Is it a good idea to create a blog that offers quality content but also passes PageRank to sponsors
-
I am a part of a business networking group that has lots of members who services home owners (a/c repair, plumber, home inspector, etc.). I am thinking of starting a blog to help home owners be better informed how to care for their homes. I would like to ask for sponsorship from the people in my group. I would also like to invite them to post on the blog as a way to improve their SEO. Would posting on this kind of blog hurt, help or not affect their SEO? Would this violate Google's policy of selling links that pass page rank as described here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en.
-
Awesome. Thanks so much Wesley.
-
Hello Adam,
In my eyes there are two ways to approach placing authorship markup for a blog post.
1. A link to the author's google+ profile straight from the blog post's Author Bio. For this you could make the Author's name the link like this:
[rel="author">Author's name](Google+ profile URL)
2. Create an author page on your site for every author. Create a link from the blog post to the author page like this:
[rel="author">Author's name](Author page URL)
From the author page there should be a link to the Google+ profile like this:
[rel="me">Google+ profile](Google+ profile URL)
Hope this helps
-
Thanks Wesley.
Would you please expound a bit more on the right way to do an authorship tag and where to link it? I'm not sure I understood from your comment.
All the best
Adam -
Having advertisements on your website with the no-follow attribute in place is a possible way of earning money indeed.
Other ways could be to use affiliate links or getting leads and sell these to other companies. For example you could have a form on your website where people will fill in their information and request a certain kind of service. You could sell this lead to a company who provides given service.The blog posts in this case would bring in the traffic and if done well will make you an authority on the subject.
If the article has the rel="author" is in place and their is a link back from the person's Google+ profile contributor to section than the article will be tied to that author.Not sure if you want to try and make money of Google Authorship though. Google has very strict rules about earning money with links and such and i'm pretty sure they have some rules concerning authorship as well.
Hope i answered your questions
If not, please let me know where i can explain further or if i can assist you with any other questions. -
Hey All,
Thanks for all the responses, but I'm still left a little curious. I'd like to make a blog to help home owners learn how to take better care of their homes. I think this is a service that is needed in the world. However, I still need to eat. So I can't really afford to do it for nothing. I'd also like to help my friends and clients who I think have good advice to offer home owners. How can I do this in a way where we all can benefit from this service?
I get it that I can't have them post articles with follow links to their websites. How about authorship? If they are the author of an article on this site, will the article come up with an authorship credential?
Can they write an article and include no-follow links, but have an ad somewhere on the sidebar, also with (rel=no-follow links of course)?
-
By all means provide a link to the sponsor but absolutely make sure you 'nofollow' that link. Here's the relevant link to the Google Webmaster blog where they state why you should avoid selling links that pass page rank.
-
Hello Adam,
Blogging in order to help home owners be better informed on how they should care for their homes is a great idea which you could benefit a lot from.
Michael already stated that sponsorships are paid and that the sponsered links should be no-followed to avoid penalties. In the question title you mentioned 'passing PageRank to sponsors'. No-follow links pass (almost) no PageRank. So passing PageRank to them is not going to work.
You mention that you would like to invite your sponsors to guest post on your blog to improve their SEO.
Letting them guest post is a tremendous idea but guest posting for SEO reasons only is not a good approach.There is an excellent post here on Moz that goes deeper into the subject of guest posting.
Conclusion - Blogging is a good idea
- Selling links which pass PageRank is against Google's guidelines
- No-follow links pass (almost) no PageRank
- Guest blogging is awesome if it adds to the quality of the blog
Hope i was of help and if you have any questions, please let me know.
-
Sponsorship is paid for so all those links should be no-follow
Having guest posts has, does and will still work if the primary purpose is to add value, be informative and be honestly relevant and not at all promotional - no keyword links spamming the content. Personally I wouldn't actively promote guest posts on the site, rather let it happen naturally or through your networking.
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
-
Where should I centre my content Hubs?
I look after a manufacturing site which has a well structured architecture when it comes to our products. There is also a benefits section and an about section. In addition to managing the three main information sections I've also been setting up a blog with topical content divided into four categories (Built environment, Secondary glazing in practice, Treat of the month, Project profile). My question is, where do I position my content hubs? Having worked through Cyrus's 'How to Rank 25 Step Master SEO Blueprint', I've realized that my approach of simply linking back to main top level pages is at best arbitrary, at worst negative in terms of SEO. Would I be better off asking our designers to set up category landing pages within the blog that relevant new copy can be linked to (currently the blog is just set up without category landing pages and I categorize each post with a tag that is used to sort the posts into their respective location on the blogs homepage? Currently the blog is an option on the main sites top level navigation and I link relevant blog pieces to relevant areas within the site. Basically I'm struggling to understand how to implement Cyrus's recommendation to create themes with my current website structure. Can anyone help? Thanks Mozers
Link Building | | Catherine_Selectaglaze0 -
Having two blogs or one?
Wordpress.com and Blogspot.com both have high page authority. Naturally i want to have a blog that talks about my website.
Link Building | | kevinbp
And the aim is to create back links to my website. Q: So do I create two blogs and separate my content or should i concentrate on a single blog? Which is better for getting SEO backlink juice?0 -
Guest Blogging - Spread about or stick to a few?
I’ve decided to do guest blogs. I have written 10 tutorial articles, most are 500 - 600 words and none less than 300 words, there’s no fluff or padding, and I have ideas for 7 more. Is it best to spread your work across various sites and blogs? (assuming they are all good / high PR etc.) or could this make me come across as bit of a content whore? If one place likes my work and asks for more, are there any more benefits to me other than just ones internal to their site (that being increased exposure on their site) I’m also thinking about including my guest post tutorials on my own website as downloadable PDF’s with short descriptions so that the content remains original where my guest posts are. I also want to make video versions of the tutorials to put on youtube and embed within the guest posts too, but also my own website. Is all that a sound idea SEO wise? On other question if that’s OK. I have seen the following in google’s guidelines… “The following are examples of link schemes which can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results: sending someone a “free” product in exchange for them writing about it and including a link.” http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356 That’s a bit of grey area for me knowing that normally a professional book reviewer receives a free review copy, in this case perhaps a blogger receives a free review copy. This has never been seen as suspicious so long as interests are declared. Do you think those google guidelines include this kind of activity? Regards,
Link Building | | Zoolander1 -
Guest Blog It
Does anybody else here use the Guest Blog It site? I have tried submitting an article but it's telling me that it's 47% duplicate content. I have ran it through 2 plagiarism checkers and they both said it was 100% unique. I have tried contacting the site directly about this but as of yet have had no response. I was just wondering if anybody on here knows what they use to check for duplicate content so I can take a look and amend my article. Thanks 🙂
Link Building | | AAttias0 -
What makes a good back link profile ?
Hi Now forgive me as I know this question has been asked on this and other sites thousands of times over, but since the recent algorithm changes to Google what would you consider to be A good backlink profile for a regional window, doors and conservatories firm For example looking at a leading SEO firm in the UK and in detail at one of their clients – the backlink profile for a team of 40, is nothing better than an experienced freelancer could achieve. For example they are mainly directory listings, css design galleries or comments on blogs not relevant to the target site What should this contain, but please bear in mind there is no budget to develop games, widgets to gain viral back links Most peoples responses are just great quality content, which although the correct answer they do not go into any detail on what form this should take, where it should reside, how people will find it etc I was thinking of the following Web Directories - if yes - which ones should I target and which ones to avoid (UK) Competitions - Is this a good means of gaining backlinks from the likes of loquax, prizefinder etc - or is it just a short term boost Forums - Answer questions on the likes of DIYNOT with the web address in my signature response Suppliers - Get a link from suppliers and the likes of Fensa Local Search - Yelp, Qype etc Social Media posts - Facebook, Google+ and Twitter any thing else I have missed?
Link Building | | ocelot0 -
What could cause a drop in pagerank
Our home page pagerank dropped from 4 to 3. nlpca(dot)com What are the possible things that could cause this?
Link Building | | BobGW0 -
How to Check if The Content is Spinned
Hi guys, We run 5 ecomm sites in the fashion industry. We set up blogs for each one of them. Our regular writer cannot handle the job of posting 1-2 unique articles per day on 5 blogs plus the extra copy writing jobs he has. We want to involve freelancers in writing our articles. We do not want to spin content (due to low prices of real articles). The issue we have is that we want to be able to check if the articles our contractors deliver us are spinned content or not. We would not accept spinned articles if we pay for unique content 🙂 Do you know any good spinned content checker that we can use? If possible, please post 2-3 software, free or paid, so we can use them simultaneously to check the articles. Thanks in advance
Link Building | | tolik10 -
How do i create a link.i am not a developer/programmer
I am a business owner with multiple websites and have an SEO company doing my work for me, i am eager to learn how to help my websites myself also. i want to know how i can create a link my self in my blogs to other relevant content on our websites. i understand anchor text, i just dont know how to actually create the link????
Link Building | | corgi0