Sponsored posts against Google guidelines?
-
I'm a bit confused. Every blog I try to outreach on always give me a quote for a sponsored post. Isn't this against Google guidelines because you paying for a link technically even though your paying for a post?
Do you guys buy sponsored posts?
Should this be avoided?
How do you outreach to a blog that offers sponsored posts? They can smell that you want a link from a mile away and give you a nice fat quote.
-
Point well made.
-
I might have used a bad example with Rand, but it is amazing how many companies take paid posts or reviews. Places like Allure, Vogue, Huff Post, NY Times, ect. What you are really hitting is the demographic that thinks they are reading something that is impartial, but in reality they are just being advertised to under the guise of "News". I always make sure the link is nofollow, so I do not really consider it blackhat, be shakey marketing, maybe. But in the end it comes down to dollars and cents. I regularly have posts that are paid in the 500-1000usd range. When you first do it, it is a leap, because there is no SEO value at all. But the largest return I have had was a post that in 3 days grossed 50k in sales on high margin products. The posts usually die fast, because people want the latest greatest thing. But they end up getting shared and work for the most part generally.
-
When it comes to domains that feature sponsored posts (aka paid guest posts), I think there is a lot of FUD out there and the domains selling sponsored space are capitalizing on that. There is also a fundamental difference between the value of Rand posting a single WBF post on Moz (that promoted a product), Rand posting the same single WBF post on another domain, and, for example the value of Moz, as a domain/brand regularly posting content it received money for from other parties.
I think the difference is in the measurable quality of the audience. Ongoing sponsored content:
- Lowers the current quality of the audience (why would an expert spend time reading paid-for content--unless it is of the most high quality--when the expert could spend time reading more virtuous--and usually better--content somewhere else? ), which is to say that it plays into lower rankings for the content/domain.
- Is a downward spiral. If Rand were to post a single WBF that promoted a product, it would likely be a very effective promotional tool for the product and would have little impact on people's perception of Moz. But if every WBF promoted a product, such would decrease the value of WBF and the worth of the promotions themselves. And if Moz were to regularly post sponsored posts/advertisements, in the long run the quality and value perceived in the brand/domain would suffer greatly and such would be indicated by its membership numbers and its rankings.
All of that's to say that best case scenario, I see sponsored posts being of dubious short-term value and of even less value in the long term.
-
Good answer. If there is a marketing benefit then it is worth doing. If you are doing it purely for SEO then you are buying links and take the risks that come with that.
If the sites you are contacting are asking you for money for followed links then you are probably not the first so it's a risky path you are walking down.
-
Generally it is against Google's guidelines if you are buying a do follow link. So in doing something like this you need to weigh the SEO vs Marketing value. I personally do it with a lot of my clients, but not for SEO purposes, it is for marketing / sales purposes. My clients are generally e-commerce sites for a little insight. See some markets have blogs that people read every time it is posted. Kind of like a Rand Fishkin article in our market. If Rand came out tomorrow witha whiteboard friday and said this product is great, it boosted Moz's organic SEO by 100% think how many people would flock to buy it. Most of the time since paid links should be no follow, there is no SEO benefit, but at the end of the day if it puts more money in yours or your clients pocket than was spent, then it is worth it. I will say that I buy links, I make sure they are not followed and I buy them when I think they can create sales for my clients. As far as I know that model fits in the Google guidelines because buy making sure they are not followed I am not buying them for SEO purposes.
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
-
Does adding a backlink in google plus comments work?
Hi guys, Can anybody tell me if adding a backlink in Google plus comments achieve anything?
Link Building | | Brover0 -
How can I find the best sites to guest post on while linking back to my article?
Whats the best way to find sites to guest blog on. There are just so many and I don't want to make bad choices so my current rankings don't get hurt
Link Building | | aronwp0 -
Google is no longer ranking home page but sub page lower, why?
We were ranking on page 2 and number 4 for the key word motorcycle tires. Google was ranking our home page jakewilson.com; however, we have been adding new content to our site and doing some internal linking. We pointed some links about motorcycle tires to http://www.jakewilson.com/cl/52/Motorcycle-Tires and now that page ranks but on page 3 not 2. Any thoughts?
Link Building | | DoRM0 -
Site Published Our Guest Post but Removed the Link Back
I recently developed a nice article for a career site and they agreed to publish it as a guest post. Once they published the article I noticed they had removed the link back to my site in the byline. What is a best way to approach this situation? Would you ask them to take down the article if they are unwilling to link back to your site?
Link Building | | Charlessipe0 -
Total Links vs Google Webmaster Site Links
I am interested why the numbers between SEOmoz and Google are so different. In SEOmoz we only show 17,000ish links from 190ish domains. In Google, we show 200,000+ links from 370 domains. Why is there such a dramatic difference?
Link Building | | webspecdesign0 -
Can high SERPS and/or social signals minimize Google penalties and a back linking removal question
As I am continually sizing up my competition in the SERPS I have scanned their sites with a fine tooth and comb. I have found that these sites practice in the very things that I have practiced in the past and have removed thinking that may be some of the reasons I was hit with Penguin. Some of these factors are: Link Scheme with sites they own (C Blocks) Content for Search Engines (Keyword rich text) Exact anchor text in back linking profile Yet even though my competition practices in these methods (One site even places exact anchor text in the footer and header of every page for one of their other forum site) they seem to have not even been touched with any of the recent updates. In fact it seems their ranking have increased. In scanning these sites the only major difference that I have been able to see between them and I is that their SERPS are higher than mine and they have way more social signals than me. One site has about 73k facebook likes where I only have about 300. My question is Can Google ignore penalties for sites that have higher SERPS and /or social signals that would effect another site that had lower ones? My other question is related to back links My main site has links from another site I built a long time ago (Pre SEO and not knowing what I was doing) somewhere in the 73k range. Obviously a HUGE signal to Google that this might be spam and I am aware. I have removed the links from that site but unfortunately the average crawl rate per day is very low so it is taking a very long time for Google to find those pages and re-crawl them to find the links gone. Since that site I have than has those links pointing to my main site has very low traffic I am totally willing to kill that entire site with a 404. Can this help speed up the removal of those links from that site? I figure since the site no longer exists all links from that site will be removed almost immediately from my main site. Any thoughts?
Link Building | | cbielich0 -
Website not appearing anywhere on google
Hello, we launched www.comparetravel.ie in June but it is not showing up on google search, we have submitted it to google twice but still no sign of our site. I thought it would at least show up for the "Compare Travel" search term, it only shows up when you type the full website address into google. Any ideas on what we are doing wrong? Alll advice greatly appreciated. (The website is Irish based) Thanks P
Link Building | | CompareTravel0 -
Did Google Panda and Penguins have any effect on Outbound Links?
I am just a beginner in SEO. But has any of the changes recently implemented by google affected out bound links? Meaning if a website now has a good number of outbound links to strong websites and pages could that Translate to better rankings?
Link Building | | sherohass0