Link Building

[WNL]

Guest blogging, guest blogging, guest blogging. Since I started my career as a "brand manager" I've heard the term "guest blogging" at least a million times. So I've put a fair amount of energy into it and for a long time it worked beautifully, still is in many ways. However, in the last month or two nearly every blog I have contacted about guest blogging has said that "due to an increase in guest blogging request we are now charging a fee of x" so on and so forth. Doesn't paying for links put you at great risk for being deindexed? And can't bloggers get in trouble for this as well? Do they not know, not care or think it doesn't apply to them? And if it's a sponsored post, say I send them $100 of free product and pay them $100 to do it, isn't that just hiring someone to talk about my brand? Why would google punish me for that? Anyway around it?

Thank you so much! I look forward to your suggestions/advice/criticism.

[WNL]

Eric-

This is great, thanks so much. I usually do send back a "Sorry we are going to penalized so we can't" (though hopefully must more eloquently put than that). And it's rare that I do get a response as well, though if I say it kindly enough I can usually at least begin some kind of conversation.

And I see your point. That makes sense.

I'll think of something. Thanks again.

Elizabeth

[WNL]

Hey Mark,

Thanks so much for your response! We have really been working on relationship building, that's really important to us. We use that a lot with social and e-mail marketing but sometimes we have relevant information that we want to get out and I get frustrated with the lack of responsiveness for good, unpaid content. I guess the problem then is patience...

Thank you for the link!

Elizabeth

[EGOL]

Most of the stuff that people send to me and want published as "guest posts".....   you couldn't pay me enough to display them on my site.

[EricPratum30]

You're right that it's difficult. They have to look for patterns that are out of the ordinary. Does a site have an overabundance of specific anchor text, links only from certain types of sites, links from a narrow niche of PA/DA, etc and then compare how your site looks against your competitors? Even when they find something out of the ordinary, it's not an immediate signal that a site is paying for links, but it gives them something to work with.

[SEOAndy]

Just to add a discussion into here.

People say paying for the link is against Google guidelines etc... But how does Google know the difference between a paid and unpaid link? they both look the same in the eyes of Google surely?

How can an algorithm know if you've sent some money to someone over Paypal for example? Surely its only differentiating between poor links and good quality links?

[EricPratum30]

When I get a response like that, I typically send a canned reply that can be summed up as, "Because we want to stay clear of Google's guidelines about not paying for links and because we made a choice not to do sponsored posts, we are not paying for guest posts at this time. Sorry. [Link to Google guidelines on paying for links.] Unfortunately, sponsored posts don't pass the link equity we're hoping to build, and paying for posts without having them marked as sponsored could incur both our site and yours penalties in the search results. I'd still love to do a post, but if it needs to be sponsored, no worries. I still appreciate your time."

Most don't even respond. Some say, "Oh, I had no idea. Thanks for letting me know. I'd love a guest post."

As far as the question about paying someone and punishment goes, I think about it like this. When I'm in a new city and need something to eat, I can ask someone on the street where to get a good pizza. If they're a regular person, they'll say XYZ pizza because they love it, know that it's popular, or for some other related genuine reason. The importance there is that their response is unmanipulated so I'm more likely to get a fair response. If that person though happens to work for ABC Pizza, there's a good chance that I'll be told ABC Pizza is the place to go. Now, did I really want a response colored by association? Or, did I want a personal response?

If I drop a paid link on my page and don't tell you it's paid, I'm not necessarily sending you to the best infographic, or marketing company, or local pizza joint. I'm sending you to the one that paid me. If enough people do that, the manipulation of the link graph moves equity toward people with money to pay for links and away from people that might actually have the best endpoint for internet users. Google can fight this by doing their best to identify paid links and devalue them.

[Mark_Ginsberg]

Hiring people to talk about your brand is fine - paying someone to talk about your brand and link to your site with the express purpose of influencing the search engine's algorithms is the problem. If you pay someone to talk about your brand and they nofollow the link that is perfectly fine in the engines' eyes - the link is not meant to influence your ranking - however, paying someone for a link is the problem.

That being said, bloggers are getting smarter and realize they can make money off of this, and are going to try and make money off of guest blogging just like they can make money off of inserting contextual links.

If you want to avoid these issues, try creating a relationship with the blogger first, connecting with them on twitter and other social media networks, actually reading their blog and interacting with them. As a representative of the brand, they'll recognize you and you'll have a real relationship and then approach and ask to guest blog post on their site - this should be a very different reaction.

There are also lots of other ways to build links besides guest blogging - it ain't easy, and no one is saying it is, but you should probably diversify your strategy - here is a great post with various tactics and strategies from Jon Cooper - enjoy!

Good luck,

Mark