Hot take: that guest post I bought actually hurt my rankings

I was sitting in my home office last month checking my site's analytics and noticed a big drop in traffic. It turned out a guest post I paid $150 for on a food blog had some real junk links in the sidebar. Google must have flagged the whole page because my site took a hit within a week. I had to email the owner and ask them to take down my post, which was awkward. They refunded half the money, but it still took me two more weeks to recover. Have any of you dealt with a paid placement that backfired like this?

2 comments

2 Comments

william_carter11d ago

Heard a buddy of mine tried something similar with a paid post on some mommy blog for his camping gear site. Paid like $200 and the whole page was surrounded by ads for sketchy weight loss pills and one of those "one weird trick" gifs. His rankings dropped hard within a month and he had to call the owner three times before they'd even respond to his emails. It took him almost six weeks to get back to where he was before.

alicesingh11d ago

Ugh that's rough, really feel for your buddy.