Is a Paid Blog Review Worth It?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

I’m on the fence about paid blog reviews. I think one every now and again is a great way to get valuable inbound links, generate new visitors to your site, build your online brand presence and more, but you have to be careful to not rely too heavily on paid reviews. If you are thinking about paying for a blog review, it’s important that you pick a blog that will actually help your brand.

Here are five things to look at when considering a paid blog review:

1. The WHOIS info for the site to see if it is hosted in the U.S. and how long it has been registered.
Best practice SEO dictates that you stick with aged and US-based sites, as these tend to be more trusted by the search engines than a newer blog or site hosted in a foreign country. Remember, when it comes to link building the quality of the link is more important than the quantity in the long run. The search engines have recently pushed through various updates designed to flag sites with “unnatural links,” and you don’t want to give them any reason to penalize your site.

2. Look at the blog itself and compare the number of paid reviews vs pieces of non paid content
A blog that is just filled with paid reviews probably isn’t a good choice for your company. You want a blog that has its own authority and loyal readership, where their review would actually mean something positive for your brand. If the blog is mostly paid reviews, then you know that blogger is just interested in selling their review services and not producing their own thought leadership content.

3. Look at social media outlets to see if the blogger is established and ask will they promote the review once it is posted
If you are going to go with a paid blog review, you want to make sure as many people as possible see it! The more people that read that review, the more traffic it could potentially drive to your site. Since this review is on a industry blog, you know that it’s reaching the right audience. Make sure that blogger has social profiles on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+ and is willing to promote your review once it goes live. Checking out the blogger’s social profiles will also give you a good idea how influential they are, what kind of reach they have and what kind of impact a review on their blog might have for your company.

4. Look at the Compete.com information to see if the blog gets a lot of traffic.
If you are going to be paying for a blog review, you want to make sure the blog gets a decent amount of traffic. There is no point in paying for a piece of content that no one is going to ever read! Compete.com will give you a rough estimate of how many unique visitors that blog gets every day, so you can decide if it’s worth the price.

5. Ask to see examples of other paid reviews to make sure it’s not spammy in nature.
Above all else, you want to make sure the paid blog review isn’t going to come across as spammy. Even though you aren’t writing this piece of content, it’s your name attached to it. You don’t want to give readers or the search engines cause to think that you’re trying to dupe them with spammy content.