Recently, Google has announced on their webmaster blog that bloggers who receive free products or gifted products from brands or manufacturers should follow Google’s “best practices” to ensure they don’t get penalized by Google.
Google noticed that bloggers will write about the products and link the supplier of the products in exchange for getting the products for free. If a blogger is given a product for free and you write about the product, Google wants you to follow these three rules:
1) If you are linking the company’s site, their social media accounts, an online merchant’s page that sells the products, a review service’s page featuring reviews of the products or the company’s mobile app in an app store to your website you need to make sure it’s a Nofollow link.
2) Google said users want to know when they are viewing sponsored content, and sometimes a legal requirement to do so. Bloggers must make sure they disclose on their website that they are writing content because they received the product for free.
3) Creating unique content so it adds value to your website beyond what’s on the internet already. Google wants their users to provide content that can only be created by the users due to their unique expertise and resources.
Bloggers should follow Google’s best practices so they don’t get manual action penalties. Often, once Google publishes new guidelines about nofollow usage, Google will check up on sites and send penalties to those who aren’t using these practices. If you are in need of assistance with following these best practices, contact Boston Web Marketing today!