Should Guest Post Links Be Marked Sponsored? Ask An SEO - Search Engine Journal

Adam Riemer tackles a follow-up question on Google's preferred markup for guest post links in this edition of Ask An SEO.

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This week’s Ask an SEO question comes from John in London, England, who asks:

“I came here from your post Should You Use Nofollow, Sponsored, or UGC Links?

In the ‘Affiliate Links’ paragraph you write, ‘These should be sponsored because you are posting them with the goal of earning a commission.’

My question is, should this strategy also be implemented for guest posts?

When I’m going to publish my article on someone’s site, should I have to tell him to use a sponsored link attribute?

I’m running an affiliate site and I know my outbound link should be sponsored but for backlinks I don’t know exactly.

I hope you understand my question. Looking forward for your response.”

Hi John,

Thank you for writing a follow-up to my post and for the great question.

Before I give you an answer, the editor asked me to share this post about Google’s warning with guest posting for backlinks.

In short, if you paid for the guest post, then the link should have sponsored markup as you are sponsoring.

But keep in mind that any attribute attached to the link will signal to Google that it is not a natural link, and if it does, the link will likely not help you with SEO.

There is debate about nofollow...

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