Commercial Blogs Are Not Evil; Paid-For Reviews Are OK
Do PayPerPost Services Game Search Engines?
Robert Scoble thinks they do but is that enough to solidify the idea? Of course, any service that creates backlinks and can help generate buzz can be gamed for search engine purposes, but does that mean companies like PayPerPost exist only to create false link buzz about a site or product? Only if the blogger being paid intends to use them that way.
However, this gray area hasn’t stopped Wordpress from announcing they will ban members who take part in the PPP service, something they touch on in their TOS page. Wordpress has also sent out warning emails to members they suspect have posted entries for PayPerPost, informing the blogger they are either to remove the offending posts or their blog will be removed.
The reason for this warning, at least in Scoble’s mind, is because Wordpress doesn’t want their service to a haven for spam bloggers; something Google’s Blogger service has been fighting for sometime.
While Wordpress’ stance is understandable and even commendable does that mean these paid post services are the search engine spam sanctuaries they are being made out to be? Again, it all depends on the user involved. If the person’s intent is to spam, then they can use services like PayPerPost to do so but that doesn’t mean every post generated from these services is malicious.
Over at SEOBook, Aaron Wall has differing point of view from Scoble’s:
Because I have been involved with ReviewMe, many people have told me that they thought ReviewMe was just an SEO tool, but I realize that links / rankings / SEO in general / brand building / trust building / sales are all just a side effect of getting exposure and satisfying market needs. The benefit of reviews from a network like ReviewMe is that you get exposure in active channels that people trust and are paying attention to.
Feedback, direct sales, direct relevant link equity, secondary citations, new readers, branding and awareness… buying reviews from ReviewMe could pay for themselves many ways over, if you create things worthy of exposure.
Our take: This is an interesting discussion. It’s essentially an argument between the blog purists like Scoble and neobloggers like Wall. The purist argument is anti-commercial while the neo argument is pro-commercial. In other words, don’t-turn-your-blog-into-a-moneymaking-machine vs. do-what-you-want-with-your-blog.
We don’t have a problem with the commercial blogging argument. Scoble’s point that promoting one’s own book in the sidebar is permissable because the sidebar isn’t as SEOd as the primary component of the blog is not a valid argument.
One of points in this discussion has to do with using blogs to spam search engines with links. But aren’t blog reviewers just following the rules that the search engines put in place anyway? Google doesn’t count paid-for links as highly as freely earned links because they don’t want people “buying” their to the top of the search rankings. We understand Google’s policy and, for the most part, agree. However, Yahoo! and MSN seem not to have a problem with these types of links as much as Google does. They’re entitled to their policies too.
If you are a blogger and you take money to write a review for a product or service you should disclose the fact that you are doing that. It’s only fair to your readers. The fact that services like PayPerPost and ReviewMe - well, let’s not leave out Blogsvertise - allow reviewers to post positive or negative reviews of the companies they link to suggests an air of openness and see-through-me. If it were otherwise, that is all paid-for blog reviews were expected to be positive in nature, we’d probably be more againt it. After all, blogging is more than just SEO work for the search engines - it’s also about talking to people, which suggests that a level of honest disclosure is expected.
So where does one draw the line in commercialization? Are blogs inherently anti-commercial? If so, then we all have some serious soul searching to do because we all use them as indirect tools of commercial selling on a daily basis. If you run a business and you blog you do so because you want your customers to trust what you say and do business with you. If you run Google AdSense ads in your blog or affiliate banner ads then you are running a “commercial” blog. Hear that Scoble?
There’s nothing wrong with promoting your own books. There’s nothing wrong with promoting the books and other products and services of others through your blog. There’s nothing wrong with getting paid to write reviews; after all, the company being reviewed gains a benefit. While traditional reviewers off line would be frowned upon for taking money from the businesses who own the products and services they review, online models of doing business have always been seen as unique.
It must be understood that companies are not paying for the review. They’re not paying for someone to say something positive about them. That’s why these review companies allow bloggers to post positive or negative reviews. The companies being reviewed are paying for SEO work. That’s what the links provide. How is it any different from paying and SEO/SEM firm to write articles and distribute them to the article directories, or to write blogs on your behalf or to write your web pages for you? It isn’t. It’s paying for valuable knowledge and experience, what fair trade has always been about.
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