SEMRush Backtracks on Guest Posting Service

by Fanboy SEO · June 5, 2020

So recently SEMRush decided to open a new service for old and new users alike which is pretty much a guest posting service which connects link buyers and sellers to help improve their SEO game.

On June 2, SEMRush sent an email blast introducing their new guest posting service. Here’s a screenshot of the email blast.

Then when they got negative comments and bad results, they had to release a statement from SEMrush President and Founder, Oleg Shchegolev.

Usually, I don’t write emails to customers, which is left to our exceptional marketing team. But, today is an important occasion.

Yesterday we faced a lot of controversy around the Guest Blogging service in our Content Marketplace. I believe it will be better if I personally address this issue and apologize. Several people on twitter and social media accused us of selling links. While this is untrue, we understand that our product launch communication could have been better. We understand what led them to such a conclusion and we only blame ourselves.

After we launched Content Marketplace, we asked our clients what other services they want to see in the Marketplace. Guest blogging was by far the most popular answer. Guest posting is a complicated topic. We flagged it ourselves in our latest research. If done wrong, guest posts can cause manual penalties, but it doesn’t mean that any type of guest blogging is harmful.

Our team made a decision to follow customer feedback and we are proud of them. They found partners who would offer honest, high-quality writing and outreach to ensure our clients get what they have asked for and have it in a transparent, white-hat way.

Earlier this week we audited the first batch of guest posts and came to the conclusion that the quality is not in line with our expectations. In many cases we didn’t like the blogs where content was published. As we were exploring potential solutions, we started seeing negative comments on social media. At the same time as a result of this buzz, we started seeing more and more new orders that we couldn’t properly fulfill. The combination of these three factors led us to the decision to close the Guest Blogging offer and refund all orders.

It’s only those who do nothing that make no mistakes. I am proud we can react to customer wishes so quickly and I am thankful to each customer who tested the service, regardless of our unclear communication. I am proud that my team tried to find a white hat solution in an area that many marketers have questioned.

We’ll keep asking our customers about their wishes and challenges and we will keep developing the tools they’d love. We will also continue gathering feedback and listening proactively to the marketing community. If we make a mistake, we own it. Despite the fact that we made a mistake in our communication, it was certainly not our intention. Our initial goal was to create a transparent, quality service for writing and outreach.

We encourage customers who enjoyed that service and for those who are interested in backlinks to try our link building tool. This is the safest way to build links.

We apologize for any inconvenience this situation has caused and we will try to be more careful with our experiments next time. As always, we appreciate any feedback.