Sponsored Links

Sponsored links are links a website has been paid to place, whether the payment is money, free products or another form of compensation. Google requires links of that kind to carry the attribute rel="sponsored", so its algorithms can see that the link is an advertisement and not an editorial recommendation.

Links are one of the strongest signals in SEO, because in Google's eyes a link is an independent vote that a page is worth referring to. Pay for the vote and the independence disappears, which is why Google's spam policies treat buying and selling links that pass ranking signals as link spam. Declaring the link resolves it. A paid link carries rel="sponsored" or alternatively rel="nofollow", and that covers all paid content with links, from sponsored articles and advertorials to affiliate links. Both parties carry risk: the site selling the link can lose its ability to pass authority at all, and the buyer can face a manual action with measurable ranking losses.

Correctly declared sponsored links are entirely legitimate and still deliver traffic, visibility and brand mentions. They move no authority, though, which is why paid links can never carry a link strategy on their own. The backlinks that genuinely lift rankings are the earned ones, placed by others because a site's content, data or tools are worth referring to. Earning links instead of buying them is the whole premise of the guide to link building.