A Twitter user asked John from Google Webmaster tools team whether donating to charity is good for a back link strategy or not. His response was fast and specific.
@brettclimbs It’s just a paid link, right?
— John ☆.o(≧▽≦)o.☆ (@JohnMu) December 6, 2016
Google doesn’t normally give a straight answer and it does surprise me that people still thinking basically paying for a link are not going to be against Google Guidelines – I would pay attention. There is probably something to come in a future update to discount these links.
The original story came from a Medium article about a list of Charity sites which gives you a backlink for a donation and how this has boosted traffic. The full story can be found here.
We are not saying don’t give to charities – in fact, we are in 2017. You can read more here. However, we are not doing it for a link (I don’t believe we have got one) – we are doing it because its what we want to do.
I am the Managing Director of Coreter Media and have been in Digital Marketing since 2009. Initially in-house working for some of the UK’s biggest brands, but now I run my own agency helping small businesses grow.