Before my introduction to the world of Internet Marketing, I had never even heard of a no-follow link. I’ve been blogging for a few years, so it’s not like I’m a complete Web noob. But as a blogger who just wanted a place to write about her son and her obsession with LOST, I didn’t even know the Google Webmaster Guidelines existed.
I’m not unique in this.
Which is why I’m concerned about Matt Cutts and his recent call to action about paid links. Loren Baker of Search Engine Journal has wrapped up a lot of his concerns quite nicely in a blog post. I think that all of my fellow mommy bloggers – and bloggers in general – should read his post. Let me pull out a few takeaway messages:
- Google does not approve of paid links in any form, including sponsored conversations like product reviews and giveaways.
- If you publish a product review or giveaway and you don’t no-follow your links, Google will penalize both you and the company that sponsored your blog post.
- A Google penalization is generally understood to mean a demotion in ranking, which means it will be harder for searchers to find you on the Google SERPs.
I’d like a show of hands from bloggers who do not consider themselves a part of the SEO/Internet Marketing industry… Do you no-follow all of your links to your blog post sponsors? Do you know how to no-follow your links? Or maybe I should’ve started with a more basic question – do you know what no-follow means?
I did a preliminary poll on my personal Twitter account, and the results were split. Half of the responses indicated that they didn’t no-follow their links, and the other half didn’t even know what no-follow meant. From those in the know, they had determined that passing link juice to their sponsors was only fair, considering they’d offered some form of compensation. Unfortunately, that decision has the opposite effect. By passing link juice to the sponsor’s Web site, both the blog publisher and the sponsoring company have violated Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, which can result in losing rankings and, by extension, visitors. Incurring a Google penalty doesn’t help your blog or the sponsor!
For all of the bloggers out there who are reading this and had no idea they were doing anything wrong, you’re in good company. (As a matter of fact, I would appreciate it if you would leave a comment, and maybe I can nudge Matt Cutts to come and take a look at how many experienced bloggers are completely clueless about this whole “paid link” notion.) Here’s a little help for no-following your links:
- Don’t use your visual blog editor to create no-follow links; use the HTML editor.
- Add this to your anchor tag: rel=”nofollow”
You must do this for any links in sponsored posts, whether you’re publishing a product review, running a giveaway, or have been otherwise compensated for placing a link. You are not doing your sponsors any favors by leaving the no-follow off.
Now that you know, you can start doing right by Google. I don’t think it’s fair that Google penalizes bloggers for breaking rules they aren’t even aware of, but I don’t make the rules. I hope that I can reach out and spread the word so that my favorite blogs don’t get whacked by the Google hammer the next time they run one of their awesome giveaways. (By the way, consider this a shout out to all of the awesome bloggers who have hooked me up with some fantastic prizes. You rock! Blog giveaways FTW!)
If you’ve got the time, it would be worth it to go back and edit old blog posts to no-follow your links retroactively. Matt Cutts has put the call out for people to report sites that buy and sell links, so you want to protect yourself! Google doesn’t allow you to plead ignorance, and they don’t even need proof that you published a paid link. If they think you’re guilty, then you will suffer the consequences. Don’t give them any reason to suspect you. No-follow links to all of your sponsors, and you’ll be fine.
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“But as a blogger who just wanted a place to write about her son and her obsession with LOST….”
So the question begs, why exactly do you care?
This is getting ridiculous. We’re sell outs if we do giveaways and reviews and now we’re hurting ourselves AND the sponsor? There are getting to be too many rules and no one is bothering to send out copies of the guidelines so we all know what to do. It’s like my HOA!
What’s even worse is that the guidelines are a moving target and inconsistently enforced. For the most part (although don’t bet the farm on my opinion), I think most mommy bloggers are perfectly safe… as long as you’re fairly far under the radar.
The number one rule of linkbuilding is “don’t make Google look stupid.” In this particular instance, the campaign had such high visibility that Google felt it had to throw down its “law”. The fact that it was an IZEA campaign, didn’t help. Again, it’s all about not embarrassing Google. If you’re a small blog and you’re not throwing those sponsored links in Google’s face, you’re probably okay right now.
The web (and Google’s SERPs) are built on millions of links that probably have direct or indirect financial incentives behind them. This attack on advertising and sponsored links is like shoveling the tide, and all these public crackdowns seem like acts of desparation on Google’s part.
Just keep up with your blogging and serving your users. No need to panic quite yet; I don’t think this particular episode is going to spill over to every blog that’s ever done a product review.
Mark, even people who “just” want to write about something want to have other people who read about it. How can you get readers if no one can find your blog due to a search engine penalty that buries you?
Mel, who said you were a sellout? It wasn’t me… but please don’t kill the messenger here. Like I said, I don’t make the rules… I’m just trying to let people know they exist.
Melanie, I think you hit the nail on the head with the “don’t bet the farm on it” part. Google probably won’t go after the mommy bloggers… but there’s a lot of drama in the community, and it would only take one person who knows the rules and has a personal vendetta against you to report your blog for “selling links” by doing product reviews and running giveaways. Mommy blogs as a whole are probably fairly safe, but individual bloggers are at risk if they get on someone’s bad side.
I left a comment for Matt Cutts on his blog. It would be awesome if he responded.
Thanks for the info, but I still don’t get it. What does “no follow” mean and why should we have to add it to our links?
What if say, I did a week of giveaways back in December and I didn’t get anything out of it? Is that still considered a no-no?
Krista,
I’m sorry I didn’t explain it. “No-follow” essentially means that you aren’t passing PageRank – one part of Google’s algorithm based on the number of sites that link to any given page – to the site you’re linking to. Google thinks that sites that buy links should not be benefiting from PageRank from those links.
Wow, the “rules” do get to be a bit overwhelming, don’t they? Imagine being penalized for something you weren’t even aware of! That’s absolutely no fun.
Hi. I know what a “no-follow” tag is but I have no idea how to code it !
I don’t see too much wrong with paid for blog links. It’s just another form of advertising. It’s possible to get a reasonable amount of traffic from good quality blogs in your niche. It’s up to the blog owner to decide about no follow links, not the website owner who asks for the links. As in the off-line world those companies with deep pockets take out the biggest and best adverts. It’s no different in the online world. Getting natural links is now very difficult as very few people want to give them out, even to good sites, Google has brought this situation on themselves.
Thanks so much for the info – I had to read about this a few times before I understood it enough to (want to) do something about it. And I don’t have that many posts – LOL!
Google is unlikely to penalize the sponsor’s site because they don’t have proof that they were the one who bought the links in most cases. Think about it, if Google did this it would be easy to get a competitor penalized by buying links for them.
Frank, I’m not convinced that it isn’t happening already… Not necessarily with blog product reviews, but with other forms of paid links.
I have a “mommy blog” where I post reviews of products once or twice per week. I only heard about this rule late last week, and when I checked my pagerank it has fallen from 2 in February to 0 today. I can only assume that’s because I didn’t have no-follow tags in place. I’m in the process of adding them to my old posts and hope that will get my pagerank back where it was.
Cindy, I hope that adding the no-follow tags will get your PageRank back! It doesn’t get updated in the toolbar for several months at a time, so you may have to wait a while to see a difference.
Well Christina, I think you may have missed the point of what google is doing. One of the people whom I help with SEO sent me your link with some concern…. I said not to worry, For a more accurate look at how google acts themselves.
from a real internet marketing expert (the kind you should be following).
http://www.wolf-howl.com/google/google-profiles-seo/
Let’s back the clock up and review the facts:
* On May 27th at the Google I/O developer program Google has what is the press calls an “Oprah Moment” and gives away FREE cell phones to all attendees.
* Within 1 hour of the giveaway the phone finds it’s way up on Ebay with a starting price of $200.
* This phone receives 29 bids and has a final selling price of $760
* Within the 24 hours after that phone is given away Android receives approximately 50,000 new links.
* It doesn’t require a huge leap of faith to assume that at least 1 and quite possibly many more of those links can be directly attributed to Google giving away a cash in kind gift valued at between $200-$760.
So yet again google only follows the rules of any large monopolistic corporation… do as we say, not as we do
Are we just talking about ranking in Google Search or Adsense policy..?
b~
First of all “bruce” you seem to relish stomping on mommy bloggers and telling them where to go… you don’t belong here, you belong in a baby crib with a rattle where you can be diapered – from both ends. Get yourself a job as a moderator on highrankings where they’ve been stomping on newbie SEO’s for 6 years. Next, I’m interested in the “Google will penalize both you and the company” part and I’m going to look into that. There are a lot of bloggers that I would think get some form of compensation for product reviews like Guy Kawasaki. There is a PR4 page on Guy’s blog where he blatantly links to Amazon Kindle…
Seriously, we don’t care about google’s “rules” We don’t work for google. Google is there for our company to manipulate.
So please, you sheep keep doing what Google tells you too, makes it easier for us to succeed!