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FTC and sponsored posts
Posted by on December 3, 2020 at 11:10 pmHey everyone. I’ve done some research and have a question I want your opinion on as I can’t find data to support a single conclusion. Please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong in any of my assumptions, anything helps and I’m trying to learn.
I understand that any paid links should be tagged as sponsored in order to comply with FTC guidelines. With that said, most of the link building I see done doesn’t actually include this tag, sometimes it’s do follow, sometimes no follow, etc. I feel like small to medium sized bloggers and domain owners don’t really care that much about how it will be presented as long as the content is decent and they’re getting paid for it.
I want to know, can I pay for a link that helps my site? Under what conditions will I get in trouble if I do so?
Really appreciate your input.
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2 Replies
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The FTC requires that you put a “this is a sponsored post” type disclaimer ‘above the fold’ on sponsored blog posts. It also requires that if you promote that blog post on social media that you use #ad or #sponsored.
The rest of what you’re talking about as far as nofollow and dofollow links isn’t related to the FTC. The nofollow & dofollow stuff is from Google webmaster guidelines. It’s against google’s webmaster guidelines to buy dofollow links. If you buy a link, it’s supposed to be marked as nofollow (or rel=”sponsored”). If Google catches a site having paid links that are dofollow, they’ll penalize both the seller’s site and the buyer’s site.
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For the FTC you’re supposed to disclose somehow that your affiliate links are sponsored, you’re receive commission, or however you want to word it. It’s supposed to be somewhere obvious and not hidden. rel=sponsored is just for Google, and doesn’t show up anywhere users can see so doesn’t satisfy what the FTC wants. Don’t think anyone’s coming for you in the case of niche edits, guest posts, or whatever.
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