Is Martha Stewart Engaging in a Shady Link Exchange
Posted on September 28th, 2008by Michael Gray in Google
You know there are days where you really just cant believe the things you see. Cruising on over to the Martha Stewart blog you’ll read how they are running a contest and REQUIRING a link back to Martha’s Blog to be entered … (screen shot for posterity)
So what’s the deal Matt Cutts is Martha within the Google guidelines on this one? Can we all scurry about running similar promotions on our blogs without fear of the google hammer of justice … or is more of the same old same old two tiered google justice system …
Popularity: 14% [?]
Sphere: Related Content
.gif)
September 29th, 2008 at 4:15 am
Not the first time I have saw this. There was a local SEO firm in the North East of England who was running a “Win a Nintedo Wii - Link to me!” promotion. Whoever drove the largest amount of traffic via the linkbacks (with pre-determined targeted keyphrases) won the Nintedo Wii.
Several firms here reported him for link purchasing through sponsorship, but he never got removed.
I suspect the same will happen with Martha Stewart’s blog because she’s not buying/selling links for cash, but for a review.
September 29th, 2008 at 6:17 am
Hey Michael,
How is this different from those “A-Lister” blogger contests where they stipulate you need to link to their blog with some prescribed anchor text?
In most cases, contestants are selling out their linkjuice for a $10 giftcard, or worst still, a mousepad with the “A-Listers” logo etched in it?
It’s not even clear what prize is being offered, other than being featured on her blog.
If you’re nasty, I guess you could kiss her virtual butt and iframe to an acai berry or dating offer if you win…
I guess some would sell their soul to “The Martha”.
I’m holding out for “The Donald”.
September 30th, 2008 at 10:01 am
It seems a bit shady to me. If I was running the campaign I would be able to find dozens of legit tactics before resorting to anything like this.
But I do feel that we should be able to do this type of stuff if we want, so I cant wait to hear what matt cutts and the webspam team have to say about it.
Also the SEO or Marketing campaign manager for martha should be chiming in too.
September 30th, 2008 at 10:02 am
The difference is just pure semantics.
September 30th, 2008 at 10:19 am
Not a Martha Stewart fan, but personally I don’t see the big deal. I would bet that 98% of her search queries that lead to her site are “martha stewart”, and not “double stitched pastel placemats”, etc…
If you want to punish her, just link to her site with more relevant anchor text - “dirty white trash” or something like that - I don’t see Google going after this.
I do agree though, that we ALL should be able to do this type of link-building. It would make my life much easier.
September 30th, 2008 at 10:46 am
she’s skirting the rules. but i don’t see anything to report here.. just clarification of the rules to live by
September 30th, 2008 at 11:03 am
There is a significant difference here. As someone who has gone through a Google penalty for cross linking sites and reciprocal links in the past, I can assure you, Google penalizes for this kind of thing. The difference, I do some SEO work and Google knows it. The same is true of other SEOs, SMMs, et al.
Perhaps I’m just p@r@n0!d from past penalties, but from my experience and what I’ve seen in the search industry, if you are a developer, marketer, or social media expert, you have to watch your @$$ very carefully. The rules are enforce much more strictly us in such industries than for others who are not.
Double standard? You be the judge.
September 30th, 2008 at 11:23 am
Stating the obvious here… Google is not the law. But, they do set the tone/pace because they are the biggest engine around.
Obviously this is a link scheme:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356
But is this really an “exchange”?
September 30th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
I’ve been biting my tongue to shreds about this one, so glad you’re covering it. Some thoughts: I think the purpose is more to get high rankings in technorati rather than the serps (I mean how would it be if a regular ol’ housewifey blogger outdid The Martha in technorati as a top blog?) and of course to drive traffic. I don’t think serps traffic is the motivation here. But I dunno, how many bloggers found their blogs slapped down for the very same thing (stipulating links as a requirement for a freebie, a gift, contest, whatever) during the first major pagerank drop google applied to blogs to shake things down?
September 30th, 2008 at 11:42 pm
Martha would be exempt for everything. She can do everything John Chow does to the 200th power and never see a slap. A-list celebs get this sort of privilege. She should really take advantage of it. I would bet the worst thing that would ever happen to her if she went overboard (sold links that passed PR etc.) would be a PageRank slap.
October 1st, 2008 at 6:39 pm
Kev Strong, why are you reporting/outing people for buying links in the SEO industry?
Its pretty lame and extremely hypocritical, given that you are actively buying links for all of your clients…