Also, no need to stick with bloggers. Anyone anywhere in social media who's mentioned a competitor's product can get the same type of communication from you.
-
Its some what of a gray area - I would recommend using it in conjunction with many other tactics to make it look more normal and giving you enough link diversity that google wouldn't penalize you 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
-
What is the perfect strategy for a Brand that manufactures the product?
Hello Moz Community, I'm currently associated with one of the brands. It's a nutrition and supplement brand that manufacture supplements. Now, they are running an e-commerce website. Problem: It should be product based website, not an e-commerce website (Like Design, Look and Feel of it.) The problem with SEO: What do you thing like which will work better.
Branding | | Max_
1. Doing Perfect On-Page SEO? And building links for queries like: Best whey protein supplement in "Geo." Buy Protein Powder Online Buy Whey Online "Geo." Generic Terms Brand Name URL All the Remaining Keywords and Anchors OR 1. Doing a perfect On-Page SEO? and
2. Doing massive outreach like Inviting bloggers for guest post (Natural Anchor) Guest Posts (Natural Anchor) Mentions on social media Content Local Business about reciprocal promotions Email outreach Product Reviews Influencers content Link building as mentioned above Q. Tell me which will work the best?
Q. What I've to change in the strategy?
Q. Also tell me how to do a perfect keyword research for product pages? Thank you0 -
Opinions For Getting Worthwhile Links For Longevity
Hi Everyone, I have just joined the Moz community and have been reading through a lot of content. I have a question and I would like to put it out to all of the professional digital marketers here to hear their take on it. Basically I work for a construction company that has developed a way to build extensions to houses which is environmentally friendly and cost effective. Obviously the house extensions market is pretty competitive and I need to work out how I can make headway into the market for the digital marketing side of things. The website is still under construction and I am having it built in order to will viewers to enter their contact details for more information as well as provide lots of useful content that show why the product will be more cost effective than say a standard timer frame constructed house extension. We are having some professional videos made as well so we can set up a YouTube channel and this will be clearly visible on the website as well. What I would like advice on is how would you start to build quality links to a site like this. We are not going for just local trade but more national (UK). The main thing is that we have longevity and I know it wont happen very quickly but I want to ensure that we do things the right way. Thanks Barry
Branding | | newbiebarry0 -
Issue with the company's brand name in SERPs
Any suggestions on how to solve this without the need to be ranked for something not related?
Branding | | GardenPet0 -
Google +1's and Google+ Local
Hi fellow Mozers, I manage 5 brands at the national level, each with their own Google+ profile and then under each brand, there are several hundred physical locations, each with their own Google+ Local page. My question is, should we be encouraging visitors of each location's Google+ Local profile page to +1 the page? Does it have an influence on local rankings and overall SERP results? Our goal is to ultimately get our local websites to rank better than our less targeted brand sites and have our Google+ Local pages show in search results as much as possible. Our local businesses convert to leads, where our brand sites are one step out from that and are used to feed into a "find a location" result that takes the visitor to the local site.
Branding | | dsinger0 -
Can i link my rel=publisher to a number of relevant microsites ?
We have linked our Google plus company profile to our main website and setup a rel=publisher authorship which appears and works fine in the SERPS as we regularly create Google plus posts about our industry and products. We also gain some good traffic through some of our smaller product specific micro sites so i wanted to setup our publisher markup for these also as some of our posts are relevant to these products. I setup the rel=publisher on one of these , but the Google snippet testing tool says that the rel publisher is unverified. Is this Google's way of saying i cannot use the same Google plus company profile across multiple sites My question is: Does Google not allow you to display the same Google plus rel publisher profile for multiple websites ? or is the there a problem with how i am marking up my micro sites ? has anybody tried this ?
Branding | | Antony_Towle0 -
Register a Domain: Brand Name VS Product Name
Hi All, Since Google give more priority to brand names and most of the penalized websites by Google's Penguin update are websites which had links with promoted keywords, is it a good idea to register a new domain by the product name (ex: www.leatherbags.com) ?. Or is it good to register the domain by the company or brand name and then build a reputable brand first before targeting product based keywords (ex: leather bags) ?.
Branding | | Iresh.Dilan1 -
It's been 2 Months and Google STILL shows my Old URL, why? (help please)
First i just want to say the 301s, change of address and nearly all outer links are changed to the new url since early september. Let me give you an example... Query: Custom Sweatbands Ranking URL: www.stbands.com/custom-sweatbands/ **Correct URL that it is 301'd to for over 2 months now: **www.customonit.com/custom-sweatbands/ More... new sitemap has been submitted since the beginning. The old website www.stbands.com doesn't even exist anymore, in fact at the beginning of this month I got pretty angry and blocked search engines via the robots txt for the old domain. Any way I can get Google to catch on? Thanks in advance!
Branding | | Hyrule1 -
Is having two websites that sell most of the same products a good idea?
Hi - Please read this in full before you answer. I currently own a website that sells kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities that match the kitchens. This website has been operational since Arpil 2009 and we have built good rankings over the past 3 years. The site is operated on the Volusion platform (my mistake from the beginning, but we're kind of stuck now). We are in the process of designing a new website on the Magento platform - everything will be 100% different from look, speed, the way our customers shop, content, product skus, etc. The original plan was to keep the same domain but implement 301 redirects for subpages (subpage urls would have to change) and shut down the Volusion site and transfer the domain name to the Magento site. Our current website does make money right now and we would hate to lose rankings (even if only temporarily) during the switch or have something go wrong. What I am now thinking is keeping our current website on Volusion where it is currently making money and having the new Magento site have a new name/domain. The sites would sell most of the same products (the Magento site would sell more types of vanities and accessories though). The two sites would have different email addresses, phone numbers, and mailing addresses. Is it a bad idea to try and rank two websites selling pretty much the same thing? We have competitors out there that sell the same products as us, I would just prefer to compete with myself rather then someone else. Another issue is our name, one of our competitors names is extremely close to ours and we rank for pretty much all of the same keywords and customers get us mixed up all the time. This other site would have a different name (one that makes more sense). I want to make a decision that will not come back and bite us later. I know there are a lot of bigger sites that operate tons of niche sites, and of these website could eventually be similar to that. I really appreciate your help and guidance! Thanks
Branding | | tyler7560