So Google’s latest blog algorithm is going to penalise bloggers who have backlinks to products that pass rank value back to brands – kind of defeating one of the main digital purposes that brands try to get bloggers to review their stuff. The website accepting the link can also get penalised.
The reviews are still useful, people will still read them, and people will still follow links – but Google won’t be following and if you invite them to follow and they don’t like the link from an advertising and ‘paid’ link stand point – you’ll actually end up worse off in your rankings.
The only way around it is to have a rel=”nofollow” code for specific links so search engines don’t follow the link. There’s some simple plugins in WordPress that allows you to code the links, such as NoFollow – the ultimate no follow link plugin.
I originally heard about this through the Smart Company article written by Jim Stewart. Then did some more digging and thinking about how it will affect our business and the PR side of what we do.
So next time we are engaging a blogger, we will have to actually specify to them how to add a rel=no follow link so we don’t get our clients penalised in the rankings for helping to get them coverage. What does this mean for Bloggerzines like sites locally such as HerCanberra? They are going to get smashed by this change and will need to do some fancy footwork and coding changes to maintain their good standings in the rankings.
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