Is it a good idea to create a blog that offers quality content but also passes PageRank to sponsors
-
I am a part of a business networking group that has lots of members who services home owners (a/c repair, plumber, home inspector, etc.). I am thinking of starting a blog to help home owners be better informed how to care for their homes. I would like to ask for sponsorship from the people in my group. I would also like to invite them to post on the blog as a way to improve their SEO. Would posting on this kind of blog hurt, help or not affect their SEO? Would this violate Google's policy of selling links that pass page rank as described here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en.
-
Awesome. Thanks so much Wesley.
-
Hello Adam,
In my eyes there are two ways to approach placing authorship markup for a blog post.
1. A link to the author's google+ profile straight from the blog post's Author Bio. For this you could make the Author's name the link like this:
[rel="author">Author's name](Google+ profile URL)
2. Create an author page on your site for every author. Create a link from the blog post to the author page like this:
[rel="author">Author's name](Author page URL)
From the author page there should be a link to the Google+ profile like this:
[rel="me">Google+ profile](Google+ profile URL)
Hope this helps
-
Thanks Wesley.
Would you please expound a bit more on the right way to do an authorship tag and where to link it? I'm not sure I understood from your comment.
All the best
Adam -
Having advertisements on your website with the no-follow attribute in place is a possible way of earning money indeed.
Other ways could be to use affiliate links or getting leads and sell these to other companies. For example you could have a form on your website where people will fill in their information and request a certain kind of service. You could sell this lead to a company who provides given service.The blog posts in this case would bring in the traffic and if done well will make you an authority on the subject.
If the article has the rel="author" is in place and their is a link back from the person's Google+ profile contributor to section than the article will be tied to that author.Not sure if you want to try and make money of Google Authorship though. Google has very strict rules about earning money with links and such and i'm pretty sure they have some rules concerning authorship as well.
Hope i answered your questions If not, please let me know where i can explain further or if i can assist you with any other questions.
-
Hey All,
Thanks for all the responses, but I'm still left a little curious. I'd like to make a blog to help home owners learn how to take better care of their homes. I think this is a service that is needed in the world. However, I still need to eat. So I can't really afford to do it for nothing. I'd also like to help my friends and clients who I think have good advice to offer home owners. How can I do this in a way where we all can benefit from this service?
I get it that I can't have them post articles with follow links to their websites. How about authorship? If they are the author of an article on this site, will the article come up with an authorship credential?
Can they write an article and include no-follow links, but have an ad somewhere on the sidebar, also with (rel=no-follow links of course)?
-
By all means provide a link to the sponsor but absolutely make sure you 'nofollow' that link. Here's the relevant link to the Google Webmaster blog where they state why you should avoid selling links that pass page rank.
-
Hello Adam,
Blogging in order to help home owners be better informed on how they should care for their homes is a great idea which you could benefit a lot from.
Michael already stated that sponsorships are paid and that the sponsered links should be no-followed to avoid penalties. In the question title you mentioned 'passing PageRank to sponsors'. No-follow links pass (almost) no PageRank. So passing PageRank to them is not going to work.
You mention that you would like to invite your sponsors to guest post on your blog to improve their SEO.
Letting them guest post is a tremendous idea but guest posting for SEO reasons only is not a good approach.There is an excellent post here on Moz that goes deeper into the subject of guest posting.
Conclusion - Blogging is a good idea
- Selling links which pass PageRank is against Google's guidelines
- No-follow links pass (almost) no PageRank
- Guest blogging is awesome if it adds to the quality of the blog
Hope i was of help and if you have any questions, please let me know.
-
Sponsorship is paid for so all those links should be no-follow
Having guest posts has, does and will still work if the primary purpose is to add value, be informative and be honestly relevant and not at all promotional - no keyword links spamming the content. Personally I wouldn't actively promote guest posts on the site, rather let it happen naturally or through your networking.
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
-
Duplicate Content Link Juice
Hello SEO Community, So sometimes I will pitch one guest post to multiple outlets and if multiple reply positively, I will tell all but the single most authoritative site that the article is being published elsewhere and it won't be unique for their site. But some don't mind and still post anyway. I definitely don't mind because it just means that more people will read my article and more sites will be linking back to me. What are the implications on the link juice from the most authoritative site? What about the other ones (which are still authoritative, just not as much)? Is there any reason I should explicitly tell them not to post if I know it will appear somewhere else? Thanks much,
Link Building | | CleanEdisonInc0 -
Does spinning content work any longer?
A few years ago, I used Free Traffic System, and spun a bunch of content to get links. I still have tens of thousands of these links showing up in stats. They were probably not good quality links. Will I get penalized if I pick up the spinning game again?
Link Building | | manintights280 -
Do follow Blog comments
Alright,
Link Building | | sebastiankoch
I would like to know what do you think about this practice in general and hear some answer for my case. My case: I know a net of different blogs that let you put do follow comments as long as they are good. It is not really a lot of spam going on yet, around 6 comments per blog entry. The do follow link is in the form www.xyz.com. Normally a PR 3 after the post ranks.
There are around 20 different blogs. I have already use them and I believe with good results but can´t measure it as I do many other SEO activities. Would you recommend to get to invest time commenting in all of them? Even if all them are in the same C-block? Please feel free to share any experience!
Thanks!0 -
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?
Link Building | | esztanyo0 -
Publish content on current domain for content boost or new domain for links?
I have about 1000 unique and organically generated articles. My quote compare business has had briefs submitted by clients for over two years. The content has only been accessible to registered members. I want to polish it ASAP. Is it better to publish the content on the existing website in a sub folder or set up a new website to publish the content and have every article link back to the main website? Content is around 300 words x 1000.
Link Building | | designquotes0 -
Blog Comments
We all get them ... spam blog comments. People do it to get link value back to their site. Recently, someone approached me to do this for our site but on niche sites that are related to our content and to provide good valueable comments within a blog post of about 100 words each, and genuinely try to engage.They also were talking about finding blogs that have "follow" links in their comments space, since most do not. I still declined it because it is somewhat 'grey-hat' rather than 'white-hat' linking, and we want to be above-board on everything. Although we personally declined this approach, I'm curious your thoughts though on whether gaining links from blog comments from related, niche sites is a good idea. Like this question? Give us a Big Thumbs Up! Thank you!
Link Building | | applesofgold0 -
How to search blogs for blog commenting?
Hi every one can any help me out regarding blog commenting I am doing blog commenting since last 6 months to my automotive website i am posting the comment in blogs which are related to automotive only now i all most commented in 1500 blogs and i am not finding the new blog so how can i do blog commenting is there any other way to comment in new blog or getting the list of new blogs Kindly suggest me plz 🙂
Link Building | | PrasanthMohanachandran0 -
Guest Blogging - Build a relationship with a few blogs and post only there or post a few on as many good blogs as possible?
I'm curious which strategy is better in the short term and in the long-term? Part of my link building strategy involves contacting bloggers and posting some guest blogs on their sites. Now there are advantages with posting on a few blogs and creating a link between you and the blog readers and the blog owner. It also saves time trying to contact blog owners etc. However would my time be better spent contacting hundreds of blogs and seeing where I can guest blog and then post on as many as possible; in order to have a diverse number of links going back to my website? What do you think is the best option and why?
Link Building | | Grow0