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When to Mark a Link as “Sponsored” for SEO

ByNina Clapperton Updated on

Links are more complex than they seem.

You may not need to manually write out the “a href” code anymore thanks to hyperlinking, but there are still some adjustments you need to make.

You’ll need to decide whether a link should be marked as no follow, open in a new tab, or marked as sponsored.

Sponsored links are often missed by bloggers – I myself didn’t use them properly for years!

People assume that no following a link is enough, or even that Google won’t care about any of these bits of code.

Wrong!

Marking your links properly really matters. It’s a legal issue, and Google doesn’t exactly enjoy being in legal trouble. Links that aren’t marked properly can get your post wiped from the search results.

Or worse, it can get you sued.

I’ll admit, 99% of the time you’ll get away with it. But that 1% is too risky to toy with in my opinion, especially when the solution is so simple!

You need to know when to mark the link to properly comply, so let’s go through my checklist of questions together:

1. Is it a sponsored post?

Verdict: Mark it as sponsored

The most obvious use case for the sponsored link setting, is for a link in a sponsored post.

A sponsored post is any post that you were paid to create – even if you were paid $0.01.

Most bloggers know to add a sponsored post disclaimer at the top of the post, letting users know that this was a sponsored post but all views are your own.

But only about 1% of bloggers seem to know that all links back to the brand/company from within those posts must be marked as sponsored.

And I mean every single link.

If you link to their social media, their website, or even use your own affiliate link for their company, it MUST be marked as sponsored.

This tells the algorithms what type of post this is, and stops the links from passing link juice to the company. It’s sort of the same as adding a “Paid Partnership” label on Youtube, Instagram, or Tiktok.

Legally, you have to disclose this.

Morally and ethically, you should also disclose this to keep your audience’s trust.

2. Were you gifted the item?

Verdict: Mark it as sponsored

Gifted items are a form of compensation for bloggers.

You even have to declare the value of gifted items as “income” on your taxes. It’s one of the reasons many bloggers, myself included, won’t accept gifted items.

If you do accept a gifted item and write blog post about it, or include it in a round up, every link for that product needs to be marked as sponsored.

You may not have been financially compensated with cash, but you were compensated with product. You should also use a gifted disclosure to note that you didn’t buy the product.

Again, this operates very similarly to a disclosure on social media. It’s ethical to tell your audience how you got the product, even if you do love it or if you’ve used it before.

3. Was it a press trip or free experience?

Verdict: Mark it as sponsored

Just like with gifted products, a gifted experience is compensation.

You have to declare it on your taxes, and you have to declare it to Google.

I use the same sponsored disclosure for press trips or free experiences that I use for sponsored posts.

And I mark every single link to the company, or to companies that partnered with the tourism board I’m working with, as sponsored. If I got anything for free from them, even if they weren’t the host of the experience, I include it as a sponsored link.

This covers you legally and ensures Google doesn’t get mad at you for not disclosing a collaboration.

Most people forget that free tickets or press trips from a conference count as a gifted experience. Even if you aren’t required to create content around it, it’s best practice that if you do create content, you mark it “sponsored”.

4. Did someone pay you to insert the link?

Verdict: Mark it as sponsored

Sponsored links or paid link placements (also called “paid backlinks”) are a link that you were paid to insert. They are literally named after the need to mark them as sponsored so Google knows that this is not an organic link.

Google doesn’t want to pass backlink juice to someone that you were paid to recommend.

You might ask, “then why would a company want this link?” Because it’s not about SEO link juice. It’s about getting in front of your audience and getting traffic to their website or socials.

These companies are different than the ones who outreach to us bloggers offering $50 for a do follow link that’ll probably go to some spammy casino site.

Ignore those.

I’m talking about legit sponsored links.

These often happen when you’ve already mentioned a brand or company, or have an existing review post that they’d like to be added to. The company will ask for a link, you charge them for it (this calculator can help you price that), and you add the no follow / sponsored / open in a new tab link.

Even if the person paying you to insert the link as 0 affiliation with the company being linked to, you must mark it as sponsored!

5. Is it an affiliate link? 

Verdict: Mark it as sponsored

Most people don’t know that it’s best practice to mark affiliate links as sponsored.

Bloggers mark it as no follow and call it a day.

Technically, you can get away with this as Google can’t pass link juice through the no follow link. But it’s not best practice.

You are supposed to mark your links as sponsored because you might get paid for it if someone purchases through your affiliate link.

I have never had Google or any other platform lower or raise the ranking of an affiliate blog post because it has a sponsored tag on an affiliate link. But I have had posts get lower rankings when I tested turning off the no follow tag (at that point I wasn’t using sponsored tags properly yet).

Link Whisper can help you do this en masse – which is how I fixed mine when I learned after 5 years that I’d been doing it wrong.

6. Is it a manually placed ad or banner?

Verdict:  Mark it as sponsored

Placing manual ads or banners on your site is a great way to monetize before you’re in a premium ad network.

But there are some rules you need to be aware of: like marking every linked image as no follow and sponsored.

You are getting paid for this link to be on your website. Even though most people would figure that out at a glance, it’s still legally required for you to disclose your ads properly.

When you add the image, be sure to properly add the sponsored link class to it. It’s a little bit more complicated with images.

7. Did you trade goods/services/experiences for this link placement? 

Verdict: Mark it as sponsored

If you traded a link to a friend’s blog for a product, or swapped services with a friend and are writing a blog post review of their services, any links are technically sponsored.

Swaps/trades compensate you in some way. Whether that’s with free product or services, or a favour of some sort, you received something without paying money for it.

I have a policy not to do swaps for reasons like this, and the annoyance of tax declarations/tracking.

Any trade or swap, please for the love of God, get a written agreement to protect both parties. And mark those links as sponsored anywhere you post them on your website.

But…Do We Really Have To?

Yes!

You should always clearly disclose to your audience and to Google when you have been compensated in some way and that it doesn’t influence your opinions/reviews.

Your community will trust you more.

And Google will see you as a law-abiding business.

Plus, you never know when Google will suddenly decide to crack down on this. Tomorrow, they may go “actually if you haven’t been marking links as sponsored, we’re drop kicking you out of the SERPs with no warning”.

The last documentation I could find from a Google rep on this issue was from 2021 when John Mueller stated that sponsored and no follow are the same “theme” so it’s kind of ok to only have on of sponsored or no follow – and he seemed to suggest no follow was the priority.

But it’s been years since then, and we’ve seen Google updates crack down harder and harder recently.

Other search engines may also be more vigilant about these things.

So save yourself the heartache later, and mark links properly from the get go (or from today, if you haven’t been doing this already).

While you’re at it, make sure all of your hyperlinks are properly marked with the tags they need.

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Nina Clapperton is the founder of She Knows SEO.

She started blogging in 2018 and spent years doing everything “right” while earning $0. Then she stopped guessing and learned how search actually works. She rebuilt her travel site around audience intent and structure and grew to 50,000 sessions in 6 months. Within a year, the blog was bringing in $30,000 months and later crossed 243,000 pageviews.

She took the same audience first SEO approach and built her education business into multiple $100,000 months.

Now Nina teaches bloggers and online business owners how to build search powered businesses grounded in strong positioning, clear structure, and monetisation that actually supports their audience. She covers traditional SEO and AI driven search without the tech bro noise, and she’s known for explaining complex strategy with analogies you won’t forget.

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