Blogger Reviews w/ Links - Considered a Paid Link?

[b4004040]

As part of my daily routine, I checked out inbound.org and stumbled upon an article about Grey Hat SEO techniques. One of the techniques mentioned was sending product to a blogger for review. My question is whether these types of links are really considered paid links. Why shouldn't an e-commerce company evangelize its product by sending to bloggers whose readership is the demographic the company is trying to target? In pre e-commerce marketing, it was very typical for a start-up company to send samples for review. Additionally, as far as flow of commerce is concerned, it makes sense for a product review to direct the reader to the company, whether by including a contact phone number, a mailing address, or in today's e-commerce world, a link to their website. I understand the gaming potential here (as with most SEO techniques, black-hat is usually an extreme implementation), but backlinks from honest product reviews shouldn't have a tinge of black, thus keeping it white-hat. Am I wrong here? Are these types of links really grey? Any help or insight is much appreciated!

[patrickmartin]

As far as I'm concerned, gone are the days of requesting anchor text and, one step further, outright requesting links. Bloggers aren't living under a rock, they're hip to the SEO game. Requesting links in outreach emails is a bad tactic for several reasons, the main reason being it gives the blogger the impression that you could care less about what they actually think of the product and are only interested in the link. The 'ask' section of my blogger outreach emails therefore never include link requests.

[john4math]

When we get a review by giving our product to a reviewer and by extension link(s), I'm more interested in the leads that are going to be driven to us by the review, not increasing our search rank.  Technically you're exchanging something with them, so they could be considered paid links, but honestly I wouldn't worry about it too much.  This is a very common relationship between bloggers and companies.  As long as the blog isn't spammy and is relevant to your product (like TommyTan says), it should be fine.

[Dr-Pete]

It can cut both ways, honestly. Look at paid links in general. If you buy a link from a site called "BuyMeSomeSEOLinks.com" that has "paid links" 50 times on the home-page with pricing, you're going to get caught. If you and I meet in a bar, and you agree to give me $50 for a link on my site, you'll never get caught, unless a Google employee happens to be sitting in the next booth. Now, I'm not condoning it either way, but I'm just being practical.

I think the key is a certain amount of subtlety. Google definitely, as a matter of policy, frowns on overt quid-pro-quo when it comes to links. If you send products to bloggers and actively solicit links (especially if you post that information online), you're at decent risk. If you send product to bloggers and make it easy for them to review those products but don't push the linking aspect too hard, it's a bit different, IMO.

Case in point - I recently had a weird situation where Amazon accidentally sent me a wireless headset. I thought it was a gift, only to realize they just screwed up a different order. I tweeted about the incident a few times, and then forgot about it. Two weeks later, the CEO of Headsets.com sent me brand new Sennheiser headset with a note that he saw my tweets. He didn't push me to promote it or ask for a link, etc. Of course, being a marketer, I did promote it on social media and told the story. To me, that's just smart marketing on their part. Of course, it's also a risk - I might've never reciprocated.

So, don't be too pushy - try to be creative, and make the experience fun for people. Make it something the bloggers want to talk about - not just a free product, but a unique and positive statement about your brand. That's win-win, IMO.

[MarketingOfAmerica]

If your going to pay for links, I would just go to godaddy aucitons, find a site with a nice DA and PR and w/e other stats your looking for, put it up and place yourself a link on it.  This is 100% cheaper, not only do you own it, but your also going to be able to keep it forever.

I find paid links a waste of money honestly unless your able to get on the front page of a real pr7 or higher. Or something very rare that you couldn't buy for cheap.

I see domains that are pr3 with 50 + DA all day long on godaddy auctions for $20 total after checkout price.  I know, because I have bought many myself for projects.

You can find free templates or cheap templates as well all over online. Fiverr has people that will give you 150 + templates for websites that are actually nice for $5.00.  You could pay someone on Fiverr $5.00 to setup the site for you and another $5.00 to have someone write the content for you.  So you may have a total of $50 by the time your done.  If you do it yourself, it's cheaper obviously.

Again this is only if your going to go this route, I wouldn't do this as a ethical tactic though, because it's not.

Have a nice day.

MB

[TommyTan]

Hi,

I don't believe paid links are bad and you shouldn't be worried about whether those link are considered as paid.  However, why people believe paid links are bad is because paid links are usually low quality links that may harm your website.  However, if that single "paid link" is from a high authoirty, non spammy website, then Search Engines will see the link as high authority.  They won't know whether it is paid or not.  I believe that is one of the myths about link building.

In your case, if you provice a sample to a blogger and they decide to write a review about your product and link to you, I believe it is ok and won't harm your ranking IF the blog is relevant to your theme and the blog is not a spammy blog and have some sort of authority.

What you should be worried about is not "buying" spammy and low quality links.  Spammy and low quality is the keyword.