Sponsored posts against Google guidelines?

[The_Kiwi_Man]

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.

[LesleyPaone]

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.

[Marcus_Miller]

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.

[Chris.Menke]

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.

[LesleyPaone]

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.

[Chris.Menke]

Point well made.