Sponsored content has two potential problems:
1. Readers won’t like it because you’re trying to sell them something as real when it’s not.
2. Google won’t like it because you are, in all honesty, buying backlinks; and Google has made it very clear that buying links is bad.
Nevertheless, sponsored content is gaining traction in online marketing, and it’s not just the marketers who are happy.
Publications in desperate need to advertising revenue are more than happy to publish articles, for a price.
Sometimes the price is high
We’re not going to go into any detail about The Atlantic’s near fatal error in judgement when it published sponsored content from the Church of Scientology. But it is a shining example of sponsored content gone bad. The cost to The Atlantic’s reputation and the amount of negative press outweighed any fee that was paid.
At least two factors contributed to the disaster:
1) The Atlantic completely failed to realise how much people don’t like Scientology and how highly they regard it in contempt.
2) Sponsored content is so new that there aren’t any well-defined guidelines regarding ethical use.
Sometimes the price is worth it
When sponsored content is handled well, it can benefit publishers, marketers, and readers.
Publishers benefit because they get a stream of new, original content to keep search engines and readers engaged. Marketers are happy because they get to reach a wider audience and gain some credibility by appearing on reputable sites. Readers are happy because they get to read interesting articles from brands they like, as well as from brands they didn’t know existed.
How is it done properly?
Like most marketing tactics online (and offline), it requires transparency. In other words, publications and marketers need to label sponsored content as such and not try to pass it off as genuine in-house content.
As far as Google is concerned, SEOs need to ensure that all the links in the content are nofollow and they don’t pass PageRank (adamsherk.com). This is also to ensure that sponsored content doesn’t end up in Google News results, which would mean that Google unintentionally directs web users to paid content. This is something the big G really doesn’t want to do.
Finally, SEOs, online marketers and publishers need to come up with a set of rules regarding sponsored content so that everyone knows what’s considered ethical practice and what is unethical. These guidelines (policies) should be clearly visible on websites that are going to publish sponsored content, so that everyone knows what is expected.
Frank Sennett (jimromenesko.com) has proposed several factors that need to be considered in ethical guidelines, including, but not limited to:
- Sponsored content should be written by the paying clients and not by in-house staff.
- It should be in line with the type of content the publication would ordinarily publish.
- Comments should be disallowed.
- Copyright issues must be sorted out.
Sponsored content is not necessarily a bad idea. In fact, it can be a good idea for SEOs, marketers, publishers and readers. But it needs to be done ethically and with all due consideration to readers.
