Expressly paying for links has been out for awhile. Quid Pro No is in. These are some things you can do when a website asks for money in exchange for a link. During the course of building links, whether it’s free links, publishing an article or getting a brand mention, it’s not unusual to get solicited for money. It’s tempting to take the bait and get a project done. But I’m going to suggest some considerations prior to making a decision as well as a way to turn it around using an approach that I call Quid Pro No.
Link building, digital pr, brand mention building can often lead to solicitations for a paid link. There are many good reasons for not engaging in paid links and in my experience it’s possible to get a link without doing it their way when someone asks you for money in return for a link.
Red Light Means Stop
The first consideration is that someone who has their hand out for money is a red light is because it’s highly likely they have done this before and are highly likely linking to low quality websites that are in really bad neighborhoods, putting the publisher’s site and any sites associated with it into the outlier part of the web graph where sites are identified as spam and tend to not get indexed. In this case consider it a favor that they outed their site for the crap neighborhood it resides in and walk away. Quid pro… no.
Getting solicited for money can be a frequent occurrence. Site publishers, some of them apparently legit, are publishing Guest Post Submission Guidelines for the purpose of attracting paying submissions. It’s an industry and overly normalized in certain circles. Beware.
Spook The Fish
A less frequent occurrence is by the newb who’s trying to extract something. If the site checks out then there may be room for some kind of concession. If they’re asking for money, in this case, Quid Pro No means to FUD them away from this kind of activity THEN turn them around to doing the project on your terms.
When angling on a river fish that’s on the hook might make a run downstream away from you which makes it tough to land the fish because you’re fighting the fish and the current. Sometimes a tap on the rod will spook them into changing position. Sometimes a sharp pull can direct them to turn around. For this character I have found it efficacious to spook them with all the bad things that can happen and turn them around to where I want them to be.
Very briefly, and in the most polite terms, explain you’d love to do business, but that there are other considerations. Here’s what you can trot out:
- FTC Guidelines
FTC guidelines prohibit a web publisher from accepting money for an unlabeled advertisement. - Google Guidelines
Google prohibits paid links
Land The Link
What’s in it for me is a useful concept that can be used to convince someone that it’s in their interest to do things your way. It’s important to convince the other party that there’s something in it for them. They want something so sometimes it’s worthwhile to make them feel as if they’re getting something out of the deal.
The approach I take for closing a project, whether it’s a free link or an article project is to circle back to asking for an article project by focusing on communicating why my site is high quality and ways that we can cross-promote. It’s essentially relationship building. The message is that your site is authoritative, well promoted and that there are ways that both sites can benefit without doing a straight link buy.
But at this point I want to emphasize again that any site that’s asking for money in exchange for a link is not necessarily a good neighborhood. So you might not actually want a link from them if they’re linking out to low quality sites.
Or Go For A Labeled Sponsored Post
However, another way to turn this around is to just go ahead and pay them as long as it’s a labeled as a sponsored post and contains either multiple no-follow links and or brand mentions. Sponsored posts get indexed by search engines and AI platforms that will use those as validation for how great your site is and recommend it.
What’s beautiful about a labeled sponsored post is that they give you full control over the messaging, which can be more valuable than a tossed-off link in a random paragraph. And because everything is disclosed and compliant, you reduce the long-term risk while still capturing visibility in AI Mode, ChatGPT and Perplexity through the citation signals.
Quid Pro No
Quid Pro No is about negatively responding to a solicitation and turning it around and getting something you want without actually saying the word no.
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Studio Romantic
