What is the danger in offering giveaways in exchange for links?
-
In this Whiteboard Friday video, Rand says there is a danger in offering products for blogs to give away, simply requesting a link to your product or website in exchange for the giveaway. Could someone elaborate on what the danger is?
Is this also the case with offering products for review?
-
The answer is - it is risky ground. Some say it is good marketing, but there are examples of this backfiring - so the best advice is to be aware of the risks and tread lightly. Technically when you really look at it - it is good marketing, but it is also an alternative to paying cash, and Google doesn't like this type of link building
Giveaways and even offering a discount in exchange for a link can land you in hot water. Take the whole Overstock penalty for example, they were getting links on EDU sites by offering discounts to students and faculty. Good marketing or shady link building? Debatable. Would they have gotten caught if they weren't such a big name? Who knows...
To be on the safe side, my recommendation is to host a giveaway, but make no mention of "linking back" to your site. You can probably say "please share this contest with your friends and family" but "sharing" isn't necessarily asking for a link. Any links obtained out of interest in the contest are earned through good marketing/content.
Edited to add:
You also have to consider FTC disclosures when giving away any product for a review.
Also, I can't find it right now, I will continue looking, but I think remember reading something from Matt stating that if you are giving away a product you have to ask them to no-follow any links.
-
In my situation I am doing this for introducing my brand. I give them a product to review and I have a giveaway / prize every month. The link will always stay but may be to same or different page of my site. I also want to do it for many sites.
I appreciate to hear from SEOmoz staff also
Thank you for your response
-
They get the giveaway and then remove the link!
-
This was my question yesterday and I got completely
different answer!!?? I wish we would get more response. I understand both sides of arguments.http://www.seomoz.org/q/is-it-a-good-idea-to-participate-in-review-giveaway-bloggers
-
It can constitute a link scheme. When a search engine finds out, they could determine that the links you've received aren't legitimate and may subject you and the sites linking to you to a penalty.
It also technically counts as buying a link. You are essentially trading something that has value for a link to your site. Absent following one of these suggestions you run the risk of being flagged for buying links.
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
-
Link Relevance vs Link Authority ?
Hi guys, I have a quick question regarding some low quality links my site is getting. From the information in Open Site Explorer, the website Im talking about has a page authority of 16 while the domain authority is 11\. These are very low quality scores in my oppinion and Im thinking of removing them with Google Disavow Tool. The thing is that, although the domain is low quality, the links have relevance as they're in the same business sector as us. More exactly, the name of the domain is taxisavona and the company I work for is also a taxi company. So, now I`m thinking, should I disavow the link because of it's low scores or should I leave it because it is relevant to our business ? Thank you in advance! Best regards, Tiberiu Iavorenciuc
Link Building | | Tiberiu0 -
5 Million Links?
Hi all, I've been hired as the chief marketer at a (very) high traffic web company. Ironically, I don't have much SEO experience but I have been able to figure out PPC, on-page SEO and SEO content generation pretty well over the last few months. What I don't get is link building. My question is this; we're trying to move from the 3-4 SERP slot to the 1-2 SERP slot for a short list of keywords. My boss asked me to get busy with link building. Our competitor has over 2 million external links and we have roughly 60 thousand. What do I do? How do I start? Is there a legit, white hat way to get this job moving? Any insights would be GREATLY appreciated. Thanks in advance!
Link Building | | SEOguppie0 -
Link Ratio
Hello, When Building backlinks is there a specific ratio I should try to follow to avoid any issues with google? Thank you!
Link Building | | TP_Marketing0 -
Why does my site only have 4 internal followed links/internal links?
When using Open Site Explorer my site is winning in many categories but lacking in others as compared to competitors. I intend to improve on this but am a little confused by the extremely low number of "internal followed links" and "internal links" at just 4. My competitors have much more than that. Does this mean links to the root domain? Total internal links? I have many internal links so I'm having a hard time figuring this one out. What four internal links are getting noticed? I just went through and changed all the links that went to index.html to link to the root domain at www.njlimocarservice.com as I just found a Q&A that indicates this was better. So as of Wed at 5:45 PM all my links to the homepage went to index.html and not the root which is no longer the case. Not sure if this matters. At the same time I also just put a 301 from index.html to redirect to www.njlimocarservice.com. Any help appreciated! h9QuF.png
Link Building | | kabledesigns0 -
Linked in public profiles
It seems that linked in is doing some type of redirect on their links, that block them from passing value to the connected site. Is there anyway to get link value out of public LinkedIn profiles, or did they shut that down?
Link Building | | VanadiumInteractive0 -
Link Building Ideas?
Hi everyone, I am currently working on a site where people can buy mail-order bagels, i.e. the bagels are shipped via postal mail. It's a good alternative for places that have no good bagel stores nearby, especially in small, rural towns. I am about to launch a link-building campaign for the website, but am a little stuck as to where to begin. My first thought was guest posting, but it seems like the vast majority of food blog owners are very protective of their blogs and rarely, if ever, allow guest posts. I also thought about doing sponsored reviews (i.e. sending mommy bloggers free samples in exchange for a review), but that's essentially a paid link, i.e. a no-no. There are of course generic web directories, but those only get you so far, and article marketing is out of the question (too spammy). Was hoping I might be able to bounce off some ideas off of you all. Any thoughts? Thank you in advance for whatever tips/ideas you might be able to share 🙂 Lukas
Link Building | | TampaSEO0 -
Link from Dmoz.org
hi, first question on here. Just starting to get into link building and after a day already confused. I'm using the seomoz pro link analyser / open site explorer to look at my sites links against competitors. First up was dmoz.org. great rankings so a great link target, turns out though that I already have one!! Any ideas why it isn't showing up on my linking domains. Is this a seomoz oversight or am i not getting my alloted 'juice' from this domain??
Link Building | | rattleanddrum0 -
Link Building
I've been hearing about going after niche directories, and my question is most of them have a ton of links on any given page. Is it even worth taking the time to approach these sites knowing they won't pass a lot of link juice?
Link Building | | azguy0