Sponsored articles are an important part of link building and are closely related to the concept of content marketing, when used properly they can bring many benefits in SEO.
Sponsored articles - a comparison with traditional advertising
Sponsored articles are an extension of the advertising offer. In other words, they are also targeted at a different group of recipients. We are talking about people who perceive typical marketing "moves" and slogans poorly, who reject traditional forms of advertising, flooding the internet, and often simply irritating with their pushiness. Sponsored texts are more subtle, more balanced, written from a different perspective (of a person who knows or wants to share knowledge/information, not of an advertising agency), sometimes information about a given company or product appears as if by chance. Their great advantage is the placement of a link or links to the company's website or to some categories on its website - in the advertisement, of course, we will also often see a website address, but usually you cannot click on it, it is part of the whole, it is not exposed either. The effectiveness of sponsored articles is evaluated almost on par with traditional forms of advertising (of course, not every article will catch everyone's attention - a striking beer advertisement, for example, will be remembered, an article about the production of the same drink will attract the attention of a small percentage of potential customers, with technical innovations, however, it may be the opposite).
Sponsored articles - how to use them in SEO?
The impact of sponsored articles on website positioning is carefully analyzed: marketers can easily provide data on search traffic coming from various sources - Google search, social media, or sponsored texts. Sponsored articles are closely related to the concept of link building and content marketing, of which they are a very important element. They are a recognized and popular means of acquiring links to one's own website, which is one of the basics of SEO - they are a source of so-called direct traffic to the site. Properly utilized, they will increase the visibility of the website and increase its value in rankings developed by Google algorithms.
It is known that regular publication of sponsored articles on "strong" websites/portals/blogs has an impact on the positions of keywords. Of course, the value of the article must match other content on the website to which it refers and its structure, otherwise there will be no significant impact on positioning.
How to recognize agencies offering good sponsored articles?
The most important thing is that they guarantee and ensure a high level of content. Usually, experienced copywriters or people who work professionally in the media industry (which is already a guarantee of language correctness) work for them. Sometimes they use the help of experts in a particular field. The text is written according to SEO rules. There are no restrictions on the number of characters (as in directories), the client simply pays based on the quantity, depending on their preference; on the other hand, texts between 3 and 4 thousand characters are the most successful. There are no restrictions on visual inserts. The person leading the project ensures that all links provided in the article have a dofollow attribute, as only these affect later positioning.
Very often, agencies dealing with the sale and preparation of such articles also publish them on their social media, expanding the circle of potential recipients (and usually such texts remain in the archives, they are not deleted, which also boosts the SEO effect). Sponsored articles must not mislead or deceive customers - content sponsoring treated in this way is very unwelcome in Google algorithms.
