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A few days ago, I received an email from a blogger, X, and I thought I’d share her dilemma with you. I’ve edited the message below for clarity and to protect the mentioned identities.

Hey Tine,

I’m very new with dealing with PR companies. I have some successful collaborations in the sense of being sent products to review. However, when it comes to guest posts/sponsored posts, it gets a bit more confusing. A PR person for brand Y contacted me asking if I wanted to ‘collaborate’ by posting some of their content or writing some to put on my blog. I don’t want to just post a generic article, so I’d have to take the time to write an article including brand Y that was both relevant and interesting. So, as they said nothing about any kind of compensation, I tried to ask in the most delicate way whether there would be any monetary compensation or a product to try so I could be sure of my endorsement.

I got an email back saying essentially that due to new Google guidelines, a sponsored post would cause both my blog and their company to be penalised in search engine results. They pasted this part of the Google guidelines: http://puu.sh/2QtF5.jpg.

Here’s my problem: Is this a legitimate thing I should do without any charge, or as a small blog, am I being shamelessly used to promote their content for free? Part of me feels as though I should go with the sponsored post without any compensation because I don’t want to appear uncooperative with PR. But I don’t want to sell myself short or promote something that might not interest my readers for no gain to anyone but their company.

I replied with a lengthy email and a lot of it was my ranting at how irked I was at the situation. The new blogger was being taken advantage of by the PR who either knew what was going on but didn’t give her the full picture of what Google does or didn’t know what can be done around it.

After some deliberation and permission from blogger X, I decided to make a Bloggie Wednesday topic out of it. Some of you may have heard of Google penalising websites that sell links and write sponsored posts by knocking their page ranking right out the window. If you accept and write sponsored content for your blog, what does this mean for you? Does this mean that you should no longer be writing any more sponsored posts from now on and remove all of them to protect your blog from being penalised by Google?

This is what I told blogger X. Just so you know, she did tell me what brand Y was and it’s not a small business. It’s a big one.

© sqback

My reply:

Yes, it’s true that Google is starting to penalise sponsored content because of the high number of so-called SEO companies trying to buy links from websites to boost clients’ websites’ page ranking. I’m sure you’ve received emails from random “agencies” requesting link exchanges. In a nutshell, how Google page ranking works is the higher the number of linkbacks a website receives, the higher the page ranking is. These companies employ SEO agencies to get smaller blogs to link them in their blogroll in exchange for a linkback from them to those smaller blogs.

This is the reason Google is starting to penalise websites that have extraordinary number of linkbacks and even flag those with sponsored content (when these SEO companies pay a pittance for links on certain keywords). It’s because of this unscrupulous way of getting linkbacks to jack up page ranking that Google is clamping down on this this sort of link exchange and buying of links, which also includes sponsored posts.

How does this affect us as bloggers? In order not to consider a sponsored post a “purchased link” and in the end be penalised by Google is to add “nofollow” tags to the link. Read the link below:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ca/2013/02/a-reminder-about-selling-links.html

You can also read up on why and how Google penalises sponsored links here:

http://paidcontent.org/2013/02/22/if-you-are-running-advertorial-or-sponsored-content-google-is-watching-you/

Say you’re being asked to promote brand Y at www.brandY.com. This is how you’d add a “nofollow” tag to the link:

Google has specifically stated that if a link is paid for, it must not “pass page rank”, which means that the link cannot and should not be used to increase the authority of the sponsored site. As long as you add “nofollow” tags to your sponsored posts, you’ll be all right. Websites naturally link to others in the course of time with organic links.

In my media kit and rate card, I make it very clear that due to Google’s strict specifications, the links have to have a “nofollow” tag. There will be brands/PRs who will try to talk you out of it because this obviously doesn’t add a link back to their clients’ websites that will increase their page ranking. But if the brand is genuinely interested in working with you and understand this restriction by Google, it won’t be an issue. They’re more interested in getting their brand out there than just technical page ranking.

Right, so back to the brand. A collaboration is a partnership. What are you doing for them? And what are they doing for you? It has to be a win-win situation. If you take the time and effort to research and write an article for them, then you should be compensated for it. Don’t work for free. Sadly, a lot of brands/PRs take advantage of bloggers for free advertising and that’s not right.

Ultimately it’s up to you. If brand Y is something you like and think your readers might be interested in, you might want to write something about it. I’ve given a lot of free airtime on my blog on brands and products I really like anyway without compensation. But to intimidate you with Google guidelines without showing you the actual picture just because you enquired about compensation is just not on.

So to answer your question after rambling on for so many paragraphs, yes I believe they’re just using your blog for free advertising. Don’t worry about being uncooperative if you said no. There are plenty of brands out there who will work with you properly without only thinking about their page ranking. It will come to a point where you will have to be selective of who you’d like to have a proper working relationship with. Just don’t let them bully you into doing stuff for them for free.

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That was my email to blogger X and I hope it has also answered some questions you may have about writing sponsored content and emails on link exchanges. Whenever you receive emails requesting for a link exchange from an unknown sender to links that are irrelevant to your blog (especially the ones that also tell you what their Google Page Ranks are), just mark them as spam and delete them. Only link to websites that you like and in time, other people will do the same for you. Organic linking is safe in Google’s eyes, unusual spam-like linking isn’t.

As for brands wanting to work with you but not pay you because they think it will hurt their page ranking, I’d say thanks but no thanks. Be polite but firm. You hold more value on your blog than you think. Don’t sell yourself short.

What do you think about Google penalising sponsored links? Better yet, what are your thoughts on brands using this against bloggers as not to compensate them for their work?