Could product sample giveaways be seen as 'paying for links'?

[azu25]

One of our main methods of advertising for my startup business is by sending samples to bloggers for review. I've read a lot of good things about this method and many of my competitors use it very well - I've even seen it suggested on the Moz blog several times in the past.

The one thing I do worry about is that Google may see this as a form of 'link purchasing', as I'm offering something in exchange for a link and some of the blog posts may reference that fact (or at least most likely use the word "Review" - Which could be some kind of footprint?).
We don't intend to ask for anchor texts, so at the very least that should look natural.

What are your opinions? Could this be seen as paid linkbuilding or is it regarded as a natural marketing method?

[EDIT]:
One idea we had was to potentially offer bloggers the chance to earn a portion of their purchase back by writing a review on their blog. They'd buy from us and let us know they have a blog, then we'd reimburse them some credit towards their next order for every blog post they write about us. Does this sound like a good idea or is this potentially more dangerous than simply offering free samples?

[DavidKonigsberg]

Its some what of a gray area - I would recommend using it in conjunction with many other tactics to make it look more normal and giving you enough link diversity that google wouldn't penalize you for it.

[Chris.Menke]

I think you're OK if you're sending out samples but not asking for the reviews. Something like "here [blogger], I see you have an interest and an opinion on a number of similar products and I'd love to know your thoughts on mine."--kind of thing.  The number of online reviews you get without asking might not be that different than the number you get with asking, depending on your niche.  Also, no need to stick with bloggers.  Anyone anywhere in social media who's mentioned a competitor's product can get the same type of communication from you.

[azu25]

Hi Chris, thanks for the response.

I actually meant that we would be asking for reviews, but just not for specific anchor text. So the reviewer could link to us however they want, or not at all - As long as we get our name out there.

We also had one more idea which I'll make a note of in the OP.

Thanks

[azu25]

Hi David,

We'll be making sure to mix in plenty of other marketing so will hopefully be able to gain some links to water the 'sample-links' down a bit.

Thanks

[Chris.Menke]

Understood.  And I'm just saying that if you ask for their evaluation--without asking for the review--you may get the review anyway--especially if you're targeting those who have already shown they review or mention products online.

[azu25]

I might do a sort of A/B test with this kind of thing and see what happens - Ask 20 people for a review and ask 20 people (who I know already do reviews) if they'd like some free samples, to see how it goes. Probably a bit pointless, but if there's any way I can try to get our links looking as natural as possible then I'll give it a go

[MarieHaynes]

Most of my work is on sites that have been dealt a manual unnatural links penalty.  I have worked with a couple of sites who were penalized for exchanging free product for a review.

Here's one of the points in the quality guidelines under "link schemes"

• Buying or selling links that pass PageRank. This includes exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links; exchanging goods or services for links; or sending someone a “free” product in exchange for them writing about it and including a link

Now, there are ways that you can do this where an algorithm (i.e. Penguin) is not likely to pick up on what you are doing.  But, if you want to be squeaky clean you have to build links as if you were comfortable with someone from the webspam team taking a look.  To me, it's all about scale.  If you have a small handful of links because you sent someone a product, this is probably ok provided you didn't ask for a link back.  But, if you do it on a larger scale then it can easily look like a linking scheme and could open you up to a manual penalty.

Is it wrong to send free product to someone?  No.  Is it wrong to ask for a link from someone?  No, provided you haven't exchanged anything for it.  Is it wrong to send free product AND ask for a link?  According to Google, yes.  So the obvious question is, "How would Google know that I asked for a link?  Couldn't I just send free product and hope that they write about it?"  I don't know the answer to that question.  But if I was doing this I would be careful.  If there is any sort of insinuation that the free product comes with the expectation of a link then you're treading on thin ice.  Similarly, in my opinion, if you send free product and ask for a review, you are essentially asking for a link.

"One idea we had was to potentially offer bloggers the chance to earn a portion of their purchase back by writing a review on their blog. They'd buy from us and let us know they have a blog, then we'd reimburse them some credit towards their next order for every blog post they write about us. Does this sound like a good idea or is this potentially more dangerous than simply offering free samples?"

IMO this is a paid link.

[azu25]

Thanks Marie for your feedback,

Obviously we want to be as squeaky clean as possible. Our biggest competitor is a very big  and well-known company - they rank very well for some big keywords and one of their main sources of links at the moment is these product giveaways in exchange for a review and a link. I think any Googler could see that they are sending free products in exchange for links, as they're getting ALOT of links doing this.

I don't think I've seen that part of Google's guidelines about offering free products - I don't know how I've missed that!
It's a marketing method we can't ignore, so I'm trying to think of different ways we can do it so that it doesn't get too dangerous. Perhaps if we sent out maybe one free sample a week to a blogger who we know writes reviews, then rather than asking for a link, just ask for their opinions (as Chris suggested above) and hope for a review with a natural link, then that might be better, as there's no link being requested and it's not too aggressive on a large scale.
We'll try anything to make this method as natural looking as possible.

Regarding the second note about reimbursing purchases - another idea we had for this was to do the same, but offer people the chance to write a review for us to post to our site. We could add a 'customer reviews' section to our blog and include those there, which of course would be more detailed and more engaging than the regular 'Write a review' section on the product pages. This doesn't involve links as the content would go on our site, so there's no risk of a penalty (that I know of, other than Panda, which we'd ensure it's good content first), so I was just wondering what your opinion of that would be?

Thanks very much !

[MarieHaynes]

I think what you are asking here is the same as saying, "How high above the speeding limit can I drive before I get charged with speeding?"  If the limit is 50, then anything above 50 is breaking the law, but will you get stopped for speeding at 51?  Not likely.  55?  Maybe.  60? Some people can get away with it but you could get caught.

I think that if you are sending free product and hoping for a link you may get a few, but if you get enough links to start making a difference in rankings then you're probably crossing the line of unnatural linking.  These days there are three ways to make links:

1. Completely self made links.

2. Completely earned links.

3. Links that are self made but you've tried your best to make them look naturally earned.

Google is very smart.  If I were you I would not be risking a penalty but then I am biased because I work with sites who have been ruined by penalties.

I'm not sure that I have an opinion on the second part.  It won't get you into linking trouble as no one is linking to you, so it sounds fine to me.

[azu25]

Ok, What I'll have to try is our other marketing methods first and leave this to a kind of 'last resort' practise. If you think it's a bad idea, I'll steer clear as much as possible - It seems to be used by most of our competitors (especially our biggest one) so I suppose it's only a matter of time before they're penalised for this.

Thanks

[90miLLA]

Hi Marie,

Can you please elaborate on what you think is a completely earned link as well as giving us some example?

I am in the same boat as azu25 - it is hard to earn links when you are starting off because no one knows you, so how do you go viral while avoiding link scheme penalties?

Other ideas I had:

1. Offering bloggers coupons that they can blog about. Their audience would be able to use the couple to buy form your store.

2. Offering free giveaways from your store. The blogger could blog about this. Could this be seeing as a "free" product form search engines??

What is your opinion on the two ideas above?

Like azu25 has stated, it seems that many domains with high authority do give away products to their bloggers, but are still ranking....it's hard to compete with 1000 monthly links.

Also, what is your opinion on building blogger relationship and asking for that blogger to blog about you once a month (recurrent blogs)?

Regards,

Carlos