Soliciting Product Reviews with Free Samples?

[RocketBanner]

I have been looking at my competitors links and I have discovered that a competitor with top positions in the SERPs has been gaining links by offering free product samples to bloggers in exchange for links within the review back to their site.

My question is, does Google frown on this?  Can it invoke a penalty?  To me it seems tantamount to buying links, but yet his results speak for themselves.  It is something I intend to start doing myself if I am sure it won't result in a penalty.

Thanks.

[JaneCopland]

Hi,

Whether you report this or not is up to you - there's always been a lot of debate in SEO circles about whether it's a good idea to do this or not but the end of the story is pretty much that it's up to you.

The technical answer to the question is that yes, soliciting links with products is directly frowned upon. Plenty of people still basically do this but in a more subtle manner, where they are "developing a relationship" first, often not directly asking for a link. Products for publicity is an ancient trick which Google won't get rid of, but they definitely can and do say that they aren't happy with a direct exchange.

[EGOL]

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I have people wanting to send me free stuff to write a review for them.

They must think that I have nothing on the schedule here.  Most bloggers who have any audience at all have a lot more interesting stuff to write about instead of your product.  The things that I write about instead of your product are probably going to make me a lot more money.  They are the topics that my readers want to hear about.

The largest group are people who want to send me a cheap product, expect me to try it and then shill it to the people who visit my site and subscribe to my feed.  I am not going to be your mule.   Honestly,  if I filled my feed with a bunch of product reviews all of my visitors will stop visiting and all of my subscribers will unsubscribe.

Shilling your product is dangerous to my success.

So, I am not going to write about your product.  If you want to reach my readers just buy adsense that is site targeted at my domain or ask about how much it costs to have the rectangle ad on the right side of all of my articles.  It is going to cost a lot more than the product sample that you thought you would send me.

Any blogger who has a worthwhile audience is not going to write an article for your product sample.  He isn't.  The economics are not there. He is going to spend his time writing about the stuff that brings visitors to his site.  Blathering about your product is not going to go down well with his visitors.  He would be burning their patience.

Most bloggers with a worthwhile audience are just going to tell you....  Here are our advertising rates.  You can have the rectangle on the right side of all of our article pages for $15,000 per month.

[MarieHaynes]

Agreed.

[KempRugeLawGroup]

I find this one of google's many extremely vague guidelines that sounds clear, but in reality, is not at all. You can't exchange "a free product in exchange for them writing about it and including a link." Which, to me sounds like, "you can't give someone a sample and they agree to write about it and link to you." That parts clear. What's not clear, is whether or not you can send a blogger a free product, and hope they write about/link to it. If I had to argue it, I'd say you definitely can or google would have written differently to include the latter specifically.

Lots of bloggers are known for their reviews. It seems natural that they get sent products, especially new releases and review them in their blogs. If they only went out and reviewed the products they bought themselves, they probably wouldn't have a whole lot of content. So, sending them free products should be completely fine. The problem stems from what comes next.

1. How did you "discover" your competitor was doing this? (that's rhetorical) I just want to think about if how you discovered it and if it was something Google could discover itself. If it is, you definitely shouldn't do it.

2. Have you tried just sending out free samples to bloggers? If you're doing this primarily for SERPs, and not for the bloggers' fan base, then you don't need him/her to review 50 products to get you 50 links. Really, the first one (or few) are what provide you most of the SEO benefit. If you send someone twenty five free samples (with no strings attached), they probably will write about at least one (though, to be fair, I can't say for certain that's true). Also, you can look through the comments on the blogger's site, and find someone mentioning your product or something like your product, and then you could send your free sample with a screenshot of the comment. This would show that the blogger's community wants to know about your product, and you did some research.

3. If you're still going to do some sort of 'review my product for links" official deal, then I'd at least over send the blogger products and keep records of it. Maybe, if you get flagged by google, but you show only 4% of the products you sent out ever got reviewed, they might believe you were sending out samples legitimately...but I doubt it.

Good luck!

Ruben

[Silkstream]

I guess that would be your decision. I have in some instances reported violations, although they were not always heeded. If you wish to report them then here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/paidlinks?pli=1 is the best place to do so.

[RocketBanner]

This begs the question, should i report my competitor who has achieved terrific results with this method?

[Silkstream]

Taken from: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en

The following are examples of link schemes which can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results:

• 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