Best practices for bloggers reviewing products they receive from companies

Friday, March 11, 2016

As a form of online marketing, some companies today will send bloggers products to review or give
away in return for a mention in a blogpost. Whether you’re the company supplying the product or
the blogger writing the post, below are a few best practices to ensure that this content is both
useful to users and compliant with
Google Webmaster Guidelines.

1. Use the nofollow tag where appropriate

   Links that pass PageRank in exchange for goods or services are against
   Google guidelines on link schemes.
   Companies sometimes urge bloggers to link back to:

   1. the company’s site
   2. the company’s social media accounts
   3. an online merchant’s page that sells the product
   4. a review service’s page featuring reviews of the product
   5. the company’s mobile app on an app store

   Bloggers should use the
   nofollow tag
   on all such links because these links didn’t come about organically (that is, the links wouldn’t
   exist if the company hadn’t offered to provide a good or service in exchange for a link).
   Companies, or the marketing firms they’re working with, can do their part by reminding
   bloggers to use nofollow on these links.

2. Disclose the relationship

   Users want to know when they’re viewing sponsored content. Also, there are laws in some
   countries that make disclosure of sponsorship mandatory. A disclosure can appear anywhere in
   the post; however, the most useful placement is at the top in case users don’t read the entire
   post.

3. Create compelling, unique content

   The most successful blogs offer their visitors a compelling reason to come back. If you’re a
   blogger you might try to become the go-to source of information in your topic area, cover a
   useful niche that few others are looking at, or provide exclusive content that only you can
   create due to your unique expertise or resources.

For more information, please drop by our
Google Webmaster Central Help Forum.

Posted by the Google Webspam Team