Outreach, Blogging, and Search Engine Optimization

Outreach is a sensitive topic in Swedish search engine optimization. That might sound odd, but it’s because many people work with a distorted version of outreach—and that distortion creates problems, ethical ones, in fact.

It’s rarely reasonable to talk about ethics and SEO; when you’re competing against an algorithm with fixed rules, it’s hard to accuse someone of being unethical for winning. The industry is so unified on this point that it’s almost standard practice to poke fun at anyone who brings up the old cliché of “ethical SEO.”

The problem with outreach in Swedish SEO is different from other challenges. The issue is that, when working with a very common distortion of outreach, you’re often skirting the edges of the Swedish Marketing Act. What is sometimes called outreach in Sweden is, in reality, just emailing bloggers and asking to buy space on their blogs. If someone pays you to publish something, it must be labeled as an advertisement—and many have already written about this. The issue with labeling a post as sponsored or an ad is that Google will react negatively to it; they don’t want content to climb the rankings through paid articles.

So What Is Outreach, Really?

If we set aside that specific distortion for a moment and instead look at what outreach actually is and how it works, things may become clearer. Outreach is the process of spreading your content to bloggers, webmasters, and online publishers. It shares many similarities with the PR industry, even if the end goal is different. The foundation is that you need to be interesting—or have something interesting enough that, when you reach out to a publisher, they’ll want to write about it. That “interesting” factor can take many forms: offering deeper insight into a topic, having a product compelling enough to warrant attention, or something else that captures a blogger’s or webmaster’s interest.

When someone fails to be interesting in any of these ways, some resort to slipping a bit of money into the envelope. Once money enters the conversation, you’ve shifted from editorial content to sponsored content. Just like newspapers maintain a strict separation between editorial and advertising, bloggers need to do the same. When the Financial Times was recently pressured by HP, who disliked an article and threatened to pull ads, the FT had a crystal-clear response:

“It is my editors’ steadfast refusal to consider the impact of stories on advertisers that makes us the decent newspaper we are. It is why I want to go on working here. It is why the FT goes on paying me.”

A real outreach campaign in SEO clearly belongs on the editorial side—because the alternative equation is impossible. If the article is labeled as an ad, it complies with the law, but then Google discounts it (and sometimes it can even have a negative effect). That’s why so many shady requests to publish sponsored posts on blogs come from SEO companies—often not based in Sweden, or at least operating through foreign offices under different names. What’s more, it’s not the buyer of the content who breaks the law—it’s the publisher.

That’s why this activity can continue. The client is told it’s outreach (which I don’t even consider it to be), and then a foreign company buys posts from unsuspecting bloggers who likely don’t know the legal requirements.

Real Outreach Is Possible

As far as I know, none of these companies actually engage in proper outreach—but it is entirely possible. A potential red flag for you as a buyer should be if it sounds suspiciously cheap. And for you as a blogger: always make sure to label paid posts

For Bloggers

For the content to be truly editorial, several things need to be in place. To begin with, the person contacting you cannot dictate what should be written. If you’re reviewing a product, no one can demand a positive outcome—you have every right to completely trash the service if you choose. As mentioned, you must not be paid, and no one can require you to write—because you’re not being compensated. If an outreach agency chases you for weeks to write about an event, and you attend, enjoy the evening, eat free snacks, and see a product launch—they still can’t demand anything in return. You write if you want to write.

For Agencies

To the agencies claiming you do outreach: stop buying blog posts unless you’re willing to have them clearly labeled as ads. I get that it’s an easier path—but are you really that damn incompetent?

Disclaimer

As a brief disclaimer, I myself worked for a short time at an agency that used this method. I resigned rather quickly—not solely because of this, but it was part of the reason. My colleagues and I also tried to steer the business away from this kind of buying—not necessarily for moral reasons (as mentioned, it’s not the agency that breaks the law, but the webmaster), but because it’s poor SEO. It’s not long-term or sustainable. The good news is: real outreach is possible.