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Hey Art and Writing Twitter,
Let's have a chat about why Rolling Stone's new paid writing thing isn't your standard "pay for exposure" scheme and how and why it differs.
What is being bought here ISN'T exposure, but backlinks and Google E.A.T.
1/ https://twitter.com/forexposure_txt/status/1353129358290870272
Let's have a chat about why Rolling Stone's new paid writing thing isn't your standard "pay for exposure" scheme and how and why it differs.
What is being bought here ISN'T exposure, but backlinks and Google E.A.T.
1/ https://twitter.com/forexposure_txt/status/1353129358290870272
To start off with, let's have a quick explanation of what backlinks and Google EAT are.
Backlinks are links back to your website or a client's website from another website. Site owners want good, credible backlinks because it makes google rank them higher.
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Backlinks are links back to your website or a client's website from another website. Site owners want good, credible backlinks because it makes google rank them higher.
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Google EAT is a little more difficult to explain. EAT stands for "Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness." Google EAT is something that helps your site rank. You NEED EAT.
How do you get that though?
There are a few different ways.
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How do you get that though?
There are a few different ways.
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The first is by publishing quality content on your site and having a good page or pages detailing who makes the site, their qualifications...in general just showing your audience that you're trustworthy.
The second is...you guessed it...backlinks.
But the third? ...
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The second is...you guessed it...backlinks.
But the third? ...
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The third way to establish EAT is by publishing content on authoritative sites, and being mentioned on authoritative sites.
So now that we've established what backlinks and EAT are, let's talk about what Rolling Stone is doing.
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So now that we've established what backlinks and EAT are, let's talk about what Rolling Stone is doing.
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As you've probably figured out by now, Rolling Stone is a pretty large publisher. This means that the amount of good link juice (yes, we actually call it that) and the amount of EAT you get from publishing your content with links to your sites is super high.
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This isn't about the exposure of being on Rolling Stone for people to see you.
This is about Google seeing that you and your links are on Rolling Stone.
The people buying this membership don't care about the "exposure" in the traditional sense that we think of it.
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This is about Google seeing that you and your links are on Rolling Stone.
The people buying this membership don't care about the "exposure" in the traditional sense that we think of it.
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What they're essentially paying for is a service to get google ranking. That's why it's on a separate section of the site no one will end up reading. Rolling Stone doesn't care about the content bc it's not about the content for them either, it's about selling this service.
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Another part of this is the potential for people that are buying this membership to use their access as a feature of their marketing business, which we're already seeing happening in the first batch of articles.
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As an example, one of these "culture council" members owns a marketing firm for the cannabis niche. Suddenly, their firm is able to offer a valuable service: backlinks and interviews in articles on Rolling Stone.
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You may be asking, "Well this is all well and good that this is of value to them, but surely this will become the new norm and hurt journalism or small businesses or publishers who can't afford this kind of thing?"
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The answer to that is...
This has been a thing since google was created. Usually, however, it just doesn't happen in broad daylight like this. It doesn't happen out in the open where it's so obvious and shameless.
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This has been a thing since google was created. Usually, however, it just doesn't happen in broad daylight like this. It doesn't happen out in the open where it's so obvious and shameless.
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The buying and selling of backlinks does make it harder for those with less startup capital to grow their sites quickly, yes.
A few good backlinks can mean a world of difference in rankings.
And we could debate the ethics of this all day.
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A few good backlinks can mean a world of difference in rankings.
And we could debate the ethics of this all day.
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That doesn't change the fact though that this happens every single day. A lot of google's rankings are influenced by deals like these that are normally relegated to the smokey back rooms of the internet.
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The fact that they're being so brazen about selling this out in the open is something new...something I think we will start seeing a lot more of from big publishers.
Their word choice of "thought leader" literally screams "come buy your EAT and backlinks!"
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Their word choice of "thought leader" literally screams "come buy your EAT and backlinks!"
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Anyway, all of this was basically a long way to say that this isn't a traditional "for exposure" scheme and explain why people with the capital will 100% jump at this chance, and it's not that they're being suckered into writing for nothing.
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Thanks for reading! Hopefully, I was able to explain this in a way that makes sense. The world of search engine stuff can be a bit complicated, but it's honestly really fascinating.
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For any SEO's that read this, I'd like to clarify that yes, I did oversimplify some explanations for the sake of brevity and accessibility for those that don't have a technical SEO background.
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I guess this is where I say, "Hey, if you enjoyed this thread, please click the follow button! I have a lot more of this type of content planned!"
Cause I do have some proper, well thought out content planned that will be better than this late-night ramble!
Cause I do have some proper, well thought out content planned that will be better than this late-night ramble!
