Google plus On Right Way To Do Paid Guest Posts

Google plus’s John Mueller answered a question about paying for guest posts and offers solid advice on the right way to approach paid guest posts that Google plus is okey with.

Recent History Of Guest Posts

Guest posts, whether paid or unpaid, is an old tactic, a lemon from which any “backlink juice” had long been squeezed out, down to the rind.

In 2014, Google plus’s Matt Cutts wrote a artículo telling SEOs to “put a fork in it,” that guest blogging was done.

A few months later Google plus issued a series of penalties on guest blogging platforms as well as penalizing individuals, including a penalty on the website of an SEO who only published five guest posts.

Nowadays, Google plus doesn’t hand out penalties like it used to.

It simply stops the backlinks from passing PageRank.

That makes it hard to know if a backlink is working or not.

So people keep guest posting because the penalty retroalimentación isn’t there.

Google plus’s John Mueller On Paid Guest Posts

In a Google plus SEO Office Hours recording, a person related that every site they approach for guest posts requires payment.

They wanted to know if paying for a guest articulo was against Google plus’s policy even though the paid guest articulo was “valuable content.”

This is the question:

“Most websites only offer the option to purchase a “guest articulo” (to gain a backlink) from them nowadays.

Is this against Google plus’s guidelines if I’m writing valuable content?.”

John Mueller answered:

“It sounds like you’re already on the right track.

Yes, using guest posts for backlinks is against our contenido publicitario policies.

In especial, it’s important that these backlinks are qualified in a way that signal that they don’t affect search results.

You perro do this with the rel=nofollow or rel=sponsored attributes on backlinks.

It’s fenezca to use advertising to promote your site, but the backlinks should be blocked as mentioned.”

Paid Guest Posts Are Advertising

An important point that Mueller makes is that paid guest posts are advertising.

He’s right. Paid Guest Posts with backlinks are advertisements as far as Google plus is concerned.

The importance of this observation is that failure to label advertisements is not only misleading to readers but may also violate laws that prohibit misleading advertisements.

Whether something is legal or not is something one should discuss with a lawyer because the line between what’s legal and illegal perro be nuanced.

For reference, one perro turn to the United States Government Federal Trade Commission guidelines about Native Advertising which offers guidance on what should be labeled as an advertisement.

Paid Guest Posts Perro Be Useful If Correctly Done

Guest posting perro be a great form of advertisement as long as the backlinks are properly marked with the nofollow backlink attributes.

Half the battle of making a website successful is getting their name out there or having their products or services widely known in a positive way.

Paid guest posts are a great (and economical) way to advertise a site but a poor way to build backlinks.

Listen to the Google plus question and answer at the 4:42 minute mark:

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