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
-
What are the best Guest posts?
Hi, we have been working on improving the SEO for our website www.caffeinemarketing.co.uk and we are looking to guest blog on some sites. Are there any that you would recommend. What kind of volume of posts do we need to make a significant difference to rankings?
Link Building | | Caffeine_Marketing0 -
Can I include "commissioned" posts in my link building strategy?
Ok "Commissioned Posts" meaning industry influencers/bloggers etc writing about your brand, products or services and possibly "linking" to your website (in exchange for money, or not) a) I'm contacted by a blogger who wants to write a piece about our product and naturally links back. b) A blogger says, yes, we can write a fantastic article about your brand and link to you for $$$..$ - is this ok if not at scale? What is deemed as ethical? 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, social links) sharing knowledge or interesting content which readers will want to read. Sites like HuffPost, The Guardian would be great although we're starting on authoritative well maintained blogger sites within 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! Your feedback (sharing any examples if possible) would be truly appreciated. Thanks Gary
Link Building | | GaryVictory0 -
Link building for big webite. 2500+ posts.
We run a big kids website: http://mocomi.com/ and have over 2500+ posts. Its about 2 years old now. No SEO was done on this site until the last two months when I was hired for SEO. I divided the SEO into 2 parts - on-page and off-page SEO. For the last 1.5 months I did the on-page fixing - correcting URLs, optimizing posts with best keywords, adding meta titles and descriptions to each post, 301 redirects etc. Now that on-page optimization is over, I have to do the off-page thing - build links. But with so much content I'm confused on how should I go forward. Among the 2500 posts I have listed down 700 posts that have real traffic potential so I'm planning to build links to these. But 700 is a huge number which includes our home page, 50+ category pages and rest are posts. So the question is how should I build links to these? Should I pick up each page and build links to it and move to next or as some people suggested, build most links to home page and category pages and that'll pass pagerank to my posts and help them rank. What link building plan would you suggest? Thanks in advance.
Link Building | | Mocomi0 -
I could use some help with Link Building Post Panda
I am new to Internet Marketing world and want to become a great SEO. My biggest challenge is How To of Back linking. Not the reason and theory behind back linking. But more the actual hands on Back linking strategy. I feel that a lot of the back linking information out there is so mixed.Rand did a White board Friday lesson on the new link building strategies. When searching for back linking strategies it is filled with all the old link building tactics. What I wanted to ask is all the experienced back link people is, Have you changed your back linking strategy. Or just parts of your strategies. It all seems very confusing for a newbie when it seems the industry it self is still uncertain. Any advice on where a newbie should be starting their new back linking strategy. And any good resources on learning to do the actual hands-on of the back linking. Thanks in advanced
Link Building | | CurtCarroll1 -
JoeAnt, HotVsNot - Post Penguin?
Just curious as to the Mozzers views on directories such as HotVsNot, JoeAnt post Googles Penguin update. It seems to me that these kind of directories are exactly the kind of sites that Penguin is targeting? Yet, i can't find any evidence that links from these sites have been negatively effected. Would appreciate your views on whether these are "safe" directories, just a matter of time before Google hits them, or that Google has already hit them Justin
Link Building | | JustinTaylor880 -
Blogs that Thank Their Sponsors in a Blog Post
I've noticed some popular bloggers who create a monthly blog post that thanks their sponsors and the links are followed. Do you think that Google lets this slide or are they stopping some or all of the links from these blogs from passing link juice?
Link Building | | SparkplugDigital0 -
What percentage of an old post can I change without lose rank?
A few months ago I updated some old posts of my site (Wordpress), to improve old content, with new pictures (better quality), better content, new info about product, and links to our review of this product (newer posts). Most part of the content is this old posts were new, so I "deleted" the old text but replaced the new one with another of better quality. I suppose it will help new post to improve rank, but I los thousands of daily visits, because old posts ranks worse since the change. What do you think? What happened here? Maybe I shouldn't update the whole text, only add a link to new content? Thank you!
Link Building | | DSG0 -
Is publishing press releases for SEO thorugh newswire sites as effective post panda?
Does anyone have any knowledge/thoughts on how leading newswire sites have been effected by Google's latest updates, i.e. Panda? To date this has been a method (alongside others) I have sucessfully used to build links, but the results of late have not been as good for some clients and I'm beginning to question how effective this is - so I would be very interested to hear anyone else's experiences in this area?
Link Building | | simon-1453280