SEMrush Selling Links Against Google Guidelines

This is where digital marketing tools, such as SEMrush, have come in and taken over the narrative. However, on the flip side, many of these digital marketing tools operate on gray areas. This means they might operate with one foot on the legal side while the other treads on questionable methods that might be against the guidelines of the digital spectrum. Read on as our Liverpool SEO agency highlights the confusing situation regarding SEMrush and guest posts.

What is SEMrush?

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation has become a niche in the digital market. The growth of SEO has been capitalized by companies like SEMrush. SEMrush is an all-in-one software that assists companies with online digital marketing such as companies or people running SEO campaigns. It is a leading marketing tool to help digital marketers to do SEO.

It essentially helps businesses to come up with strategic plans and actions to optimize traffic for their work. SEMrush offers a multitude of functions- tracking the success of a website, optimizing SEO, monitoring performance, and resolving website issues and setbacks. With all these functions, we can conclude that SEMrush is a spectacular piece of software engineering, right? Not exactly.

There have been constant rebuttals relating to SEMrush in the tech field, which might suggest otherwise. SEMrush alleges that it provides a cascade of high quality and links that are natural to websites, which helps in the overall efficiency and organic traffic of the site. They stated that they do this using the marketplace guest posting service. This means the software does all the heavy work for the site owners.

This includes management of time, flowing in of organic traffic, increasing site exposure, and generating ideas and content materials. But all these come with a price, except for the first 30 days trial, which is free. After the trial period, SEMrush requires payment for the different plans available, and this is where things get a little gray.

Google Webmaster Calls Out SEMrush.

Buying and selling links is against Google’s policy. Google is a giant when it comes to the digital world. However, with many new digital entities entering into the digital market, developers might find loopholes or even choose to ignore certain precedents and guidelines that have been in place for years for fairness and equal opportunities.

We can cite the example of SEMrush, which is a software for aiding SEO that was called out by Google Webmaster John Mueller. John Mueller was responding to a tweet by SEMrush claiming natural links and bringing organic traffic using their software. This tweet has, however, been taken down ever since. But the tweet was captured by George Majic.

In the post, we can see user John Locke enquiring about SEMrush about the selling of links. SEMrush replied, explaining that they create unique articles and use backlink, which is placed to the site’s URL as well as to other similar content research to make it as natural as possible. They justified that this falls under the guidelines of the digital world and is hence legal.

However, google analyst John Mueller was quick to refute this statement and called out SEMrush, stating that what they offer and how they are going about it might be subject to reparation and legal actions. He stated that the links were unnatural and the kind which might be subject to actions from the webspam team.

Issues from Other Users

Twitter has become the ground for rebuttals and clarifications. As such, Tom Raynor posted saying that he had purchased some links from SEMrush. However, he stated that when he tried to use the links, the backlink audit tool of SEMrush flagged them as toxic, thus rendering them useless.

He further alleged that it was unlikely that the links were flagged and taken down by Google as of yet and that SEMrush would need to look into the matter immediately as others have also paid for the same services and links on SEMrush’s guest blog network. He also reached out to SEMrush for which he had not gotten any feedback.

SEMrush responded later, stating that they do not buy or sell links and are rather focused on composition, content development, and editorial coordination. We see from the tweet that SEMrush was also appreciative of the user feedback at the same time while also offering their end of the story.

However, later, we got the news that many of the users were not able to get into the page of SEMrush, which sold those links anymore. They said that the page no longer loads and is instead prompted by the error 404-message.

Clarification from the Side of SEMrush

In the midst of all the confusion and accusations, SEMrush CEO Oleg Shchegolev made a statement in hopes to clear up confusion and address the situation. He started by apologizing for the stress and confusion that was created and then went on to reject the accusations that they were selling links. He stated that it was false, and they do not sell links.

He continued to stress the fact that their software was designed to help with SEO contents, compositions, and editorial works, but not to pay blogs to publish articles or sell links. He did, however, think that in hindsight, they may have launched the service without proper foresight and communication. He further clarified that they also flagged certain links themselves, but it wasn’t because it violated the terms of the search engine.

He continued to state that they are working on all the customer feedback and on account of tremendous orders which would be difficult to fulfill at the current juncture, they have to pause the services of the guest blog. He ended his statement by saying that he was proud that they could react to customer feedback to improve and sought further feedback to help their development.

Summing It Up

As we stated in the start that with many entities joining the digital spectrum, confusion and accusations are imminent. Every developer of software would want to climb to the top and enjoy the perks of the niche, but sometimes things are done in haste and can have consequences. Many users have offered many opinions.

Some compare SEMrush to other link building agencies which do not comply with the guidelines of the digital spectrum. While others suggest, you use and buy links only from sites that have links sponsored by google. However, we believe the field is wide open for any competition to come in with proper tools and methods.

We believe some users when they say guest posting is legal, but guest posting in a way to manipulate search results is not. The bottom line, SEO, is a hugely profitable niche right now, and this has made it to not be Black or white. The only certainty is linked schemes are a violation of Google’s policy and, if caught, can be penalized.