Link Building
-
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.
-
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
-
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
-
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.
-
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.
-
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?
-
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.
-
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
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
-
About link building strategies and article publishing
Hi friends. What could be the best strategies for article publishing with links and anchor text. I did the next. I published original article in my website blog section and then next day published the same article in few news portals with links and anchor text to product landing pages. But google indexed only article from my blog. News portal in my country is with highest DA. Is it ok to do this way or better is make uncial article for every news portal and do not publish in own blog so there is no duplicates? I am afraid that doing my way is waste of time and money. Thanks for help.
Link Building | | netcomsia0 -
Building Links for an E-Waste Recycling Business
Hi everyone. I was wondering how I could build a solid link profile for an e-waste recycling business. Should I try to get links from local government bodies, the better business bureau, and the chamber of commerce? How have people done this before? I must also note that my business doesn't have a physical location per se in every city, but will travel to a client instead. Thanks!
Link Building | | Charles_Murdock0 -
Link building
Hello everyone, I am building links for an e-commerce site and I need to increase the value of the links we get by placing them on specific pages in order to pass more juice to inner pages. Which part of the website should I point the links to? Because there is no content section on the site what I can do is either link to the homepage (not an option) or link to inner pages such as category/subcategory/product pages. My doubt is that it wouldn't look natural to link to products pages from a piece of content or from a site where people go with the intention not to buy but to get information. Any opinions on this?
Link Building | | PremioOscar0 -
Please give me some ideas on my link building campaign
Hello everyone, My website is on Pharmacy schools. I just sell leads to universities. Well, I am unable to find sites which are related to my niche. Can i get links from Unrelated sites like Health? and other educational sites (other than pharmacy)? I can see all .edu and gov sites when i type in Google. Ofcourse, they wont sell any links to my low quality sites. Help me out in finding those sites which sells advertising spots and 100% related to my niche 🙂 thanks.
Link Building | | artemmin0 -
Link Building for relaunched & newly designed site
Hey all, Next week we are relaunching our brand spankin' new site. It's a major overhaul of our existing site from both a brand, design, and identity point of view. As part of the relaunch we will be reaching out to journalists in our niche with PR, and also doing a series of guest posts. But I'm wondering about other link building opportunities around newly redesigned websites. I have a list of about 2 dozen design + CSS galleries to submit to. Can you recommend other sources? I'm especially interested in sites that review web design, etc... Thanks. C.
Link Building | | cmoylan1 -
Squidoo for link building?
Hello Mozzers I'm thinking about using squidoo as a part of my link building. I've never used squidoo before, I'd love to hear from Mozzers using sqidoo for link building and traffic generation.
Link Building | | Thommas0 -
Link Building - Goals and Expectations
I'm trying to set concrete goals around link building and I'm wondering if anyone has any insight on what is reasonable to expect. If we are reaching out to 10 sites a day in a non-spammy, relevant way, is it reasonable to think that we'll get 5 links back, 2 links? I just don't know. Tips and tricks are welcome too!!
Link Building | | ehorndahl0