Sponsored Posts
-
Hi
I'm a little curious as to what the lastest guidelines are for sponsored posts by Google?
The writer blurb at the bottom of an article is of course ok, but what about companies who pay money to another company to have a fantastic piece written "with a link" but with no evidence who the writer is?!
Thanks
Gary
-
Hey Gary,
The Google stance is that anything paid like what you outlined in #2 and #3 should have nofollowed links on it. It's the same story for giving free stuff to bloggers in exchange for reviews. The official stance can be found here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en.
The reality is that there are still plenty of people getting away with this behind closed doors. The ones that are subtle about it can likely keep doing it for a long time with low risk. The ones that are blatantly doing it are much more at risk for being penalized or losing the value of those links, however I haven't seen many public stories of paid link penalties for awhile.
If you choose to do this, do so with the understanding that it carries some risk, and your competitors are going to be happy to report you to the webspam team if you make it obvious that you're doing it.
-
Thanks for your help guys.
I want to make sure our link building campaign is done within Google's guidelines. Here is currently what we are doing, or intending to do;
1. We're producing unique content on our site and sharing this with key influencers organically on Twitter, Facebook and G+ communities. This so far is working well for a new start up.
2. Writing guest posts on authoritative sites (with only our author bio at the bottom, branded link to our site with social links) sharing knowledge or interesting content which readers would want to read. Sites like HuffPost, The Guardian would be great although we're starting on authoritative well maintained blogger sites with the industry to begin.
3. Reaching out to industry influencers who may like to review our products. Many of them have got back to me stating that they "can" run commissioned posts (normally requires a large fee) which carries a followed link, branded or unbranded. Although we may have initially contacted them, and money could be exchanged, in the eyes of Google wouldn't this appear as a natural post?
Please let me know your thoughts on this? It would be great to gain more of an understanding exactly what I can or cannot do when it comes to developing high quality links for our business! I would like to be more pro-active.
Your feedback (sharing any examples if possible) would be truly appreciated.
Thanks
Gary
-
My answer might not go by the book but reality is if they didn’t get caught, its fine but they got caught, the game is over J
Hope this helps!
-
Hi Gary,
While I wouldn't advise dabbling in black hat (the things you mention are all against Google's guidelines), my experience from cleaning up other SEOs' messes has always been that doing things like this won't get you in trouble if you do it right.
2 factors to keep in mind:
-
Don't do it at scale. 1 Sponsored Post may help, but if you try to do 100 of them, you're creating a clear pattern that Google will pick up on sooner or later.
-
Don't do this on sites where they disclose that the post was sponsored (either on the post itself or on an "advertise with us" page. Google can crawl that text and thus knows right away to discount those links.
Again, this is ALL black hat, but if done right in the past, I wouldn't even disavow because the link may actually be providing value.
Let me know if you'd like to discuss further!
Mark
-
-
Hi Gary, what's up?
I found this video from Matt Cutts from a year ago: https://youtu.be/zupIbMyMfBI but I don't know if it will answer all your questions.
Regards,
Luis
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
-
Is it okay to post my blog posts to both an internal blog on our domain and an external blog?
We have a blog internally at kay-grant.com/blog and also created an external blog at ActiveRain.com Is it okay to post the same blog posts to both sites or should I have different content for each blog?
Link Building | | geoff81510 -
In a post penguin world, what would be your widget rollout strategy?
We have some very useful calculators. Should the branded text link be follow or no follow? Is a genuine, value ad widget helpful in post penguin SEO world
Link Building | | stevanl0 -
Reposting Blog posts on 3rd party sites
We have a few informational blog posts that are valuable to some readers. We have posted them in our blog but were contemplating posting them on 3rd party blogging websites such as Blogger, Squidoo, etc.. Ideally we would continue to maintain these accounts with multiple blog posts, but would all be reposts of the original blog. These are not half english blog posts just hoping to gain a better Google rank. They will provide value to the readers who might not be finding their way to our website directly. Is posting these blog posts on the 3rd party websites, linking back to the original article and maybe some products that are related to the specific document going to negatively affect our rankings due to the duplication of the content?
Link Building | | wishmedia0 -
Lost inbound link from Huffington Post???
My website was featured on HuffPost's "7 Sites You Should Be Wasting Your Time On" in September of 2011 and somewhere along the way it no longer gets recognized as a linking domain? The site/page itself ('7 Sites' from Sept 2011) still exists through direct linking, and my site's link is still on there. I am looking at it right now (still knew the URL because I put it as a link in the 'About' section of my site). Any theories as to how/why this happened and if it is due to something on my end? Any way to get it back?
Link Building | | Pace0 -
Multiple guest posts from one site have any effect on rankings?
I have started guest blogging and have sites asking me for more content. I understand that regular guest blogging is great for building authority as an author and has the potential to get more links through word of mouth and other sites linking to me. The more posts I do the more exposure I get. But if I have say 3 or 4 posts on an external site with each linking to my site (to a different url and with different anchor text) does that have any effect on rankings as all links come from the same domain? As I understand it links from different root domains are what matters. Presumably a site with links from 5 different sites with 10 links on each external domain totalling 50 links wouldn't rank as well as a site with links from 50 different domains (1 per domain)?
Link Building | | SamCUK0 -
A competitor is posting to all these blogs!
One of my competitors is posting on blogs like this getting free back links. http://50fiftyclothing.com/blog1/
Link Building | | CLTMichael
http://www.get-rid-of-bellyfat.org/tag/disease/ http://www.medicalinfo101.com/ He is killing the SERP, but how am I suppose to compete when google is rewarding him with great rankings?0 -
Are Guest Post Anchor Text Links Evil?
Hi, In the recent free SEOMoz webinar about What's Ailing the Linkgraph, Rand Fishkin says that corporations try to get anchor text guest posts on his wife's blog and he suggests this is manipulative. Do you agree that anchor text links in guest posts are manipulative? Do you think that Google will take action against this tactic in the future? Thanks!
Link Building | | SparkplugDigital0 -
Do "Sponsored Posts" links get discounted by google?
Do "Sponsored Posts" links get discounted by google? A feture post that is tagged by the site as "featured' or "sponsored" are they discounted as paid links by google?
Link Building | | DavidKonigsberg0