Finance SEO + black-hat in the news again

Over the last couple of days there has been plenty of talk across larger SEO blogs about a large UK comparison website being penalised for techniques deemed as unscrupulous by Google.

Two well thought of blogs, Econsultancy and Insiders-View, both confirmed the news yesterday.

So whats happened here? Essentially, it looks like the comparison site has been offering free content to website owners in return for a contextual link back to the comparison site's key product pages.

Google doesn't like this, but why? It's most likely not the offer of free content they dislike, but the method that was used at facilitating the request. Such a mass link request campaign could be seen as an attempt to directly game the PageRank algorithm. The email requests don't offer a link in return, so ultimately any webmaster that agrees to provide a link is taking the risk and losing out here by sharing their sites PageRank without really getting anything back.

A short while ago Forrester Research and Matt Cutts had a discussion about a technique used called "Sponsored Conversations". This is where a blogger is offered a (usually) tangible gift, or money, to talk about a product, highlight its benefits, include a link and try and create some buzz.

In fact, there are some companies that actively encourage bloggers to register with them and will then field requests from commercial companies on their behalf.

Matt Cutts is very clear on this issue;
1) "Clear disclosure of sponsorship is critical, and that includes disclosure for search engines."
2) "..paid posts should not pass PageRank." - i.e. out going links should be fully nofollowed.

Could it be Google are seeing the request for a link in return for 'quality content' falls in the realms of "Sponsored Conversation"?

It's all too common (and easy) for online marketers within a tough marketplace (which finance undoubtedly is) to take their budgets and try and 'buy' something more tangible like inbound links.

However, Google has been very very clear where the boundaries for this are. Here's a few quotes from the Google's Matt Cutts and former Googler Vanessa Fox.

Vanessa said, as far back as 2006;
"You want other sites to link to you. So, guidelines about links may seem confusing. You want genuine links: another site owner thinks your content is useful and relevant and links to your site. You don't want links that are intended only for Googlebot. For instance, you don't want to pay for a program that spams your link all over the Internet. You don't want to participate in link schemes that require you to link to a bunch of sites you know nothing about in exchange for links on those sites. Do you have hidden links on your site? These are links that visitors can't see and are almost always intended only for search engine web-crawling robots. Think about links in terms of visitors: are the links meant to help them find more good content or are they only meant to attract Googlebot?"

Matt Cutts then re-iterated this a year later by defining the difference of 'paid links' and 'paid links that pass PageRank';
"As someone working on quality and relevance at Google, my bottom-line concern is clean and relevant search results on Google. As such, I care about paid links that flow PageRank and attempt to game Google’s rankings. I’m not worried about links that are paid but don’t affect search engines. So when I say “paid links” it’s pretty safe to add in your head “paid links that flow PageRank and attempt to game Google’s rankings.” "

So, paid links bought to increase SEO benefit for the purchasing website, simply, contravene Google guidelines, and carry the high risk that such a strategy obviously carries with it. As you can see from the first quote i've listed, these links must be no-followed.

It's pretty clear really isn't it?